Barlaam

Saint Barlaam the Venerable was one of the ascetics who came from other lands and attained holiness on the island of Cyprus, whom Cypriot tradition calls the Alamanni Saints. He is commemorated on 12 October, together with Saint Epictetus and the other monastic saints of the island.

No details of the life of Barlaam have been preserved. He is known only as one of the company of the three hundred Alamanni Saints, of whom the chroniclers of Cyprus and the services written in their honour speak. According to the oldest witness, the fifteenth century chronicler Leontios Machairas, three hundred clergy and laymen fled to Cyprus from Jerusalem after its capture by the Arabs in 638 and scattered across the island in smaller groups. Later the Latin writers of Cyprus held that they had come from France and Germany, hence the name Alamanni.

Scholars have not agreed on their number, on where they came from, or on when they lived. Some link them with the Venerable Heliophotos and the fifth century, while others hold that the name Alamanni simply meant soldiers. What remains certain is that many of them lived as hermits in remote places on the island, and some villages and monasteries of Cyprus still bear their names today.

Saint Epictetus, with whom Barlaam is commemorated, lived as an ascetic in a cave near Kyrenia, where the village of Agios Epiktitos later grew up. On the same day the Church also remembers Valantius, Barnabas, Basil the Bishop, Demetrianus the Bishop, Elpidius, Epaphroditus and the other monastic saints of Cyprus, all honoured as intercessors for the island where they struggled.