Amathus - in Late Antiquity and The Middle Ages

In Late Antiquity and The Middle Ages

Later, in the fourth century AD Amasus became the see of a Christian bishop and continued to flourish until the Byzantine period. In the late sixth century, Ayios Ioannis Eleimonas (Saint John the Charitable), protector of the Knights of St. John, was born in Amathus.

Amathus still flourished and produced a distinguished patriarch of Alexandria, St. John the Merciful, as late as 606-616, and a ruined Byzantine church marks the site; but it declined and was already almost deserted when Richard Plantagenet won Cyprus by a victory there over Isaac Comnenus in 1191. The tombs were plundered and the stones from the beautiful edifices were brought to Limassol to be used for new constructions. Much later, in 1869, a great number of blocks of stone from Amathus were used for the construction of the Suez Canal.

Read more about this topic:  Amathus

Famous quotes containing the words late, antiquity, middle and/or ages:

    “The fire I praise was once perduring flame
    Till it snuffs with our generation out;
    No matter, it’s all one, it’s but a name
    Not as late honeysuckle half so stout....”
    —Allen Tate (1899–1979)

    “Nothing but great antiquity can make graveyards interesting to me. I have no friends there.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “If these Essays were worthy of being judged, it might fall out, in my opinion, that they would not find much favour, either with common and vulgar minds, or with uncommon and eminent ones: the former would not find enough in them, the latter would find too much; they might manage to live somewhere in the middle region.”
    —Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)

    “How many ages hence
    Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
    In states unborn and accents yet unknown!”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)