[56] Excavations in Cyprus (London, 1900).
CYPRUS, CHURCH OF. The Church of Cyprus is in communion and in doctrinal agreement with the other Orthodox Churches of the East (see [Orthodox Eastern Church]), but is independent and subject to no patriarch. This position it has always claimed (see, however, W. Bright, Notes on the Canons, on Ephesus 8). At any rate, its independence “by ancient custom” was recognized, as against the claims of the patriarch of Antioch, by the council of Ephesus, A.D. 431, by an edict of the emperor Zeno (to whom the church had sent a cogent argument on its own behalf, the alleged body of its reputed founder St Barnabas, then just discovered at Salamis), and by the Trullan Council in 692. Attempts have been made subsequently by the patriarchs of Antioch to claim authority over it, the last as recently as 1600; but they came to nothing. And excepting for the period during which Cyprus was in the hands of the Lusignans and the Venetian Republic (1193-1571), the Church has never lost its independence. It receives the holy ointment (μῦρον) from without, till 1860 from Antioch and subsequently from Constantinople, but this is a matter of courtesy and not of right. Of old there were some twenty sees in the island. The bishop of the capital, Salamis or Constantia, was constituted metropolitan by Zeno, with the title “archbishop of all Cyprus,” enlarged subsequently into “archbishop of Justiniana Nova and of all Cyprus,” after an enforced expatriation to Justinianopolis in 688. Zeno also gave him the unique privileges of wearing and signing his name in the imperial purple, &c., which are still preserved. A Latin hierarchy was set up in 1196 (an archbishop at Nicosia with suffragans at Limasol, Paphos and Famagusta), and the Greek bishops were made to minister to their flocks in subjection to it. The sees were forcibly reduced to four, the archbishopric was ostensibly abolished, and the bishops were compelled to do homage and swear fealty to the Latin Church. This bondage ceased at the conquest of the island by the Turks: the Latin hierarchy disappeared (the cathedral at Nicosia is now used as a mosque), and the native church emerged into comparative freedom. In 1821, it is true, all the bishops and many of their flock were put to death by way of discouraging sympathies with the Greeks; but successors were soon consecrated, by bishops sent from Antioch at the request of the patriarch of Constantinople, and on the whole the Church has prospered. The bishops-elect required the berat of the sultan; but having received this, they enjoyed no little civil importance. Since 1878 the berat has not been given, and the bishops are less influential. The suppressed sees have never been restored, but the four which survive (now known as Nicosia, Paphos, Kition and Kyrenia) are of metropolitan rank, so that the archbishop, whose headquarters, first at Salamis, then at Famagusta, are now at Nicosia, is a primate amongst metropolitans. There are several monasteries dating from the 11th century and onwards; also an archiepiscopal school at Nicosia, founded in 1812 and raised to the status of a “gymnasion” in 1893; and a high school for girls.
Authorities.—Ph. Georgiou, Εἰδήσεις Ἱστορικαὶ περὶ τῆς Ἐκκλησίας τῆς Κύπρου (Athens, 1875); K. Kouriokurineos (Archbishop of Cyprus), Ἱστορία χρονολογικὴ τῆς νήσου Κύπρου (Venice, 1788); de Mas Latrie, Histoire de l’île de Chypre sous les princes de la maison de Lusignan (Paris, 1852 f.); H. T. F. Duckworth, The Church of Cyprus(London, 1900); J. Hackett, History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus (1901).
(W. E. Co.)
CYPSELUS, tyrant of Corinth (c. 657-627 B.C.), was the son of Aeëtion and Labda, daughter of Amphion, a member of the ruling family, the Bacchiadae. He is said to have derived his name from the fact that when the Bacchiadae, warned that he would prove their ruin, sent emissaries to kill him in his cradle, his mother saved him by concealing him in a chest (Gr. κυψέλη). The story was, of course, a subsequent invention. When he was grown up, Cypselus, encouraged by an oracle, drove out the Bacchiadae, and made himself master of Corinth. It is stated that he first ingratiated himself with the people by his liberal conduct when Polemarch, in which capacity he had to exact the fines imposed by the law. In the words of Aristotle he made his way through demagogy to tyranny. Herodotus, in the spirit of 5th-century Greeks, which conventionally regarded the tyrants as selfish despots, says he ruled harshly, but he is generally represented as mild, beneficent and so popular as to be able to dispense with a bodyguard, the usual attribute of a tyrannis. He pursued an energetic commercial and colonial policy (see [Corinth]), and thus laid the foundations of Corinthian prosperity. He may well be compared with the Athenian Peisistratus in these respects. He laid out the large sums thus derived on the construction of buildings and works of art. At the same time he wisely strove to gain the goodwill of the powerful priesthoods of the great sanctuaries of Delphi and Olympia. At Delphi he built a treasure-house for Corinthian votive offerings; at Olympia he dedicated a colossal statue of Zeus and the famous “chest of Cypselus,” supposed to be identical with the chest of the legend, of which Pausanias (v. 17-19) has given an elaborate description. It was of cedar-wood, gold and ivory, and on it were represented the chief incidents in Greek (especially Corinthian) mythology and legend. Cypselus was succeeded by his son Periander.
See [Corinth]: History; histories of Greece; Herodotus v. 92; Aristotle, Politics, 1310b, 1315b; P. Knapp, Die Kypseliden und die Kypseloslade (Tübingen, 1888); L. Preller, Ausgewahlte Aufsatze (1864); H. Stuart Jones, in Journ. Hell. Stud. (1894), 30 foll.
CYRANO DE BERGERAC, SAVINIEN (1620-1655), French romance-writer and dramatist, son of Abel de Cyrano, seigneur de Mauvières et de Bergerac, was born in Paris on the 6th of March 1619-1620. He received his first education from a country priest, and had for a fellow pupil his friend and future biographer, Henri Lebret. He then proceeded to Paris to the collège de Beauvais, where he had for master Jean Grangier, whom he afterwards ridiculed in his comedy Le Pédant joué (1654). At the age of nineteen he entered a corps of the guards, serving in the campaigns of 1639 and 1640, and began the series of exploits that were to make of him a veritable hero of romance. The story of his adventure single-handed against a hundred enemies is vouched for by Lebret as the simple truth. After two years of this life Cyrano left the service and returned to Paris to pursue literature, producing tragedies cast in the orthodox classical mode. He was, however, as a pupil of Gassendi, suspected of thinking too freely, and in the Mort d’Agrippine (1654) his enemies even found blasphemy. The most interesting section of his work is that which embraces the two romances L’Histoire comique des états du soleil (1662) and L’Histoire comique des états de la lune (1656?). Cyrano’s ingenious mixture of science and romance has furnished a model for many subsequent writers, among them Swift and E. A. Poe. It is impossible to determine whether he adopted his fanciful style in the hope of safely conveying ideas that might be regarded as unorthodox, or whether he simply found in romance writing a relaxation from the serious study of physics. Cyrano spent a stormy existence in Paris and was involved in many duels, and in quarrels with the comedian Montfleury, with Scarron and others. He entered the household of the duc d’Arpajon as secretary in 1653. In the next year he was injured by the fall of a piece of timber, as he entered his patron’s house. Arpajon, perhaps alarmed by his reputation as a free-thinker, desired him to leave, and he found refuge with friends in Paris. During the illness which followed his accident, he is said to have been reconciled with the Church, and he died in September 1655.