Cathedral of Saint George of the Greeks at Famagusta

Although the Cathedral of Saint George of the Greeks is in ruins, it is easy to identify because it is marked on Gibellino’s map from 1571, which represents the siege of the city of Famagusta by the Ottomans. Its construction is also mentioned in two testaments from 1363. It testifies to the policies of the Lusignan family, sovereigns of the Latin rite, towards their Greek subjects in the fourteenth century. Indeed, the relationship between the Greek and Latin churches became very tense after the conquest of the Island in 1191 by the Latins, particularly after the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and the sack of Constantinople. During the thirteenth century, the pope wanted to reduce the number of Greek bishops and displace them. Hence, the Greek bishop of Famagusta was to be transferred to the isolated region of Karpas. The kings, who were careful to maintain civil harmony amongst their subjects, probably never applied this decision. When a Greek relic, the Cross of Tochni, was found in 1340, the queen regained her voice, and the sovereigns adopted a policy of openness towards the Greeks. Two keystones discovered in the ruins bear the kingdom’s arms and attest to the king’s support for the cathedral’s construction.

The cathedral had three naves, with ribbed vaults, but no transept, terminating in three apses. The central nave was buttressed with flying buttresses. The ensemble was inspired by the Latin Cathedral of Saint-Nicolas and incorporated elements from the Gothic repertoire, such as radiating tracery windows and groups of small columns in the side apses. It incorporates a more simple and austere style inspired by the style of the mendicant orders, and this can be seen on the cathedral after work was recommenced in 1311: the bare walls and façade, the windows in the apses have no tracery, the flying buttresses are undecorated, and so on. Lastly, some elements were inspired by twelfth-century Romanesque monuments of the Holy Land, like the apses covered in half-domes, which were archaic in conception in the fourteenth century, and attest to the stylistic synthesis that occurred at the time on Cypriot monuments.

The Gothic building was attached to two small Byzantine churches, which are completely in ruins and may date from around the twelfth century, thus affirming a link with the past, predating the arrival of the Latins. A relic insignia—the remains of Epiphanes, the fourth-century saint bishop of Salamis—had been transferred to the middle of the nave of the new building. The monument’s liturgical modifications attest to the Greek religion, for which it was intended. Indeed, at the end of the central apse stands a great, three-tiered synthronos, a presbyteral bench characteristic of the major basilicas of late Antiquity, used in this case by the Cypriot Greek Church.  Each apse with an altar is flanked in the north, in its lower part, by a small room for offerings, the prothesis, opening to the left and inset into the walls. The sanctuary was enclosed by a templon, whose base still stands. Another particularity is the height of the apses that rise to the same level as the three naves. Pierced with narrow bays, These apses, with their narrow windows, have extensive wall surfaces that are covered in iconographic paintings, following the traditional arrangement in Greek churches, in place of the historiated windows used in Rayonnant Gothic. Some of the scenes relating to traditional Byzantine Christological iconography and the fathers of the Greek Church and the Cypriot saints are in a state of partial preservation. Saint George of the Greeks is therefore an exceptional example of a Gothic church that was adapted to the Orthodox religion in the mid fourteenth century.