The Church of Cyprus is one of the oldest autocephalous churches in Christendom. The Council of Ephesus in 431 confirmed its independence from the Patriarchate of Antioch, on the argument that the island had been evangelised by Barnabas and Paul directly rather than through Antioch, and a later tradition connects the confirmation to the discovery of Barnabas's tomb with a copy of Matthew's Gospel on his chest. The Byzantine emperor is said to have granted the archbishop three privileges retained to this day: to wear purple, to carry an imperial sceptre rather than a pastoral staff, and to sign in red ink.
Those privileges became political rather than ceremonial under later rule. The Ottoman administration governed non Muslim subjects through their religious hierarchies, so the archbishop became the ethnarch, the civil head of the Greek Cypriot community, responsible for taxation and representation as well as for the liturgy. The British inherited the arrangement, and it culminated in Archbishop Makarios III leading the movement for union with Greece and then serving as the first president of the republic. A serving archbishop as head of state is rare anywhere and unique in modern Europe.
The Turkish Cypriot community is Sunni Muslim with a historically relaxed observance, and the Hala Sultan Tekke on the salt lake outside Larnaca, associated with Umm Haram, a relative of the Prophet by marriage, is among the more significant Islamic shrines of the eastern Mediterranean. Small Maronite, Armenian and Latin Catholic communities have constitutional recognition as religious groups.