medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture



The at least largely legendary Cosmas and Damian (d. early 4th cent., supposedly) are said to have been brothers from somewhere in the East (their region of origin is variously reported) who operated marvelous cures and who refused to accept compensation for their services.  In Byzantine-rite churches they and St. Panteleimon constitute an informal upper tier within the category of physician-saints known as the Holy Unmercenaries (in Greek: Hagioi Anargyroi).  In Italy they are often referred to simply as the Holy Doctors ("i Santi Medici").  That they perished in the Great Persecution seems, like most details of the the medieval accounts of their activities, to be either invention or conjecture.



Cosmas and Damian are named in the Roman and the Ambrosian canons of the Mass.  Today (26. September) is their feast day in Latin-rite churches.  Churches using the Byzantine Rite celebrate them on different days under three separate identities: Cosmas and Damian of Rome (1. July), Cosmas and Damian of Arabia (17. October), and Cosmas and Damian of Cilicia (1. November).





Some period-pertinent images of Sts. Cosmas and Damian:



a) Cosmas (above) and Damian as depicted in the very late fifth- or early sixth-century mosaics of the Cappella Arcivescovile (a.k.a. Cappella di Sant'Andrea) in Ravenna:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pelegrino/5779219367



b) Cosmas and Damian (second from left and second from right; one introduced by St. Peter and the other by St. Paul) as depicted in the originally earlier sixth-century apse mosaic (ca. 527-530) of Rome's basilica dei Santi Cosma e Damiano:

http://tinyurl.com/owkczgf



c) Cosmas (at left) and Damian as depicted (being crowned by Christ) in the earlier to mid-sixth-century mosaics of the north apse (carefully restored, 1890-1900) in the Basilica Eufrasiana in Poreč: 

http://tinyurl.com/ho7dgjb



d) Cosmas (at left) and Damian as depicted (flanking, in the upper register, the three boys in the fiery furnace and, in the lower register, their own three martyred brothers Sts. Leontius, Euprepius, and Anthimus) in a sixth- or seventh-century wall painting from a house in Wadi Sarga in Egypt, now in the British Museum in London:

http://tinyurl.com/zhxtext



e) Cosmas and Damian as depicted in an eighth- or perhaps earlier ninth-century fresco in the oratorio dei Quaranta Martiri in the Catacombe di Santa Lucia in Siracusa (Syracuse):

http://tinyurl.com/obn7d7k



f) Cosmas as depicted in a deteriorated tenth- or eleventh-century fresco in the Grotta dei Santi in Pignataro Maggiore (CE; near Calvi Risorta) in northern Campania:

http://www.cattedrale-calvirisorta.com/imgrSanti/05.jpg



g) Cosmas and Damian as twice depicted in the late tenth- or very early eleventh-century so-called Menologion of Basil II (Città del Vaticano, BAV, cod. Vat. gr. 1613):

1) as Cosmas and Damian of Arabia (martyrdom; at right, their three martyred brothers Sts. Anthimus, Euprepius, and Leontius); p. 120:

http://tinyurl.com/gojussq

2) as Cosmas and Damian of Cilicia (receiving a physician's bag from the Hand of God); p. 152:

http://tinyurl.com/zozj7wl



h) Cosmas as depicted in an earlier eleventh-century mosaic (restored between 1953 and 1962) in the narthex of church of the Theotokos in the monastery of Hosios Loukas near Distomo in Phokis:

http://tinyurl.com/qcbarwj



i) Cosmas and Damian as portrayed (at left and right in the lower register of saints flanking the ivory central panel) in the mid-eleventh-century book cover of the Gospels of Theophanu of Essen (betw. 1039 and ca. 1058; Essen, Domschatzkammer, Hs. 3):

http://tinyurl.com/nhkayao

http://www.bodarwe.de/buch.jpg

Cosmas and Damian were the patron saints of the monastery at Essen of which this Theophanu was abbess.



j) Cosmas and Damian and their three martyred brothers Sts. Leontius, Euprepius, and Anthimus as depicted in a colored pen-and-ink initial in the mid-twelfth-century martyrology and necrology of the abbey of Pontlevoy (ca. 1141-1142; Blois, Bibliothèque Abbé-Grégoire, ms. 44, fols. 8-79v, at fol. 62v):

http://www.enluminures.culture.fr/Wave/savimage/enlumine/irht2/IRHT_053638-p.jpg



k) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (at upper foreground; Cosmas at left, Damian at right; at center, St. Panteleimon) on an arch soffit in the mid- to slightly later twelfth-century mosaics of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo:

http://tinyurl.com/jm9ysj9

Detail view (Cosmas):

http://ica.princeton.edu/slir/w600-h600/images/tomekovic/st.04651.jpg

Detail view (Damian):

http://ica.princeton.edu/slir/w600-h600/images/tomekovic/st.04650.jpg



l) Cosmas and Damian as depicted in the twelfth- or thirteenth-century frescoes (restored betw. 1992 and 1997) of the rupestrian chiesa / cripta San Leonardo at Massafra (TA) in southern Apulia:

