Nicolai de Martoni, a notary from Carinola, visited Cyprus in November 1394 and was impressed by the ruins of Salamis and the references to S. Catherine.
"And because through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ Who permitted me to do so I saw all the story of the blessed Catherine, and all that she did, as well in Alexandria, the place of her prison and the glorious martyrdom which she endured in honour of our Lord Jesus Christ on the wheel between those two columns, as in her church, where her glorious body was placed by the holy angels on the summit of that great mountain, and then her holy body which was translated from that lofty mountain to her own church of S. Catherine, I desired also to see the place of her nativity; wherefore on the fifth day of December of the third indiction I went to that ancient city Constantia four miles distant from Famagosta, which was once a great city built by the Emperor Constantin father of the blessed Catherine, but now is utterly destroyed, and went to the place where one can see the castle of the city stood, which seems to have been of great size, and there directly is that room, now destroyed, where the blessed Catherine was born: near it now stands a seemly chapel, to which the people of Famagosta go with great devoutness and frequency. In the middle where the castle stood is a certain ancient cistern, no bigger one I think is found in the world, with a vault raised on thirty-six columns and with apertures above whence the water was drawn. Into this tank water flowed continuously from a certain mountain, along a conduit built with pillars and arches, just as at Scolo, an appurtenance of the castle of Trajetto or Garigliano."
The 'What I Saw...' series is made possible with the support of OPAP (Cyprus) and the Active Citizens Fund.
