The Miracles of *Kosmas and Damianos (brothers, physician martyrs of Syria, S00385), an assemblage of collections of the saints' miracles at their church in Constantinople, mostly effected through incubation, and almost all involving healing. Written in Greek, probably in Constantinople, between the 6th c. and the 14th c.; one distinct collection assembled in Egypt by the 11th c. Overview entry
E07950
Literary - Hagiographical - Collections of miracles
Miracles of Kosmas and Damianos (BHG 385-391)
The Miracles have been published in two places - by Deubner in 1907 and Rupprecht in 1935 - with much overlap between the two publications, but also with many miracles that appear only in one or other of them.
The Deubner collection:
We present here an overview of the miracle-stories assembled by Deubner, with his numbering and with cross-references, where applicable, to Rupprecht's Egyptian collection (for which, see below).
Unless otherwise specified, all the miracles involved healing and took place in the saints' church in Constantinople.
(The division into groups follows the suggestions of Festugière 1971)
Group I
Prologue (probably by the author of Group II, who united the two groups into one collection)
Miracle 1. The man with dropsy, who had blasphemed the saints [= Egyptian Miracle 5] (E08429)
Miracle 2. The Jewish woman with cancer, both cured and converted (E08430)
Miracle 3. The palace official cured of urinary retention by means of a lamb called Kosmas [= Egyptian Miracle 6] (E08431)
Miracle 4. The young man suffering paralysis inflicted by a devil (E08432)
Miracle 5. The man suffering an internal abscess, whose condition was worsened by human surgery (E08433)
Miracle 6. The man suffering a lung disease, ordered to stop blaspheming and consuming meat in Lent [= Egyptian Miracle 9] (E08434)
Miracle 7. The deaf and mute woman cured during the singing of the Trisagion (E08435)
Miracle 8. The woman suffering with a disease of the womb (E08436)
Miracle 9. The pagan healed and converted after he renounced his belief in Castor and Pollux [= Egyptian Miracle 23] (E08437)
Miracle 10. The pagan converted after seeing a vision of the eucharist (E08438)
Group II
(no prologue)
Miracle 11. The man who drank cedar oil, and was cured of an abscess and a love of the hippodrome [= Egyptian Miracle 13] (E08439)
Miracle 12. A woman named Martha, cured of a cranial disease and protected from a demon (E08440)
Miracle 13. The woman (the wife of a soldier named Konstantinos) cured in Laodicea, who recognised the saints from an icon carried by her husband, after they had appeared to her in a vision [= Egyptian Miracle 25] (E08441)
Miracle 14. The paralysed presbyter cured in a bathhouse (E08442)
Miracle 15. The woman cured by ingesting plaster from an image of the saints painted in her house (E08443)
Miracle 16. Three miraculous cures in the same family, involving kerote and the wick of a lamp (E08444)
Miracle 17. The Arian suffering from paralysis [= Egyptian Miracle 21] (E08445)
Miracle 18. The teacher for whom the saints found employment (E08446)
Miracle 19. The woman with dropsy [= Egyptian Miracle 24] (E08447)
Isolated miracle
Miracle 20 The prefect’s son with haemorrhages [= Egyptian Miracle 22] (E08448)
Group III
Prologue
Miracle 21. The man cured in the stomach and heart, but not in the jaw [= Egyptian Miracle 33] (E08449)
Miracle 22. The man suffering from swollen genitals, and later blindness, cured through surgery and the saints' salve [= Egyptian Miracle 34] (E08450)
Miracle 23. The deacon with inflamed genitals and blocked intestines [= Egyptian Miracle 26] (E08451)
Miracle 24. The paralytic man and the mute woman, both cured when the former is instructed to sleep with the latter (E08452)
Miracle 25. The man cured of an eye disease with the milk of a chaste woman, who thereby proves her marital fidelity [= Egyptian Miracle 11] (E08453)
Miracle 26. The heretical cleric and the woman with an ailment of the breast [= Egyptian Miracle 35] (E08454)
Epilogue
Group IV
Miracle 27. The man with a broken leg, cured at his home [= Egyptian Miracle 14] (E08455)
Miracle 28. The woman with a breast tumour, cured by the saints though her doctors had mocked her for expecting this [= Egyptian Miracle 28] (E08456)
Miracle 29. The woman with petrified milk in her breast [= Egyptian Miracle 36] (E08457)
Miracle 30. The man with an abscess in his hips, cured after praying before an image of Mary and the two saints [= Egyptian Miracle 37] (E08458)
Miracle 31. The paralysed poor man partially cured through the intercession of a pious man [= Egyptian Miracle 29] (E08459)
Miracle 32. The lawyer with abscess [= Egyptian Miracle 30] (E08460)
Group V
Prologue
Miracle 33. The official (memorialis), on whom the saints performed surgery [= Egyptian Miracle 33] (E08461)
Miracle 34. Viktor the lawyer and Hesperos the paralytic, cured when the latter is told to shave the former (E08462)
Miracle 35. The federate soldier to whom the saints appeared as two other foederati (E08463)
Miracle 36. The suddenly-blinded child cured with eulogia from their church (E08464)
Miracle 37. The official (taxeotes) to whom the saints appeared in the form of assailants (E08465)
Miracle 38. A cleric with dropsy (E08466)
Note: The descriptions above are very brief summaries of the stories; they are not the (even briefer) titles of the stories that appear in the manuscripts.
