After leaving Constantinople, the next place John Mandeville describes in detail is the island of Cyprus. Mandeville, writing for the benefit of prospective pilgrims, for the most part maintains his religious focus when describing the island. He informs his readers that there is an archbishop at Nicosia, along with four others in the region. Along with this he says that in Cyprus there is the Hill of the Holy Cross of the good thief Dysmas, along with the burial sites of St Sozomenos, an ecclesiastical historian, and St Hilarion, and that St Bernard was born near the city of Famagusta on the island. Pilgrims using Mandeville’s book as a guide for their own journeys would surely find such information useful, as they were on the look out for places to display their piety. Mandeville even warns pilgrims that the locals advertise that they have half of the Holy Cross upon which Jesus was crucified, but it is a fraud and that they sin by saying so.

Mandeville does, however, include more practical and secular information about Cyprus as well. In fact, the first thing he says about the island is that a variety of grapes which start red and turn white after a year grow there, and that these grapes are “…utterly translucent and have the best scent.” Descriptions of local produce like this have not been mentioned before, so it is interesting that he would want to include it here. Mandeville also informs us that the city of Famagusta has an excellent harbor and that “…Christians, Saracens, and people of all nations live there.” It is interesting to note how matter of fact the zealous Mandeville talks about the island’s Muslim inhabitants. On top of this he describes how the Cypriots hunt with papiouns, a type of big cat similar to a leopard though modern scholars do not know what it could actually be. Mandeville also reports that Cypriots eat on the ground in massive ditches dug for that purpose up to the knees. He says this is because it keeps food more fresh in the hot climate of the island, though when foreigners come for great feasts they set up tables for them, but would prefer eating on the floor.

Because Mandeville is an invented character and did not actually go to Cyprus, it is difficult to tell if any of the information he relays is true. The strange eating custom could be something the author heard from someone else and believed it, but just as easily be something he decided would be fun to make people believe. The fact scholars have no idea what a papiouns is, and that Mandeville claims Cypriots use these animals which he says are larger than lions to hunt is too strange to believe. Which begs the question of what he gains from making this up? He seems to sincerely want people to be informed about the pilgrimage route and where to stop on the way by the fact he warns readers where frauds are, but his own fraudulent information seems to work against this stated goal. This disconnect continues down to smaller details: usually light on the practicalities of travel, he claims Cyprus is nearly 500 miles from Rhodes. No it isn’t, the distance is much closer to 300 miles. It may be an innocuous detail, but it seems strange to me that he feels the need to include such a detail when he never has before, and it is just plain wrong.