1) Cosmas: 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/24271543@N03/5732304075/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/77379511@N06/14424923361/

2) Damian:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/24271543@N03/5732295853/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rita-restifo/14241667378/

3) _in situ_ in the church:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/77379511@N06/14241696790



m) Cosmas (at left) and Damian as depicted (detail view) in a later twelfth- or very early thirteenth-century fresco in the narthex of the originally early twelfth-century church of the Panagia Phorbiotissa at Asinou near Nikitari in the Republic of Cyprus (click on the images to enlarge):

http://www.gettyimages.com/license/73251742

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/89173218/De-Agostini



n) Cosmas and Damian (martyrdom) as depicted  by Villard de Honnecourt in an earlier thirteenth-century drawing (ca. 1230; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 19093, fol. 27r):

http://tinyurl.com/9lkhpmj



o) Damian as depicted in the mid-thirteenth-century frescoes (1259) in the church of Sts. Nicholas and Panteleimon at Boyana near the Bulgarian capital of Sofia:

http://galenf.com/Bulgaria/36/bu_0017a.jpg



p) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (flanking St. Panteleimon) in a later thirteenth-century fresco (either 1263-1270 or slightly later) in the nave of the church of the Holy Trinity in the Sopoćani monastery at Sopoćani (Raška dist.) in Serbia:

http://tinyurl.com/2cmfglq

Detail view of the saint at right (Damian?):

http://tinyurl.com/9f3md34



q) Cosmas and Damian (at left) as depicted in one of the later thirteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1270 and 1285) devoted to them in the diakonikon of the St. Demetrius cathedral at Mistra:

https://ica.princeton.edu/images/tomekovic/st.01094.jpg



r) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (attaching the black leg of an Ethiopian to a white man whose diseased leg they had removed) in a late thirteenth-century copy of French origin of the _Legenda aurea_ (San Marino, CA, Huntington Library, ms. HM 3027, fol. 132r; image greatly expandable):

http://tinyurl.com/3cjxvl5



s) Cosmas (at left) and Damian as depicted by Eutychios and Michael Astrapas in the late thirteenth-century frescoes (ca. 1295) in the church of the Peribleptos (now Sv. Kliment Ohridski) in Ohrid:

http://tinyurl.com/h2uwcjr

Detail view (Cosmas):

http://tinyurl.com/z98aysy

Detail view (Damian):

http://tinyurl.com/z4fy5ck



t) Cosmas (at left) and Damian as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312 and 1321/1322) of one of the domes of the monastery church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending upon one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:

http://tinyurl.com/2wsvm8t



u) Cosmas as depicted by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios (attrib.) in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1313 and ca. 1320) of the nave of the King's Church (dedicated to Sts. Joachim and Anne) in the Studenica monastery near Kraljevo (Raška dist.) in Serbia:

http://tinyurl.com/yc5stwe



v) Cosmas and Damian (upper register; Cosmas at left) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1313 and 1318; conservation work in 1968) by Michael Astrapas and Eutychios in the church of St. George at Staro Nagoričane in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:

https://plus.google.com/photos/110067756467697073060/album/5245687190076668897/5245697004441021906



w) Cosmas and Damian (at left) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1317 and 1324) in the church of St. Demetrius in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending upon one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:

http://tinyurl.com/3akweqn

Detail view (Cosmas):

http://tinyurl.com/26gkcn5

Detail view (Damian):

http://tinyurl.com/2a5a6pq



x) as twice depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1):

1) upper register in panel at upper left (raising hands in prayer); fol.15v:

http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/15v.jpg

2) lower register in bottom panel (martyrdom by stoning):

http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/45v.jpg



y) Cosmas and Damian as depicted in an earlier fourteenth-century French-language legendary of Parisian origin with illuminations attributed to the Fauvel Master (ca. 1327; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 183,  fol. 227v):

http://tinyurl.com/2ckxm63



z) Cosmas and Damian as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) in the church of the Holy Savior (Sv. Spas; a.k.a. church of the Presentation of the Theotokos) at Kučevište in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:

