Procopius of Machairas

Saint Procopius of Machairas was the old monk who came to Ignatios after Neophytos reposed and, with him, founded the community monastery. He is commemorated together with the other three founders of the monastery of the Mother of God at Machairas in Cyprus on 13 December (new style, in the Church of Cyprus).

According to oral tradition, at the time of Iconoclasm (716 to 843), a hermit brought the icon of the Mother of God Agiosoritissa from Constantinople to Cyprus and settled in a cave on the site of the present monastery. The icon is regarded as one of the seventy painted by the apostle Luke. After the hermit's death the icon was forgotten and brambles covered the cave entrance until the twelfth century, when the Mother of God miraculously gave a knife to the venerable ascetics Neophytos and Ignatios to cut the brambles and find the icon; hence the name Machairas, meaning of the knife, and Agiosoritissa became Machairiotissa.

After Neophytos reposed, another old monk, Prokopios, came to Ignatios. When the brotherhood grew, the two fathers decided to build a coenobitic monastery after the pattern of the great monastic centres of the time. They went to Constantinople to the emperor Manuel Komnenos (1143 to 1180), who gave them the money, the mountain and its surroundings, and the privilege of a stavropegial monastery exempt from taxes. These privileges were later confirmed by the emperors Isaac and Alexios Angelos. Ignatios left Neilos as his successor by written provision, the first enthroned abbot of the community. In 1201 Neilos wrote a Typikon with the rules of monastic life, which survives to this day and from which we know how the monastery was founded. Elected bishop of Tamassos in 1209, he left Joachim as abbot, confirmed the Typikon and founded a women's monastery dedicated to the Mother of God, called Blachernitissa; it is very probable that he was also archbishop of Cyprus between 1215 and 1221.