ON ST. COSMAS CONFESSOR,
BISHOP OF CHALCEDON IN BITHYNIA.
UNDER THE ICONOCLASTS
CommentaryCosmas Confessor, Bishop of Chalcedon, in Bithynia (S.)
The Menology of the Emperor Basil Porphyrogenitus sets forth this holy Bishop in the first place with this eulogy: "On the 18th day of the same month of April, Eulogy from the menology of Emperor Basil, the memory of Saint Cosmas Confessor. Cosmas most holy, Bishop and Confessor of Christ, was of the city of Constantinople. From his earliest age pursuing God with love, he left the world: and departing, embraced monastic discipline. And when by the exercise of divine things and the other virtues he had made himself famous, and had become manifestly the dwelling-place of God, he was ordained Bishop of Chalcedon, at which time the impious iconoclasts were ruling. Therefore for the orthodox faith he sustained many struggles. For having been ordered by the iconoclast emperors to deny the veneration of the sacred and precious images, when he had refused it, he was sent into exile, and endured very many calamities. But recalled again from exile and vehemently compelled to agree with their heresy, when he had steadfastly refused to hear them, he was subjected to manifold hardships together with Blessed Auxentius, with whom he underwent the same struggles: and thus vexed with these labors and hardships, and at length emerging victorious, he departed to the Lord." These things in that place, which are read in the same words in the Greek Synaxarium, MS. Parisian of the College of Clermont of the Society of Jesus, where toward the end, after a slightly varied phrase, it is added from the Parisian Synaxarium. that his body was placed in the sacred church of the Apostles, namely at Constantinople, which the Emperor Constantine together with his mother Helena caused to be built and adorned, as George Codinus writes in Originibus Constantinopolitanis pp. 38 and 73.
The Greeks in the printed Menaea celebrate the same Cosmas but make him Archbishop of Carthage, by an error easy among the Greeks: since Καρχηδών is Carthage and Χαλκηδών is Chalcedon: but this error is corrected in the two Manuscripts of Milan of the Ambrosian library. There is in the said Menaea a eulogy differing in various circumstances from the preceding one, which we add, in this form. another from the Menaea "On the same day the memory of our holy Father Cosmas Archbishop of Carthage, rather Bishop of Chalcedon. From the cradle he applied himself to integrity of body and mind, and religiously given to discipline, and nourished with the milk of abstinence and temperance, he was made a temple of God. Hence, augmented with the honor of the priesthood, and chosen by God as a shepherd, he fortified his breast with heavenly arms, to overthrow all their fortifications and to depress the haughtiness of those who dared to despise or to treat contumeliously the divine image of Christ: which he both piously honored and proposed to others to be honored, and thence wove for himself the crown of confession. For he preserved unto extreme old age the piety which he had embraced from a boy (never seized by the sleep of negligence). Nay rather he aspired to the port of inner tranquility, and with Auxentius the Wise exercised and contended himself in the stadium of virtue, and at length began to celebrate the Sabbath, having gone forth to heavenly rest: whence also his body is kept placed in the church of the holy Apostles." In the Menology of Sirletus, these words only are had: "On the same day of our holy Father Cosmas Archbishop of Carthage," and in the margin is added, "another reading had Chalcedon," which is certain. Who Blessed Auxentius the Wise is, we have not yet read. St. Auxentius, Presbyter, Archimandrite in Bithynia, flourished in the fifth century of Christ, whose life we illustrated on February 14; so that it is not to be marveled at if in later centuries that name was common to several in that region.