In the small square «footOf Cyprus, at the southern tip of the island, in the famous Akrotiri, as the whole area is called, between military bases, on the beach of Lady’s Mile and in the Salt of Limassol is a very special and very historic monastery.
According to Must, the Monastery of Agios Nikolaos is also known as Monastery of the Cats and according to Greek Orthodox tradition, it was founded by Agia Eleni herself, mother of Constantine the Great, who during her visit to Cyprus had left a piece of wood from the Holy Cross on the site of the monastery. Not only that, but according to tradition, the hundreds of cats that are in the monastery today are the descendants of those that St. Helen had brought to the island to deal with the overpopulation of snakes.
It is of course a historical fact that one of the great evils that Cyprus has faced in various phases of its history was the large number of medicinal snakes that in combination with prolonged periods of drought and drought made the island inhospitable.
Now whether it was indeed St. Helen who brought the cats to the area is certainly not historically ascertained, however, the monastery has become known as “Agios Nikolaos ton gaton” and has even given its name to the southeastern coastline called “Akrotiri Gata”.
According to another traditional version, the monks of the early Christian years used to invite cats to the monastery for food with the sound of one beacon and with the sound of another beacon they were sent to the fields to fight the snakes.
When a few years later the area was finally cleared of snakes changed the old name of the neighboring cape and from Kargaia, which was formerly called, was renamed “Gata”.
As for the founding of the monastery itself, it seems to date specifically to the first decades of the 4th century and is attributed to Kalokairos, who was the first Byzantine ruler of the island. However, the chapel that still survives inside the monastery dates back to the 14th century.
It seems to have operated until the 16th, when it was abandoned, until, just four decades ago, and specifically in 1983, some Orthodox nuns decided to reopen it. The access to the monastery is very easy since it is located only 15 kilometers west of the center of Limassol while the request of the few nuns who have remained there in recent years is like the public stopped taking cats to the area due to overcrowding!
VIDEO SOURCE: george karageorgis- YOUTUBE
MUST
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
