The Finding of the Relics

The most celebrated episode in the Cypriot tradition of Barnabas is the finding of his relics. By the tradition, in the late fifth century the apostle appeared in a vision to Archbishop Anthemios and revealed his forgotten tomb near Salamis; the body was found beneath a carob tree with a copy of the Gospel of Matthew on its breast, and the discovery, carried to the Emperor Zeno, secured Cyprus’s autocephaly. This file reports the inventio, names its sources, and gives the scholarly assessment.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Lost Tomb

By the later fifth century, according to the tradition, the place where John Mark had secretly buried the martyred Barnabas (see The Martyrdom at Salamis) had been forgotten — the tomb, in a cave near Salamis, lay unmarked and unknown for some four centuries. The rediscovery is set against the renewed effort of the Patriarchate of Antioch, under Peter the Fuller, to subject the Cypriot Church to its jurisdiction. It was precisely when Cyprus most needed proof of its apostolic dignity that, by the tradition, the apostle himself provided it (Theodorus Lector, Ecclesiastical History, epitome; Hackett, History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 1901).

The Vision and the Discovery

The narrative, as preserved in the Byzantine sources and the Cypriot tradition, runs thus. The apostle Barnabas appeared in a dream — on three successive nights, by the fuller accounts — to Anthemios (Anthemius), the archbishop of Cyprus, revealing to him the location of his hidden grave, beneath a carob tree to the west of Salamis. Anthemios, going to the spot and digging, found a cave and within it the apostle’s relics, and upon the breast of the body a copy of the Gospel of Matthew — which the tradition holds Barnabas had himself copied out and carried in his preaching and his hand-laying for the sick (Theodorus Lector, PG 86; Hackett 1901). The finding of an apostle’s incorrupt body, with a Gospel-book at his breast, was received as a manifest sign from heaven — a divine seal upon the island’s claim to apostolic foundation, granted at the very moment Antioch pressed its case.

The Journey to Zeno

Anthemios understood at once the import of the discovery for the jurisdictional struggle. He took the relics, and above all the Gospel of Matthew found in the tomb, and journeyed to Constantinople to lay them and the Cypriot case before the Emperor Zeno (reigned 474–491). The finding of Barnabas’s body was decisive: it proved, as no document could, that Cyprus possessed the tomb and relics of an apostle, and was therefore an apostolic Church owing no obedience to Antioch. Zeno received the relics with honor, convened a synod which upheld the independence of the Cypriot Church, and — by the tradition — bestowed on the archbishop the three imperial privileges (the cinnabar signature, the purple cloak, and the imperial sceptre) as marks of the island’s apostolic dignity (Theodorus Lector; Hackett 1901; see The Autocephaly of Cyprus). The Gospel of Matthew from the tomb was deposited, by the tradition, in the imperial palace chapel at Constantinople, where it was read on Good Friday.

The Date and the Monastery

The inventio is placed in the reign of Zeno, around AD 478, though some accounts give c. 488; the variation reflects the uncertain chronology of the Antiochene dispute and of Anthemios’s tenure. [Disputed: the finding of the relics is dated c. AD 478 in many accounts and c. 488 in others; the sources (Theodorus Lector and later Byzantine historians) do not permit a single fixed year, and the date is bound up with the contested chronology of Peter the Fuller's claims and Anthemios's episcopate (Hackett 1901)]. Over the site of the discovery there arose the Monastery of St. Barnabas near Salamis (close to ancient Constantia / Famagusta), which became and long remained the spiritual center of the apostle’s veneration on the island, with the cave-tomb preserved nearby as a place of pilgrimage (Hackett 1901; on the veneration, Veneration and the Feast).

The Scholarly Assessment

Following the repository methodology, the inventio is reported as the Cypriot tradition’s own account, pinned to its sources, and not certified as independent historical fact (METHODOLOGY §3.5). Several points belong to an honest assessment. First, the sources: the earliest is the Ecclesiastical History of Theodorus Lector (early sixth century, surviving in epitome), close enough to the events to be valuable but itself a generation or more later, and the fuller narratives are later still. Second, the function of the tradition: modern scholars observe that the relic-finding is bound up with, and very plausibly shaped by, the island’s case for autocephaly against Antioch — the discovery arrives exactly when it is most needed and proves exactly what the Cypriots wished to prove, which is a reason for caution about its particulars even as it is reported in good faith by the sources (Hackett 1901; and the recent scholarship on the “Donation of Zeno” and the Cypriot regalia). Third, the relationship to the autocephaly: the canonical foundation of Cypriot independence is the eighth canon of Ephesus (431), a secure conciliar act; the relic-finding under Zeno is the traditional charter that, in the island’s memory, reconfirmed and crowned it (see The Autocephaly of Cyprus).

None of this is offered to debunk the tradition but to locate it. The Church of Cyprus venerates the finding of the relics as a true gift of God and the proof of its apostolic foundation; the historian notes that the account is hagiographical, serves a jurisdictional purpose, and rests on sources somewhat later than the events. Both can be held at once: the relic-finding is a precious and formative tradition of the Cypriot Church, reported as such, with its sources named and its evidential level acknowledged. What is beyond doubt is the result — that Cyprus emerged from the fifth century with its autocephaly secured, its apostolic founder’s tomb venerated, and its archbishops bearing the imperial privileges that the tradition traces to this discovery.

See Also

References

  • Theodorus Lector. Ecclesiastical History (epitome), on the finding of the relics of Barnabas under Anthemios and the audience with Zeno. In Patrologia Graeca 86.
  • Hackett, John. A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus. London: Methuen, 1901. (The inventio, the Gospel of Matthew, the journey to Zeno, the date, and the Monastery of St. Barnabas.)
  • The Acts of Barnabas. Trans. Alexander Walker, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8. Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1886. (The burial with the Gospel of Matthew.)
  • The Synaxarion of the Orthodox Church, June 11. (The commemoration of the finding of the relics.)