The Egyptian collection:
What follows is an overview of the Egyptian collection of Miracles, as published by Rupprecht, with cross-references to Deubner's collection.
All the miracles involved healing, and, apart from the opening one (associated with the saints' Life), all apparently took place in the saints' church in Constantinople.
The collection opens (§1-4) with the 'Asian' Life of Kosmas and Damianos (for which see E06712), but appends to the tale of Malkhos’ wife a further narrative. This relates how a farmer pierced his leg, and how, when it turned septic, a doctor recommended amputation. The farmer then invoked the aid of Kosmas and Damianos. At night the pair appeared in the guise of doctors, extracting from him an oath to lead the good Christian life. He was then healed with a single touch, leaving no scar. The farmer rejoiced in the salvation both of his body and of his soul. The mortal doctor returned, prepared for surgery, heard what had happened, and spread news of the miracle.
The Miracles that follow are classic shrine miracles, all almost certainly effected by the saints at their church in Constantinople:
Miracle 5. The man with dropsy, who had blasphemed the saints [= Deubner Miracle 1] (E08429).
Miracle 6. The old man cured of urinary retention by means of a lamb called Kosmas [= Deubner Miracle 3 (E08431).
Miracle 7. The official (memorialis), on whom the saints performed surgery [= Deubner Miracle 33] (E08461).
Miracle 8. The man with a withered hand, whose cure involved a deer [not in the Deubner collection] (E08529).
Miracle 9. The man suffering a lung disease, ordered to stop blaspheming and consuming meat in Lent [= Deubner Miracle 6] (E08434).
Miracle 10. Stephanos the blind Sophist [not in the Deubner collection] (E08530).
Miracle 11. The man cured of an eye disease with the milk of a chaste woman, who thereby proved her marital fidelity [= Deubner Miracle 25] (E08453).
Miracle 12. The man with cancerous genitals [not in the Deubner collection] (E08531).
Miracle 13. The man who drank cedar oil, and was cured of an abscess and a love of the hippodrome [= Deubner Miracle 11 (E08439).
Miracle 14. The man with a broken leg, cured at his home [= Deubner Miracle 27] (E08455).
Miracle 15. The woman with dropsy, and the vision of the saint leaving his image [not in the Deubner collection] (E08532).
Miracle 16. The paralysed man who was given a staff [not in the Deubner collection] (E08533).
Miracle 17. The woman with a facial deformity [not in the Deubner collection] (E08534).
Miracle 18. The two Thomases with an influx of the eyes (one at the saints' shrine at Cyrrhus) [not in the Deubner collection] (E08535].
Miracle 19. The Nestorian cured both of his lung-disease and of his heresy [not in the Deubner collection] (E08536).
Miracle 20. Menas the doctor, who painted an image of his disease [not in the Deubner collection] (E085367).
Miracle 21. The dyophysite heretic suffering from paralysis [= Deubner Miracle 17] (E08445).
Miracle 22. The prefect’s son with haemorrhages [= Deubner Miracle 20] (E08448).
