The Monastery of the Priests (“Monastiri ton Iereon”) -or Agia Marina as it is better known to the wider public -is located in the district of Pafos between the village Statos and the Monastery of Chrysorrogiatissa (Blessed Virgin Mary of Mt. Gold-Pomegranate), from which it is about one kilometre away. It is built in a beautiful venue that is far away from the hum of the noisy, day-to-day, secular life. In the midst of a verdant environment that is surrounded by thick vegetation, the monks find the sought after quietness -a required precondition for meditation and prayer. The Holy Monastery is considered as one of the most ancient monasteries of Cyprus with a rich history in its record and a significant contribution in the field of spreading the Christian tradition and the Greek letters, mainly during the Byzantine era and especially between the 10th and 12th centuries.

In an effort for revitalisation and revival of its old glamour, it was recently reconditioned and manned by the Holy Monastery of Kykkos, to which it belongs.

Name

There are many interpretations regarding the name of the Monastery Dependency. The most prevalent one relates that many priests lived there in the past. Thus came the name Monastery of the Priests. It was also name Holy Monastery because the faithful that found refuge in this sacred place found the much-desired spiritual exaltation and left from it feeling strengthened by the comforting words and the messages of hope.

The Monastery's complex

The Monastery of the Priests consists of buildings from various eras, which were shaped according to the needs and capabilities that its occupants had from time to time. A two-storeyed building with the monks' cells rises in the west side. According to the sign, which is placed on the wall of the left base in the semicircular dome of the main entrance, this structure was ‹‹CONSTRUCTED THROUGH THE DONATION OF THE PRIEST AND MONK MELETIOS, ABBOT OF KYKKOS AND THE MONASTERY OF AX???H (1698)››. During the last renovation (1984-1995) some of the cells were converted to an office, a kitchen, and a dining room.

Towards the north it joins with a two-storeyed building, the basement of which is used as a "Synodikon" and the second floor as a cell. As an extension of the main building, there is a 14th century chapel that is covered with a groined-vault, dedicated to St Athanasios of Mount Athos. Some speculate that it was formerly used as the dinning room of the monastery. It was repaired and maintained in 1964 by the Antiquities Department. It was then that in it a silver coin of the 15th century was discovered in it.

A series of ground-level structures expand in the south side of the Dependency. The sign on their external wall reports that they were raised in 1820 by the nation's martyr and prior of Kykkos, Josef (1819-1821): ‹‹DURING THE TIMES OF JOSEF, IN THE MOTH OF JULY KB' PRIOR OF KYKKOS AND MONI››. Three of the above structures were used as a kitchen, a "magkipeio" (kneading room and oven), and a dining room, while the rest as storage areas. Today they have been converted into cells. The overhead level behind them was considered as the most suitable venue for the raising of the abbot's quarters along with the necessary apartments.

The church of the Dependency, dedicated to St Nicolas, overlooks the east side of the building complex. It has two aisles and is arch-covered (v-shaped roof), having its two aisles separated by arches that are supported by three stone-made columns. The semicircular "synthrono" (row of seats behind the altar) and the apse's ornamental part with the acanthus leaves, as well as the ornamental part made with acanthuses of the west wall, are some of the extant parts of the church that bear Byzantine features. The same goes for the small pilasters of a paleo-christian icon screen located at the west walls of the monastery's structures, which are decorated with a plant offspring of flat-relief technique , a fact that leads to the assumption that the church's construction can be possibly placed in the times of the Byzantine period. The -formerly kept inside the church -marble baptistery was perhaps also of the same era.

