http://hellenicantidote.blogspot.com/2009/07/archbishop-kyprianos-and-9th-july-1821.html
‘The race of the Greeks was born when the world was born;
No one has ever been able to uproot it.
God shelters it from the heights: it cannot die.
Not till the whole world ends will the Greek race vanish!
‘You may kill us till our blood becomes a torrent,
You may make the world a slaughterhouse for Greeks,
But when an ancient poplar is cut down
Three hundred offshoots sprout and grow around it.
The ploughshare thinks it eats the earth it cuts,
But is itself destroyed and eaten up.’
(Vassilis Michailides, The 9th July 1821)
Below is an article (my translation) that appeared in yesterday's Simerini by Kostis Kokkinofta regarding the Ottomans' execution by hanging of Archbishop Kyprianos of Cyprus on 9 July 1821. It should be noted that Kokkinofta is a researcher attached to Kykkos Monastery and, as you would expect, his account of events tends towards hagiography and asserts the role of the church in defending the interests of Hellenism on the island. Without touching too much on whether Kyprianos deserves his status as a national martyr or the role of the Cypriot Church in the Ottoman period, it is worth stressing that Kyprianos was not the only one who was put to death by the Turks on Cyprus in 1821 with the intention of preventing the Greek revolution from spreading to the island; and no doubt he was not the only one who went to his death with 'modesty' and 'humility'. In fact, after the initial killings of the island's leading Greeks was carried out on and soon after 9 July 1821 – some 500 were rounded up from across the island, brought to Nicosia and massacred – it is reported that Turkish, Arab and Albanian soldiers conducted a reign of terror throughout the island that lasted six months and resulted in at least 40,000 Greeks (half the island's Greek population) either being killed or fleeing Cyprus – mostly to the Ionian islands.
Archbishop Kyprianos and the 9th July 1821
Towards the end of the 1810s, Archbishop Kyprianos, clerics and other notables on Cyprus were initiated into the Philiki Etaireia. However, the multiple difficulties faced by Cyprus because of its distance from the main areas of the forthcoming uprising of Greeks against Ottoman rule and, particularly, the island's proximity to Egypt and Syria, with their large Muslim populations and concentrations of Ottoman soldiers, would have exposed Cyprus to bloody reprisals and therefore the island was excluded from the initial plans for the revolution.
Despite the fact that on Cyprus there was no armed uprising in 1821, the local Ottoman authorities took measures that aimed to eradicate the island's clerical and civilian leadership and to induce fear among the general population. The events that followed were the most tragic that befell Hellenism in Cyprus during the Ottoman occupation.
The church's leaders, headed by Archbishop Kyprianos of Cyprus and three bishops, Meletios of Kition, Chrysanthos of Paphos and Lavrentios of Kyrenia, as well as a large number of leading citizens, were executed and their properties confiscated.
'When in 1822, I was in Larnaca,' wrote the Swedish traveller Jacob Bergren, 'the Greek population of the island had been reduced to such an extent that many of the large villages were completely uninhabited. The Turkish soldiers brought death wherever they passed… The Virgin was dressed everywhere in black, many houses were abandoned and splattered in blood.'
The most distinguished figure of these terrible events was Archbishop Kyprianos, who acted as a responsible, patriotic leader and spiritual father, trying to strike a balance between supporting, on the one hand, the revolution in Greece while, on the other, attempting to protect the local population. His role was particularly tragic since he knew that he could not avoid martyrdom…
The last moments of Archbishop Kyprianos' life are described by the English traveller John Carne, who visited him shortly before his execution. As Carne notes, when he asked the archbishop why he did not do more to save himself when he realised the political situation on the island was tense and his life in danger, the archbishop replied that he had decided to provide whatever protection he could to the local Christians and he had determined, if necessary, to die alongside them.
Years later, Vassilis Michailides, in his poem, The 9th July 1821, attached great meaning to Kyprianos' decision to remain with his flock, having him say to the good-hearted Turk Kioroglou, who was urging him to flee the island: 'I'm not leaving Kioroglou, because if I leave, my leaving will bring death to the Greeks here'. ('Δεν φεύκω, Kιόρογλου, γιατί, αν φύω, ο φευκός μου/εν να γενή θανατικόν εις τους Pωμιούς του τόπου').
According to Carne, Kyprianos went to his death displaying unusual courage and unique dignity. With his sacrifice, he honoured Romiosini, asserted his Greek identity and justified his Christian faith. Modestly, humbly, with dignity and no self-pity, he went serenely to his death and immortality.
Joseph Woolf, a Protestant of Jewish origin, who arrived in Nicosia a few days after the tragic events of 9 July, relays eyewitness accounts that a proposal was made to Kyprianos just before his execution that he could save himself if he renounced Christianity and became a Muslim. As Woolf notes, the archbishop rejected the proposal without a second thought and went to his death repeating the phrases: 'Lord have mercy on me, Christ have mercy on me.'
Posted by John Akritas at Friday, July 10, 2009
