Qualla: Agios Neophytos Monastery

Agios Neophytos Monastery: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mgiganteus1 at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Neophytos did not want company. After he escaped from a Cypriot jail in 1159, where authorities had locked him up for the crime of pursuing an ascetic life, he climbed into the hills north of Paphos and waited months in silence to make sure no one would find him. Then he picked a small natural cave in the limestone face above the Ezousas valley and began to enlarge it, by hand, into a hermitage. He carved a cell, a chapel, and his own tomb. He hoped to die there alone. Eleven years later, the Bishop of Paphos talked him into accepting a single pupil, and the monastic community he never wanted began.

Image: Mgiganteus1 at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Agios Neophytos Monastery: The Engleistra

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rüdiger Stehn from Kiel, Deutschland, CC BY-SA 2.0. Neophytos called the place the Engleistra, the Place of Seclusion. It is still there, three rooms cut into the rock face, reached by stone steps from the valley path. A trapezoidal narthex opens into the church of the True Cross, with the saint's small cell to the south and the r...

Image: Rüdiger Stehn from Kiel, Deutschland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Agios Neophytos Monastery: Painted Walls

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.5. In 1183, while Neophytos was still living, the painter Theodore Apsuedes covered most of the Engleistra walls with frescoes. We know his name because Neophytos wrote it down and because Apsuedes left an inscription in the saint's cell. The Crucifixion, the Annunciation, and other...

Image: CC BY-SA 2.5

Agios Neophytos Monastery: The Katholikon Above the Cave

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris06, CC BY-SA 4.0. Outside the Engleistra and downhill, a Venetian-influenced basilica rises among the cypresses. This is the katholikon, the main church of the monastery, built in the early sixteenth century when Cyprus was under Venetian rule. Most of its original wall paintings are gone, lost to...

Image: Chris06 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Agios Neophytos Monastery: What Endures

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0. A scientific study in 2009 revealed that many of the pigments in the Engleistra contained high lead concentrations, which suggests the painters had trained on wooden icons rather than wall plaster. The icon technique on a stone surface explains why so much color has survived nine...

Image: Zairon | CC BY-SA 4.0