Barnabas born in Salamis as the son of a Jewish family and received his education in Jerusalem.He worked to spread Christianity and since he was a comrade of St. Paul, the citizens killed him and hid his body in a swamp in order to throw into the sea later. However, his corpse was found by his disciples and Barnabas’ body was buried in an underground cave together with a copy of Bible written by St. Matthews. Later on, Bishop Anthemios envisaged the tomb in a dream, found the tomb and presented it to Emperor Zeno in Istanbul. Therefore Zeno donated the church an amount of money enough to declare the independence of the church and build an abbey. In 1756, the abbey was built by Archbishop