Thursday, December 29/2016

Starts with spotty bits of rain but clears so Bill suggests we go up to Bellapais (a shortened corruption of Abbaye de la Paix) while it's still nice. And it remains sunny with the panoramic views of Kyrenia far below as we remember them. It's two years almost to the day since we were here last and little has changed, although Durrell's Tree of Idleness appears less healthy, possibly down to its imprisonment in a sort of cage, protecting it from vandals and admirers alike. Lawrence would, no doubt, be appalled by the large tacky poster next to the tree advertising Tree of Idleness Take Away Doner - no ploy too cheap for the unidle restaurant and shop owners wringing every last lira out of the visitor. But it's hard to really feel for Durrell as the tree made its appearance in Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, with bitter being an appropriate reader response to the shamefully biased version of political events in Cyprus. Lunch at the restaurant and then a very pleasant coffee in the sunshine above the abbey with stray dogs at a respectful but hopeful distance and sparrows competing for our biscuit crumbs and broken peanuts. History of the abbey has not, of course, changed in the past two years, so the following comes from this blog for December 30/2014:

We go to Bellapais, site of spectacular abbey ruins and former home of Lawrence Durrell, whose book, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus, is a fair disappointment to anyone enchanted by his Alexandria Quartet. The abbey was founded in the thirteenth century for the Augustinian monks who had left Jerusalem following its fall to the Saracens in 1187. Soon after (and almost certainly before the abbey had been finished in those far off days of hammer and chisel) the Augustinians were replaced by the Norbertine order (1206).

The story from that point is a variation on the familiar tale of wealth and power - noble and royal patronage ( Hugh III gave the abbots of Bellapais the privilege of wearing a mitre, bearing a gilded sword and wearing golden spurs) and disputes with the archbishop of Nicosia necessitating papal intervention - followed by a sad, and indeed scandalous, decay. Genoese marauders robbed the abbey of any riches that could be removed, and by the middle of the 16th century the rule had been pretty well abandoned and monks were not only marrying but accepting only their own children as novices.

The abbey was given to the Orthodox after the Turks took over the island in 1570, but deteriorated, continuing to be used as a village church, with many of its stones liberated for use in building local houses - for the descendants of the monks? A further incarnation in the late nineteenth century saw its use as a military hospital. Now, slightly restored, it remains a romantic ruin with impressive views, and a summer home to concerts.