Cosmas (detail of a full-length image):

http://tinyurl.com/np5pkat

Damian:

http://tinyurl.com/o672w9p



aa) Cosmas and Damian (at left and center; at right, St. Panteleimon) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (1330s) in the church of the Hodegetria in the Patriarchate of Peć at Peć in, depending upon one's view of the matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of Kosovo:

http://tinyurl.com/3jgsftt

Detail view (Cosmas):

http://tinyurl.com/3mvhn47

Detail view (Damian):

http://tinyurl.com/3ud7jap



bb) Cosmas and Damian as twice depicted (healing; martyrdom: stoning, crucifixion) in an earlier fourteenth-century copy (ca. 1335) of books 9-16 of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BnF, ms. Arsenal 5080, fol. 229v):

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b7100627v/f464.item.zoom



cc) Cosmas (at left) and Damian as depicted in a September calendar composition in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) of the narthex in the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:

http://tinyurl.com/yflqj7y



dd) Cosmas (at left) and Damian as depicted in two joint portraits in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. 1335 and 1350) in the nave of the church of the Holy Ascension at the Visoki Dečani monastery near Peć in, depending on one's view of the matter, either the Republic of Kosovo or Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija:

1) http://tinyurl.com/37dfvns

Detail view:

http://tinyurl.com/phyo3s7

2) http://tinyurl.com/342o797

Detail view:

http://tinyurl.com/3ywlm9w



ee) Cosmas and Damian as depicted in a mid-fourteenth-century copy, from the workshop of Richard and Jeanne de Montbaston, of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1348; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 241, fol. 258r):

http://tinyurl.com/276u33e



ff) Cosmas and Damian as depicted in the later fourteenth-century frescoes (1360s and 1370s; restored in 1968-1970) in the church of St. Demetrius in Marko's monastery at Markova Sušica (near Skopje) in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia:

Cosmas:

http://tinyurl.com/qypm9vn

Damian:

http://tinyurl.com/paswc8m



gg) as depicted in semi-grisaille (healing) in a late fourteenth-century copy of part of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (1396; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 313, fol. 221r):

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84557843/f447.image.zoom



hh) Cosmas and Damian as depicted in a later fourteenth-century book of hours for the Use of Besançon (before 1398; Vesoul, Bibliothèque municipale, fol. 119r):

http://tinyurl.com/ycm6r7l



ii) Cosmas and Damian as depicted in a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Rennes, Bibliothèque de Rennes Métropole, ms. 266, fol. 268v):

http://tinyurl.com/grqapkf



jj) Cosmas and Damian as portrayed (lower register at center) on their late  fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century reliquary shrine (ca. 1400) in the St. Michaelskirche in Munich:

http://tinyurl.com/o6rtnp3

Detail view (Cosmas and Damian):

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Zywe3eg9L.jpg



kk) Cosmas and Damian as portrayed (healing a camel; the Ethiopian's leg) in a late fourteenth- or early fifteenth-century sandstone relief (ca. 1400) in the museum in the St. Petri Dom in Bremen:

http://tinyurl.com/hfvgts3



ll) Cosmas and Damian as depicted in an earlier fifteenth-century icon in the Andrei Rublev Museum of Early Russian Art, Moscow:

http://www.icon-art.info/masterpiece.php?lng=en&mst_id=505



mm) Cosmas and Damian as depicted in the early fifteenth-century Châteauroux Breviary (ca. 1414; Châteauroux, Bibliothèque municipale, fol. 343v):

http://tinyurl.com/y8qvtr6



nn) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (martyrdom) in an early fifteenth-century copy (1419) of the _Elsässische Legenda aurea_ (Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 144, fol. 131r):

http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg144/0277



oo) Cosmas and Damian as depicted by Giovanni da Modena in two earlier fifteenth-century panel paintings (ca. 1425-1435) in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin:

http://tinyurl.com/nryhbqw



pp) Cosmas and Damian as portrayed by Donatello in an earlier fifteenth-century terracotta relief (betw. 1428 and 1445) in the old sacristy of Florence's basilica di San Lorenzo:

http://www.wga.hu/art/d/donatell/2_mature/sacristy/1sacri08.jpg



qq) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (being saved from drowning) by Zanobi Strozzi in an earlier fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1435) in the Museo nazionale di San Marco in Florence:

http://www.wga.hu/art/s/strozziz/2/stcosmas.jpg



rr) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (scenes from their Passio; eight expandable thumbnails) by Beato Angelico in predella panels, now in several museums, from his earlier fifteenth-century San Marco altarpiece (betw. 1438 and 1442):

http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/a/angelico/07/index.html 



ss) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (flanking St. Lawrence of Rome) by Filippo Lippi in an earlier fifteenth-century panel painting (late 1440s) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York:

