Koutsoventis is a small Greek community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 12 kilometres south-east of Keryneia, at an elevation of 330 metres, on the southern slopes of the Pentadaktylos. On its land stand the monastery of Saint John Chrysostom and, high on the ridge, the medieval castle of Buffavento. In the 1960 census it had 163 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

The neighbouring monastery of Saint Chrysostom bore the same name, and was often called simply “the monastery of Koutsoventis”. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, which cites Simos Menardos, the village took its name from the monastery, and the monastery from the surname or nickname of its founder, Koutsafentis.¹ In the sources the name is written “Κουτζουβέντης” (Koutzouventis) in the 15th century and “Cuzzoventi” in Italian in the 16th.

Founding and first records

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the settlement existed at least from Frankish rule, most probably as a small village beside the monastery.² The first written mention of the name is found in the 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas. He writes that the tomb of Saint Epiphanios, near Kythrea, lay in a deserted spot, and when his church was abandoned, the saint’s skull and the icons were taken for safekeeping “to Koutzouventis” (“εἰς τόν Κουτζουβέντην”). The 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron, who repeats the report, writes that they were placed “al monasterio de Cuzzoventi”, that is, in the monastery.³

A popular tradition, recorded in the early 20th century by the British architect George Jeffery, curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus, said that the village was destroyed when the “Rigaina”, that is, the legendary queen of Cypriot traditions, was besieged in the castle of Buffavento and great cannons were used for her defence.⁴

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

The monastery of Saint John Chrysostom, about one and a half kilometres above the village, was built in the middle medieval Greek period. Its main church was built around 1090, and around 1100 a second church was added to its north, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, with wall paintings of the same period. The second church was built by Eumathios Philokales, doux, that is, military governor, of Cyprus. This is stated in the church’s founder’s inscription in verse, which survived because it had been covered with plaster and a slab. It was published by the British historian Cyril Mango, who with his colleagues conserved and studied the wall paintings in 1963 and 1968–69:⁵

ποθῶν σφόδρα σε δοὺξ Κύπρου Φιλοκάλ(ης) Ευμάθιος πρωτιστος νωβελλισίμων· βάθρων απ᾽ αὐτῶν τὸν νεων ἤγειρε σοι· πρὸς ἐξιλασμὸν ὧν κακῶς παρεσφάλη·

“Longing for you greatly [the Holy Trinity], the doux of Cyprus Eumathios Philokales, first of the nobelissimi [the highest title of the court], raised this church to you from its very foundations, in atonement for the wrongs he has committed.”

To the monastery of Koutsoventis in 1152 fled Neophytos from Lefkara, eighteen years old, later Saint Neophytos the Recluse, to avoid the marriage his parents had arranged. His brother Ioannis was a monk there, and later abbot. Neophytos, still illiterate, tended the monastery’s vineyards for five years and learned his first letters there. Later he left for Pafos, where he founded his Enkleistra.⁶

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Koutsoventis is a Christian village with five property-holding households. They had 79 goats and 60 beehives; no fields or trees are recorded.⁷

Under Turkish rule the monastery passed to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. As the Russian pilgrim Vasily Barsky heard in 1735, it had come into the hands of Muslims, who sold it to a Christian; he, after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, dedicated it to the Holy Sepulchre.⁸

British rule

In the early 20th century Koutsoventis was very small. Jeffery writes that it had shrunk to the size of a chiftlik, that is, a large estate, and had no church in use, only a few ruins of a medieval church. He also notes that in those years an attempt was made to reopen the marble quarry near the village, but demand was small and marble came more cheaply from Italy.⁹

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox church of the village, of Agia Foteini, stands in the northern part of the old core of the village and dates from the 20th century. The cemetery was half a kilometre south of the church.¹⁰

The monastery of Saint Chrysostom, which belongs to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, is an Ancient Monument. Within its enclosure two churches stand side by side. The northern one, of the Holy Trinity, is of the late 11th century. The southern one, the katholikon (main church) of the monastery, dedicated to Saint John Chrysostom, was rebuilt in 1891 on its old foundations, as its inscription states.¹¹ Within the monastery there is a holy spring which, according to tradition, healed leprosy and diseases of the skin.¹²

Between the village and the monastery stand two joined chapels that have been roofless for centuries: the Panagia Afentrika, of the 12th century, and to the south the Sotiras (Saviour), with notable 12th-century wall paintings, among them a Lamentation. They are an Ancient Monument, as are the ruins of the chapels of Agios Georgios, of the 12th century, and of the Timios Prodromos (Saint John the Baptist), of the 14th century.¹³

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew cereals, fodder crops, olives, carobs and almonds. Stock-breeding was well developed, mainly with goats, as already in the survey of 1832/33, and in earlier times many worked in the quarries of the area. Part of the village’s land was forest, of Buffavento to the north and of Kythrea to the south.¹⁴ In 1970 the Koutsoventis Cooperative Credit Society was founded.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 42 inhabitants in 1881, 39 in 1891, 45 in 1901, 54 in 1911 and 87 in 1921.¹⁵ In 1931 Koutsoventis had 105 inhabitants, all of them Christians, and in 1946 135, of whom 134 were Orthodox (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). The population grew steadily: in 1960 it had 163 inhabitants, all of them Greeks, and in 1973 183 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of the village had 30 pupils and one teacher.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 68 inhabitants of Koutsoventis signed.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

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

Two civilians from Koutsoventis are still missing; they went missing at Kythrea and in the area of Kefalovryso Kythreas. On the village’s land ten soldiers were killed, in the village itself and its area, on the Pentadaktylos and at Buffavento.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the monastery of Saint Chrysostom, because of its position, into a military post, and the scholars who had conserved the wall paintings were unable to visit it again. According to a report of 1989 to the Council of Europe, most of the wall paintings had been whitewashed with lime up to a height of two metres, and higher up the figures had been covered with paper.¹⁶ The 2009 list records the chapel of the Holy Trinity within a Turkish military camp, desecrated and looted. The church of Agia Foteini was desecrated and looted; in 2018 it was almost a ruin, without its bell, crosses and furnishings, and with its roof half collapsed. Of the cemetery only the foundations of the enclosure wall remain.¹⁷