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CYP1ÏIAX08. 349 some hiding tliemselves in the mountains. The older men and leading Greeks went in a body to the Yazir Mehmed Pasha, and begged him to divide the bishoprics of Cyprus among monks who were in priest's orders, and to suffer them to receive consecration from the Patriarch of Constantinople. The qnestion was still pending when a Syrian monk of Arab birth, who happened to be at Constantinople, heard what the Cypriote wanted and ran to the Yazir, and with a gift of three thousand Venetian sequins prevailed upon Mehmed Pasha to grant him the Archbishopric of Cyprus. The Patriarch was compelled to consecrate him, and he came to Cyprus with two Janissaries given him by the Porte, and with urgent commands to Muzaifar Pasha, Governor of Levkosia, to instai him in the Archbishopric. The monster began to rule the few Greeks who remained chiefly in the villages with great tyranny, trying to exact the 3000 sequins, and to make as much again, and inasmuch as he was a savage tyrant, a perfect stranger to the Cypriots, ignorant of their language, and even of the Greek alphabet, the Greeks were furious, and agreed to choose in his room another abbot. Him they despatched to Constantinople to try to oust the Arab, and procure his own appointment to the see. At that moment there chanced to be in Constantinople a monk of a good Cypriot family residing at Acre (or by name d'Acre—cf. Lusignan, p. 82 a), who was a great friend of the Patriarch, and was anxious to get the post. The abbot heard of this, and, withont presenting himself to the Patriarch, Ilmried off at once to Adrianople, where the whole of the Porte was, and after borrowing a great many sequins in his character of an envoy from Cyprns—for those he brenght with him were by no means enough—did his utmost, and obtained from Mehmed Pasha the Archbishopric. But (Timothy) the monk from Acre exercised through the Patriarch such influence that he forced the abbot to resign in his favour, and to accept in lieu of the Archbishopric the bishopric of Paphos. At the same time the abbot of the monastery of Kontzo venti, who had been ransomed from slavery, was in Constantinople, and obtained the bishopric of Lemesos ; while a Cretan monk, chaplain of S. Symeon in Ammochostos, was appointed to that see. This is the new order of districts and sees after the conquest of 1572, described in a confused fashion by Calepio. In February of the same year 1572, after the terrible defeat of the Turkish Armada, a few Turkish vessels appeared off Ammochostos. The Turks in the town saw them from afar, and fearing they might be the vanguard of the Christian fleet, came to terms with the Christian inhabitants for the preservation of their lives. Many of them put on caps and clothes such as the Christians wore : many fled to Levkosia, because the walls of Ammochostos were still in ruins, and determined to surrender without a struggle. The Pashas of the capital and Ammochostos sent three chawushes to the Sultan, to whom they set forth the peril which beset the island. The alarm spread through Constantinople; they said that the garrison of Cyprns consisted only of 2000 yeiticlieri and 800 horsemen. Five hundred yenicheri were despatched at once over land, and by sea four galleys, with five small vessels to collect horses and men from Caramania. A similar force was sent to garrison Rhodos, with a Bey and four armed galleys. For Sultan Selim was greatly afraid of losing these two islands and the adjoining coasts. But the alarm was soon dispelled, and thereafter the Turks in Cyprus remained at rest. At last, after the great calamity which had reduced the island to misery, somehow or other the poverty-stricken inhabitants began little by little to address themselves again to the culture of the soil, to some small commerce with strangers, and to those few arts which still survived in the towns. At the very beginning the dues and outgoings did not press so very hardly on the rayah, because the Porte knew how the country had been impoverished by the war : and the Pashas sent to govern it were to some extent controlled by the Porte,

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