http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/436897

http://www.wga.hu/art/l/lippi/filippo/1450/3lawren.jpg



tt) as depicted in grisaille by Jean le Tavernier or a follower in the Gospel readings in the mid-fifteenth-century Hours of Philip of Burgundy (ca. 1451-1460; Use of Paris; Den Haag, KB, ms. 76 F 2, fol. 261v):

http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi_76f2%3A261v_min



uu) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (portraits and scenes from their Passio) by Miguel Nadal in his mid-fifteenth-century altarpiece (1453) in the capilla de San Cosme y San Damián in the Catedral Basílica Metropolitana de Barcelona:

http://tinyurl.com/o3rmora



vv) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (main panel: flanking the BVM and Christ Child; predella: scenes from their Passio) by Sano di Pietro in an altarpiece of ca. 1456 in the Pinacoteca nazionale in Siena:

http://tinyurl.com/npqmf9h

Detail view (predella panels: removing the dead Ethiopian's leg and attaching it to the sick white man):

http://tinyurl.com/ochhbxo

http://tinyurl.com/o2cb2bb



ww) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (on the predella; portraits and two scenes from their Passio) by Jaume Huguet on his mid-fifteenth-century altarpiece of Sts. Abdon and Sennen (1459-1460) in the església  de Santa Maria at Terrassa (prov. de Barcelona):

http://tinyurl.com/nwym9ms

Detail view (portraits):

http://tinyurl.com/ok3c77w

Detail view (attaching the black leg of the Ethiopian to the sick white man):

http://tinyurl.com/qhak3tw

Detail view (their martyrdom and that of their brothers):

http://tinyurl.com/p74krtp



xx) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (attaching the black leg of the Ethiopian to the sick white man) by the Master of Los Balbases in a later fifteenth-century panel painting seemingly from Burgos and now in the Wellcome Library, London:

http://nicholasspyer.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/img_1500.jpg



yy)  Cosmas and Damian as depicted in a later fifteenth-century fresco (ca. 1462) in the pieve di San Pietro at Volpedo (AL) in Piedmont:

http://tinyurl.com/ydaf4ht



zz) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (martyrdom) in a later fifteenth-century copy (1463) of Vincent of Beauvais' _Speculum historiale_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (Paris, BmF, ms. Français 51, fol. 57r):

http://tinyurl.com/355dzxl



aaa) Cosmas and Damian (martyrdom) as depicted by Friedrich Pacher in a later fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1475-1480) in the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck:

http://sammellust.tiroler-landesmuseum.at/page/objekte/1948b

http://sammellust.tiroler-landesmuseum.at/wo_files/images/objekte/1948b.jpg



bbb) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (their martyrdom and that of their brothers) by Jacques de Besançon in a late fifteenth-century copy of the _Legenda aurea_ in its French-language version by Jean de Vignay (ca. 1480-1490; Paris, BnF, ms. Français 245, fol. 111r):

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8425999d/f231.image.zoom



ccc) Damian as depicted by Bartolomé Bermejo in a late fifteenth-century panel painting (ca. 1490) in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon:

http://tinyurl.com/8l6tt8w



ddd) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (left margin, second from top) in a hand-colored woodcut in the Beloit College copy of Hartmann Schedel's late fifteenth-century _Weltchronik_ (_Nuremberg Chronicle_; 1493) at fol. CXXIIIIv:

http://www.beloit.edu/nuremberg/book/6th_age/left_page/28%20%28Folio%20CXXIIIIv%29.pdf



eee) Cosmas and Damian as depicted by Dionisy and sons in the early sixteenth-century frescoes (1502) in the Virgin Nativity cathedral of the St. Ferapont Belozero (Ferapontov Belozersky) monastery at Ferapontovo in Russia's Vologda oblast:

Cosmas: http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/117/310/index.shtml

Damian: http://www.dionisy.com/eng/museum/121/320/index.shtml



fff) Cosmas and Damian as depicted  by Hans Süss of Kulmbach in two early sixteenth-century panel paintings (ca. 1507-1508; from a winged altarpiece in the St. Lorenz-Kirche in Nürnberg) in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nürnberg:

http://tinyurl.com/z7axqa4



ggg) Cosmas and Damian as depicted (flanking the BVM and Christ Child) in a remounted early sixteenth-century fresco (ca. 1515) in the Pinacoteca civica in Como:

http://tinyurl.com/oole9wd



hhh) Cosmas and Damian as portrayed in relief (attaching the black leg of the Ethiopian to the sick white man) in a mid-sixteenth-century polychromed and gilt wooden panel (ca. 1547), attributed to Isidro de Villoldo, in the Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid:

http://tinyurl.com/p8twceh



Best,

John Dillon



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