Miracle 23. The pagan healed and converted after he renounced his belief in Castor and Pollux [= Deubner Miracle 9] (E08437).
Miracle 24. The woman with dropsy [= Deubner Miracle 19] (E08447).
Miracle 25. The woman (the wife of Konstantinos), who recognised the saints from an icon carried by her husband, after they had appeared to her in a vision [= Deubner Miracle 13] (E08441).
Miracle 26. The deacon with inflamed genitals and blocked intestines [= Deubner Miracle 23] (E08451).
Miracle 27. The man with ophthalmia, who was almost blind [not in the Deubner collection] (E08538).
Miracle 28. The woman with a breast tumour, cured by the saints though her doctors had mocked her for expecting this [= Deubner Miracle 28] (E08456).
Miracle 29. The paralysed poor man partially cured through the intercession of a pious man [= Deubner 31] (E08459).
Miracle 30. The lawyer with an abscess [= Deubner Miracle 32] (E08460).
Miracle 31. The paralysed poor man, who had to be told twice to abstain from sex and meat [not in the Deubner collection] (E08539).
Miracle 32. The man suffering from lamia, a disease that made him eat incessantly [not in the Deubner collection] (E08540).
Miracle 33. The man cured in the stomach and heart, and later also in the jaw [= Deubner Miracle 21] (E08449).
Miracle 34. The man suffering from swollen genitals, and later blindness, cured through surgery and the saints' salve [= Deubner Miracle 22] (E08450).
Miracle 35. The heretical cleric and the woman with an ailment of the breast [= Deubner Miracle 26] (E08454).
Miracle 36. The woman with petrified milk in her breast [= Deubner Miracle 29] (E08457)
Miracle 37. The man with an abscess in his hips, cured after praying before an image of Mary and the two saints [= Deubner Miracle 30] (E08458).
Miracle 38. [A very incomplete story] The cleric with a disease (possibly of the stomach), who blows through a reed [not in the Deubner collection] (E08541).
Note: The short descriptions given above are our own; they are not titles given in the Greek text.
Summaries: B. Ward-Perkins
Cult building - independent (church)
Non Liturgical ActivityIncubation
Visiting graves and shrines
MiraclesMiracle after death
Healing diseases and disabilities
Apparition, vision, dream, revelation
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesPhysicians
Source
The Miracles of Kosmas and Damianos are recorded in several distinct manuscript assemblages of miracle-stories involving the two saints in their Constantinopolitan church, situated on the shore of the Golden Horn near the district of Blachernae, outside the city wall (in the modern Istanbul district of Eyüp). According to tradition (Patria of Constantinople 3.126), the church was built by Paulinus, a fellow student of the emperor Theodosius II (r. 408-450), but it is uncertain whether this is true. There was a famous monastery attached to the church, called the Kosmidion.Kosmas and Damianos, who were known as the Holy Anargyroi (the physician-saints 'who charge no fees’), were the most favoured saintly healers of the entire Empire.
The known Miracles of Kosmas and Damianos are published in two separate, but overlapping, publications:
Ludwig Deubner's collection and edition:
The 48 miracle-stories collected by Deubner are preserved in several manuscripts, none of which contains all 48. They were collected together into a single volume, and given a single numbering-system by Deubner, who distinguished six groups of miracles (plus one extra miracle), assembled over a long period of time. Five of these groups are anonymous, whereas the sixth was compiled by a certain Maximos the Deacon.
The groups are as follows:
1. Mir. 1 – 10 (BHG 385-386) – an essentially homogeneous group with a simple prologue.
2. Mir. 11 – 20 (BHG 387) – a more elaborate collection without a prologue but with a brief introduction to each miracle; it was attached by its redactor to the previous collection.
3. Mir. 21 – 26 (BHG 388) – a collection preceded by a preface and addressed to a certain Florentios.
4. Mir. 27 – 32 (BHG 389) – a collection without a prologue.
5. Mir. 33 – 38 (BHG 390) – a collection with a prologue in which its author states that he dares to add some miracles of the saints to those that already exist.
6. Mir. 39 – 47 (BHG 391) – a collection by Maximos the Deacon, probably a monk of the monastery at the Kosmidion; Mir. 39 and 40 are provided with short prologues.