In the same area with today's church, there was a Byzantine church that probably dated back to the 12th century. Various architectural features of the existing church reveal that it must have had a narthex with two apses and that it was built upon the ruins of a paleo-christian basilica, the apse of which it incorporated. With the passage of time and the consequent destruction, a Frank-Byzantine temple replaced the Byzantine one. The latter was configured into a three-aisle, arch-covered church by the -then -prior of Kykkos, Nikiforos, who then became Archbishop of Cyprus (1641-1674). Quite enlightening are the following two extant sings, which are found in the left and right base of the semicircle in the main entrance of the church: ‹‹ BUILT WAS THE HOLY MONASTERY OF THE PRIESTS: I?? HAZE›› and ‹‹NIKIFOR. PRIEST AND MONK, PRIOR OF KYKKOS AND MONI››. Besides, the remains of a fresco in the church are a testimony of and refer to a previous hagiography of it.

About a century after the reconstruction of the church, in 1735, the Russian monk Basil Barsky (1701-1747) visited the Monastery of the Priests. He noted the following regarding the church: ‹‹The east side [of the monastery] is occupied by a beautiful, large church, a solid structure, with large and hard stones, vaulted internally. Externally it is covered with a wooden roof and tiles, just like in the monasteries that I described before. It has a simple icon screen and cheap candlesticks and cresssets because of its poverty but the floor is well paved with large, stone slabs. It has five entrances, three to the west, one in the north, and one in the south››.

With the passage of time the south aisle of the temple suffered severe and irreparable damages and so, in the year 1882, when the Church Steward -and later the metropolitan Bishop of Pafos -Epifanios assumed the completion of the necessary repairs, he was forced to convert the church from one with three aisle into one with two aisles. In 1885, during the course of the renovations, two signs of the 4th century BC were discovered, which were written in the syllabic alphabet and were later incorporated on the external side of the church's west wall, to the left and to the right of the main entrance where they still are today. In the content of the signs it is mentioned that the king of Pafos, Nikoklis (374/373-361 BC), had constructed a church dedicated to the Goddess Hera in that same area.

Establishment

According to tradition, the Monastery of the Priests was constructed in the 4th century by the Saints Eftychios and Nicolaos, who later became Bishop of Myroi in Lycia. For a long time now, oral narration has maintained that Eftychios supplied the stones, taking them from the pagan temple of the ancient Greek Goddess that was located in the same venue, while Nicolaos - a secular man at the time -was carving them. Afterwards, they were both doing the construction work. However, in the end it was only Eftychios that settled. Lived, and served in the monastery until his death, while Nicolaos left for Lycia. The above tradition was recorded by the literary man, teacher, and principal of the Hellenic School of Nicosia, Efraim the Athenian, who then became Patriarch of Jerusalem (1766-1770), in his book about the history of the Holy Monastery of Kykkos that was published in Venice in 1751. Efraim, prompted by all the relative things he was hearing, decided to visit the Holy Monastery. Inside the vestry he discovered an old membrane-like manuscript with the biography of Saint Eftychios.

Two historical testimonies from the period of the Latin domination in Cyprus (1191-1571) link Saint Eftychios with the Holy Monastery. The first one is traced in the Paris Gr. 1588 Codex, which was written in the Monastery of the Priests in the beginning of the 12th century and contains many notes on various events that occurred between the years 1203 and 1750. Most of them, although they do concern the history of the Monastery, are not enlightening with regards to its historical course and the subject in hand particularly. However, what appears to be quite interesting is the undated entry in page 234, in which the Monastery is mentioned as "that of Saint Eftychios". The second testimony is of a similar nature. It is found in the "Kronakan" (Chronicle) of Leontios Machairas, although here the name of Saint Eftychios is changed into Efthymios: "and the priests' monastery of Saint Efthymios", the annalist remarks.

Furthermore, we know that the memory of Saint Eftychios was "kept alive" in the Holy Monastery at least until the 18th century. On the 8th of August, the Saint's Day that is, they chanted the following hymn: "Come you faithful, let us commemorate the two leading lights and founders of the monastery, Nicolaos the Great and Eftychios, brave healers of the Mother of our Lord". Therefore, in this particular case, either the tradition is transferred through the written sources or the written sources tend to confirm the tradition. It is difficult to answer and -unless new, adequate evidence come to light, the disjunctive question will remain unanswered.