The Gallows Stairs to Freedom: Liberating Warfare and Sanctifying Memory in Cyprus

Abstract

ABSTRACT:On the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus, the armed anticolonial struggle of Greek Cypriots against the British colonial administration (1955–59) continues to shape Orthodox Christian imagination around the ethical and ecclesiological status of violence. This article considers the spatial, sociological, and theological textures of sites that commemorate liberating warfare in Cyprus and represent the fallen fighters of EOKA (the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters) according to the hagiographical repertoire of Orthodox martyrdom. It focuses especially on the “Imprisoned Graves” of Nicosia’s Central Prison, along with other significant memorials that construct, mobilize, and contest the Greek Cypriot “heromartyrs” (ērōomartyres). The article concludes by identifying a tension between contrastive Orthodox accounts of how violence affects the soul, considering the enduring implications of this tension for the sacralized commemoration of anticolonial warfare.