Alexander of Cyprus or Alexander Cyprius, perhaps also known as Alexander the Monk or Alexander Monachus, was apparently a 6th-century Cypriot monk active in the cloister near the sanctuary of St. Barnabas in Salaminia or

Constantina Flavia Valeria Constantina (also sometimes called ''Constantia'' and ''Constantiana''; ; b. after 307/before 317 – d. 354), later known as Saint Constance, was the eldest daughter of Roman emperor Constantine the Great and his second wife Faust ...

. He also had as one of his aims the authentication of the ecclesiastical independence of Cyprus.

Date and work

Alexander seems to have lived any time between the mid-6th century and the 9th century. The Byzantinist

Alexander Kazhdan Alexander Petrovich Kazhdan (; 3 September 1922 – 29 May 1997) was a Soviet and American Byzantinist. Among his publications was the three-volume ''Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium'', a comprehensive encyclopedic work containing over than 5,000 ...

argued that the traditional view of placing him in the mid-6th century was not necessarily valid.

Cyril Mango Cyril Alexander Mango (14 April 1928 – 8 February 2021) was a British scholar of the history, art, and architecture of the Byzantine Empire. He is celebrated as one of the leading Byzantinists of the 20th century. Mango was Koraes Profess ...

and John W. Nesbitt maintain that he was a 6th-century author, according to his literary interests. Alexander composed a treatise called "On the Finding of the Cross" (''de inventatione sanctae crucis''), covering the

history of Christianity The history of Christianity began with the life of Jesus, an itinerant Jewish preacher and teacher, who was Crucifixion of Jesus, crucified in Jerusalem . His followers proclaimed that he was the Incarnation (Christianity), incarnation of Go ...

from the emperor

Tiberius Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus ( ; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was Roman emperor from AD 14 until 37. He succeeded his stepfather Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC to Roman politician Tiberius Cl ...

to the discovery of the cross by

Helena Helena may refer to: People *Helena (given name), a given name (including a list of people and characters with the name) *Katri Helena (born 1945), Finnish singer * Saint Helena (disambiguation), this includes places Places Greece * Helena ...

, the mother of

Constantine the Great Constantine I (27 February 27222 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was a Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a Constantine the Great and Christianity, pivotal ro ...

. There is also a Georgian version of this work, with the earliest extant manuscript dated to the 9th or 10th century.

Identification

Nothing is known about the life of Alexander. Many scholars identify him with Alexander the Monk, the author of an enkomion of the apostle

Barnabas Barnabas (; ; ), born Joseph () or Joses (), was according to tradition an early Christians, Christian, one of the prominent Disciple (Christianity), Christian disciples in Jerusalem. According to Acts 4:36, Barnabas was a Cypriot Jews, Cyprio ...

, but Kazhdan Kazhdan 1991: ibid. views this identification as arbitrary.

References

Bibliography

* Works collected in

Migne Jacques Paul Migne (; 25 October 1800 – 24 October 1875) was a French priest who published inexpensive and widely distributed editions of theological works, encyclopedias, and the texts of the Church Fathers, with the goal of providing a ...

Patrologia Graeca The ''Patrologia Graeca'' (''PG'', or ''Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca'') is an edited collection of writings by the Church Fathers and various secular writers, in the Greek language. It consists of 161 volumes produced in 1857–18 ...

, vol. 87.3 coll. 4016-88 * ''

Clavis Patrum Graecorum The ''Clavis Patrum Graecorum'' is a series of volumes published by Brepols of Turnhout in Belgium. The series aims to contain a list of all the Fathers of the Church who wrote in Greek from the 1st to the 8th centuries. For each it lists all the ...

7398-7400'' * S. Salaville, "Le moine Alexandre de Chypre," EO 15 (1912) 134-137 (discussion on his date) * A. Kazhdan, "Alexander the Monk", The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. I, p. 60 (Oxford 1991). {{DEFAULTSORT:Alexander of Cyprus Cypriot writers 6th-century Byzantine monks 6th-century Christian monks 6th-century Byzantine writers