Agios Ermolaos is a predominantly Greek community in the occupied part of the Keryneia district. It lies 15 kilometres south-west of Keryneia, at an elevation of 250 metres, in the southern foothills of the Pentadaktylos. It has two churches dedicated to Saint Ermolaos, the old one, which is an Ancient Monument, and the new one. In the 1960 census it had 489 inhabitants, of whom 469 were Greeks and 20 Turks.

Name

The village took its name from Saint Ermolaos, to whom both its churches are dedicated.¹ In its earliest known mention, in the 1460s, it is written “Santo Armola”.²

Founding and first records

According to a village tradition recorded by the Union of Communities of the Keryneia District, south-west of the present village, as far as the locality Kankellia, there once spread a town, which the crusaders destroyed. In 1204, at the time of the Fourth Crusade, two monks arrived in the area as fugitives from Nicomedia, an ancient city of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, where according to the tradition of the Church Saint Ermolaos was martyred. They brought the icon of the saint with them and built a small church on the spot where the old church of the village stands. Inhabitants of the town who found refuge there set up their huts around it, and so, according to the same tradition, the village was formed.³ The official gazetteer of Cyprus records the locality Kankellia on the land of the village, south-west of the settlement.⁴

The first written mention of the village, as “Santo Armola”, is in the list of the fiefs distributed in the 1460s by King James II, preserved by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron.⁵

Frankish rule

James II gave Agios Ermolaos as a fief to Plissin Mustatoso, together with neighbouring Sysklipos and a third village, which Bustron writes “Facli”.⁶ The same nobleman, written “Plichy Moustatouze”, appears in a royal decree of April 1468, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie: the king reduced the annual contribution he paid him from 30 to 15 ducats, half in money and half in kind.⁷

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Agios Ermolaos is recorded as a Muslim village, with 14 households holding property. Almost half the value of their property lay in their animals: more than a thousand sheep and goats, a few oxen and beehives. The fields were mainly wheat fields, with a little cotton and madder, the plant from whose root a red dye was obtained. Very few trees are recorded, some olive trees and three carob trees.⁸

Churches and monasteries

The old parish church of the village, dedicated to Saint Ermolaos, dates from the 18th century and is an Ancient Monument. In the 20th century the new parish church was built, also dedicated to Saint Ermolaos. Both stand on the southern road leading into the village, as does the Greek Orthodox cemetery, about half a kilometre from the centre.⁹

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals, carob trees and almond trees, on dry land with little rain. Stock-breeding, as in the survey of 1832/33, was relatively developed: in 1973, 81 stock-breeders had more than 1,500 sheep and almost 500 goats.¹⁰ The New Co-operative Credit Society of Agios Ermolaos operated in the village from 1941, and the Agios Ermolaos Co-operative Grocery from 1957.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 226 inhabitants in 1881, 274 in 1891, 253 in 1901, 307 in 1911 and 335 in 1921.¹¹ In 1931 Agios Ermolaos had 377 inhabitants, 332 Christians and 45 Muslims, and in 1946 495, of whom 439 were Orthodox, 54 Muslims and 2 others (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 489 inhabitants, 469 Greeks and 20 Turks, and in 1973 508 inhabitants, all of them Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of the village had 72 pupils and three teachers.

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 222 inhabitants of the village signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 16 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Agios Ermolaos was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek inhabitants were subjected to ethnic cleansing. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent their return.

Two inhabitants of the village, a soldier and a civilian, were recorded as missing, and their remains have not been located to this day. One was lost in Agios Ermolaos itself and the other at the locality Pikro Nero in the Keryneia district. On the land of the village six people killed in 1974 are recorded, five soldiers and one civilian, who were killed or fatally wounded in the area of Agios Ermolaos.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the new church of Agios Ermolaos into a mosque; the bell and all the crosses were removed. The old church was desecrated and looted, and in 2018 its condition ranged from poor to ruinous.¹²