7. Mir. 48 – a single miracle not to be found elsewhere, that was added by Deubner. This miracle was accomplished by Kosmas and Damianos while alive, so more properly would belong in a Life.
Collections 1, 2 and 3 (with Miracles 1 - 26) can be dated to before the end of the 6th century, because Sophronius of Jerusalem, closing his account of Miracle 30 (E07359) of his Miracles of Kyros and Ioannes (Cyrus and John), which he composed at the beginning of the 7th century, refers to a written account of the Miracles of Kosmas and Damianos, with enough detail to show that he specifically knew Kosmas and Damianos Miracles 2 and 24.
Collections 4 and 5 are certainly 10th-century or earlier, because they are preserved in a manuscript of that date. They contain no obvious clues that allow us to date them with more precision.
Collection 6 is from the 14th century. Its author Maximos dates miracles 40-47 to after the end of Latin rule. In mir. 40 he mentions the name Akropolites, referring to a member of this prominent Byzantine family from Constantinople. The man referred to was likely Constantine Akropolites, a famous hagiographer and statesman of the 14th century (born mid-13th c., died in or before May 1324), who served as megas logothetes (a high official) in 1294-1321; he was a son of another famous civil official, the teacher and historian George Akropolites, who also held the office of megas logothetes (Efthymiadis 1999: 209). Being certainly much later than the AD 700 cut-off date for evidence in our database, we have not made entries for Collection 6.
The miracles narratives are rendered in highly rhetorical Greek. Most of the miracles were effected through the practice of incubation. The patients are usually simple people who suffer from various diseases. Their names are rarely provided, which raises suspicions that the narratives were originally composed in a different milieu and were later appropriated and adapted to the needs of the new environment.
(J. Doroszewska)
The Egyptian Miracles of Kosmas and Damianos:
In 1907, the year Deubner published his collection, an eleventh-century Greek codex was discovered in the ruins of a monastery at Edfu in Upper Egypt, and then acquired by the British Museum (now BL Add MS 37534), with 34 miracles of Kosmas and Damianos, prefaced by a Life of the saints. The codex is incomplete: two leaves are missing from the beginning, and one or two quires from the end. It is nevertheless significant, particularly because it transmits 14 miracles (13 of these set in the saints' church at Constantinople) not contained in the collections published by Deubner.
The miracles follow a quite different order from the collections in Deubner’s edition, and no one collection there predominates here. No duplicated miracles are exact replicas, and some exhibit significant narrative and ideological divergences. Some, e.g. Miracles 25 and 37, lack prosopographical detail in comparison to the Deubner equivalents, but others, e.g. Miracles 22 and 23, are more fulsome. The original miracles described by Maximos the Deacon in the fourteenth century (Deubner’s Miracles of Kosmas and Damianos 39-47, which are not in the CSLA database) are, as we might expect, wholly absent.
All of the shrine-miracles seem to be set in Constantinople, which, among the unique miracles, is explicitly stated in Miracles 17, 18, and 20. In Miracle 18 the saints even appear to a patient at their shrine at Cyrrhus in Syria, and advise him to come instead to Constantinople. This perhaps suggests a rivalry between the saints’ shrines, but also a late-antique origin for the tale, when a choice, and travel, between the different centres was more conceivable than later. Indeed among the same unique miracles, Miracle 10 seems to have been composed in or soon after the reign of Justinian, since its subject is Stephanos the Sophist, the famed geographer and author of the Ethnika, dedicated to that emperor; another Miracle 15, involves the miraculous appearance of the saints from an icon, which would suggest a date after the mid-sixth century. Notable is a distinct miaphysite bias – thus the subject of the unique Miracle 19 is a Nestorian heretic made to confess one nature of Christ; while in the duplicated Miracle 21, Deubner’s Arian is instead a dyophysite.
It has sometimes therefore been claimed that the Egyptian miracles, which are written in a much simpler and less ornate style than those assembled by Deubner, represent a primitive, anti-Chalcedonian stage of the cult, but this seems doubtful. Rather we might think of an Egyptian reception of a Constantinopolitan collection or collections, with certain elements reworked to fit the local confession. When this reception occurred is uncertain, the terminus ante quem being the date of the codex. Whatever the original date of assemblage, the copying of a Greek text in Upper Egypt as late as the eleventh century is in itself remarkable.
