Tuesday April 1, 2008
Play up Cyprus
Now, here’s a curious thing. As a Pompey fan with family in Cyprus, I’ve always wondered where Portsmouth FC got its faintly Islamic-looking badge – the yellow star and crescent moon, on a blue background. It struck me as odd that a naval city in England should be sporting anything other than the cross of St George.
It turns out that all this time I have been, unknowingly, wearing on my left breast the Byzantine banner of one Isaac Komnenos of, er … Cyprus.
Apparently (according to Wikipedia) it was Richard I who adopted the flag after capturing the island from Isaac on one of his quasi-Crusades – and then granted it to the city of Portsmouth on his return to Blighty, after selling the island on to the highest bidder.
If you visit the monastery of the hermit Neophytos, near Paphos in Cyprus, you get a sense of what the local Byzantines thought of Richard’s bit of business. Answer: not much. Writing in the 12th century, Neophytos wrote that England is a land “north of Romania” whose nefarious king “sold our country to the Franks” for 100,000 pieces of gold.
Not a Pompey fan, then.
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