George the Wonderworker

Saint George the Wonderworker, called Macheromenos, meaning the stabbed, is a Cypriot saint little known today. He is commemorated on 31 December (new style, in the Church of Cyprus). The chronicler Leontios Machairas mentions him: in Achliontas, Saint George the Macheromenos, a local saint and a wonderworker.

Kataliontas was a small settlement one kilometre southeast of the village of Analiontas in the Nicosia district, near the road to Lythrodontas, where the ruins of the old church of Saint George the Macheromenos can be seen. The ethnologist Nearchos Clerides writes that during the period of Frankish rule, as in the Byzantine period, the village and the church were famous for the many miracles of the saint. Their fame is tied to the miraculous icon of Saint George the Macheromenos, which for many years adorned the main church of the village, Saint Marina, and which today is kept at the Archdiocese in Nicosia.

The saint was very probably an ascetic of the region, since beside the ruined church there is a hill with two caves, one small and one large, in one of which he may have struggled. His commemoration also appears in the Patmos codex 266.