Young Kim: Mediterranean Connectivity in the Vitae of Two Saints of Cyprus

 The fourth-century world imagined in the vitaof Saint Epiphanius is one in which the free movement of people, goods, and ideas—both within and beyond imperial ‘borders’—still very much reflected an interconnected Mediterranean, with the relatively stable structures of empire intact and perhaps even flourishing. Cyprus, which had always been a coveted and ever occupied by various regional powers, was a node of exchange, functioning as a commercial hub, to and from, in every direction. The extent to which the hagiographer(s), writing in the fifth or sixth centuries, could unfold the narrative of Epiphanius’s life in this setting offers hints of Greco-Roman continuity. In the vitaof Saint John the Almsgiver, a Cypriot who became the patriarch of Alexandria in 610, we see yet another imagined world, but one which saw the increasing disruption of the interconnected Mediterranean. And yet the hagiographer, Leontius of Neapolis, could still envisage a world of long-distance exchange, with ships laden with goods and grain moving from Alexandria even as far as Britain. Nevertheless, the pressures of imperial conflict and regional disorder witnessed a flood of refugees, first from Syria and Palestine to Egypt, and then from there to Cyprus, where John ultimately returned, having fled his bishopric. Now, in the seventh century, the island which had once been a center of exchange, has become a refuge, a borderland.