Franciscan Church (Famagusta)
The Franciscan Church is the ruins of a Franciscan monastery church in Famagusta on Cyprus . The church was dedicated to Francis of Assisi and is located in the immediate vicinity of the Cathedral of St. Nicholas .
history
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The Franciscan Church was built between 1284 and 1324 during the reign of the Frankish House of Lusignan in Famagusta under Henry II , King of Jerusalem and Cyprus. The monastery church was located in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral and right next to the royal palace of Famagustas. Heinrich had his own entrance to the church set up so that he could visit it undisturbed by day or night.
Heinrich's successor Hugo IV favored the Dominican order and had it settle next to his palace in Nicosia . In Famagusta, he arranged for the royal transition to St. Francis to be converted into a practice site for archery. Nicholas von Martoni describes in a travelogue from 1394 a wonderful cloister next to the church, the monastery building and gardens, as well as the great poverty of the brothers.
St. Franziskus has a single-nave nave consisting of three bays, which is followed by a shorter choir bay that is closed on three sides. A southern side chapel was added to the second nave vault, the vault of which is still preserved. It is unclear whether there was another side chapel in the north like a transept. The art historian Camille Enlart locates the cloister there, of which there are no more remains.
The church has been in ruins since the Ottoman artillery bombardment in the course of the siege of Famagusta in 1571 and the subsequent conquest of the city.
literature
- Camille Enlart (translated by David Hunt): Gothic Art and the Renaissance in Cyprus . Paris 1899 / London 1987, pp. 262-267.
- Beata Kitsiki Panagopoulos: Cistercian and Mendicant churches in medieval Greece , Chicago 1979, p. 122f.
Web links
Coordinates: 35 ° 7 ′ 29.6 ″ N , 33 ° 56 ′ 27.9 ″ E