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Byzantine style soldiers in
14th century wall painting, Church of Panagia Phorbiotissa, Asinou, Cyprus
Source: Sonia Halliday Photographs
The Betrayal of Jesus by Judas
Source
Panagia (Church of Our Lady) Phorbiotissa of Asinou near Nikitari
Simon of Cyrene Carrying the Cross for Jesus, Church of Panagia Phorbiotissa, Asinou, Cyprus
Crucifixion, Church of Panagia Phorbiotissa, Asinou, Cyprus
Saint George, Church of Panagia Phorbiotissa, Asinou, Cyprus
In the third quarter of the 14th c. the frescoes of Panaghia Phorbiotissa of Asinou, near Nikitari, Cyprus, show the soldiers arresting Christ armed in a mixed Eastern-Western style, brandishing spiked weapons and torches.71 They not only wear scale armours (Κλιβανια), but the group on the left is protected with scale, mail and organic padded corselets, while the group on the right is clad in corselets of small scales and chain-mail alternated again in different rows of iron and copper-alloy rings, as in the Kavalariana Church. The red and grey helmets are fitted with flexible mail aventails. The various specimens of represented armours were all still in use in the 14th c., so the artist did not borrow them from older prototypes, but copied them from real soldiers of his age. Also it is significant that the Chiliarchos is armed with a mace as symbol of command and further protected by a shield, and also the officer of the opposite troops is armed in the same way, but without shield.
71 Stylianou, Stylianou 1992, p. 575ff., Pl. 319.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Stylianou A., Stylianou J.A. 1992 The militarization of the Betrayal and its examples in the painted Churches of Cyprus
pp.88-91, Raffaele d'Amato The Betrayal: Military Iconography and Archaeology In The Byzantine Paintings Of The 11th-15th C. AD Representing The Arrest Of Our Lord
For more information & pictures of the Church of Panagia Phorbiotissa:
Cyprus Government Department of Antiquities
UNESCO
crestinortodox.ro
About Cyprus
Green e
immorfou.org.cy
wikimedia