(P. Booth)
Bibliography
Editions:Deubner, L. (ed.), Kosmas und Damian. Texte und Einleitung (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1907).
Rupprecht, E. (ed.) Cosmae et Damiani sanctorum medicorum vita et miracula e codice Londinensi (Berlin: Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1935).
Translation:
Festugière, A.-J. (trans.), Collections grecques de miracles: Sainte Thecle, saints Côme et Damien, saints Cyr et Jean (extraits), saint Georges (Paris: Picard, 1971).
Further reading:
Booth, P., "Orthodox and Heretic in the Early Byzantine Cult(s) of Saints Cosmas and Damian," in P. Sarris et al. An Age of Saints? Power, Conflict and Dissent in Early Medieval Christianity (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 114-128.
Booth, P., "Between texts and shrines in the Greek cult of saints (5th-7th centuries)," in V. Déroche, B. Ward-Perkins and Robert Wiśniewski, Culte des saints et litterature hagiographique: Accords et desaccords (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2020), 23-38.
Constantinou, S., “Healing Dreams in Early Byzantine Miracle Collections,” in Oberhelman 2013, 189-98.
Csepregi, I., "Mysteries for the Uninitiated: the Role and Symbolism of the Eucharist in Miraculous Dream Healing," in I. Perczel et al. (eds), The Eucharist in Theology and Philosophy: Issues of Doctrinal History in East and West from the Patristic Age to the Reformation (Leuven University Press: Leuven, 2006) 97–130.
Csepregi, I., “Who is Behind Incubation Stories? The Hagiographers of Byzantine Dream-Healing Miracles,” in Oberhelman 2013, 161-87.
Déroche, V., “’Tout d'un coup’: l'epiphanie masquée dans les recueils de miracles de l' Antiquite tardive, ” in Dōron Rodopoikilon. Studies in Honour of Jan Olof Rosenquist, ed. D. Searby, E. Balicka-Witakovska, J. Heldt (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis : Uppsala, 2012), 147-57.
Deubner, L., De incubatione capita quattuor (Leipzig : Teubner, 1900).
Dierkens, A. (ed.), Apparitions et miracles (Brussels: Universite Bruxelles, 1991).
Efthymiadis, S., “Greek Byzantine Collections of Miracles: A Chronological and Bibliographical Survey,” Symbolae Osloenses 74 (1999), 195-211.
Efthymiadis, S., “Collections of Miracles (Fifth–Fifteenth Centuries),” in S. Efthymiadis (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, II: Genres and Contexts (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2014), 102-42.
Halkin, F., "Publications récentes de textes hagiographiques grecs," Analecta Bollandiana 53 (1935), 374-81, at 376-7 [review of Rupprecht (1935)]
Mango, C., “On the Cult of Saints Cosmas and Damian at Constantinople,” in Θυμίαμα Στη Μνήμν Της Λασκαρίνας Μπούρα, I (Athens 1994), 189-92.
Miller, T.S., “Hospital Dreams in Byzantium,” in Oberhelman 2013, 199-215.
Oberhelman, S.M. (ed.), Dreams, Healing, and Medicine in Greece. From Antiquity to the Present (Farnham and Burlington: Routledge, 2013).
Talbot, A.-M., “Pilgrimage to Healing Shrines: the Evidence of Miracle Accounts,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002), 153-73.
Toul, Ch.I., “Τα Ίάματα τών 'Αγίων Αναργύρων, ” Επετηρίς Εταιρείας Βυζαντινών Σπουδών 42 (1976-1976), 253-75.
van Esbroeck, M., “La diffusion orientale de la légende de sts. Cosme et Damien,” in Hagiographie, Culture et Sociétés (IVe-XIIe siècles). Actes du Colloque organisé Nanterre et Paris 2-5 mai 1979, Etudes augistiniennes (Paris 1981), 61-7.
Wittmann, A., Kosmas und Damian, Kultausbreitung und Volksdevation (Berlin-Bielefeld-Munich 1967).
Julia Doroszewska, Philip Booth
08/04/2024
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00385 | Kosmas and Damianos, brothers, physician martyrs of Syria | Κοσμᾶς και Δαμιανός | Certain |
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