COSMAS AND DAMIAN

COSMAS AND DAMIAN, Saints (third century). Cosmas and Damian were brothers and are commemorated in the Church catholic as “unmercenary physicians,” that is, doctors who practiced medicine without demanding money. They are remembered as healers of humans and animals from a time late in the 3rd c. Although immensely popular among the Byzantines and mentioned in both the Western and Eastern liturgies, their lives for the most part defy research-to such a degree that one has a choice among three pairs of twin brothers by the same names who were unmercenary physicians at the same time from vastly different parts of the ancient world. Tradition holds that the first pair came from Asia Minor (q.v.), the second from Rome (q.v.), and the third from Arabia. As unmercenary physicians, the anargyroi, they are commemorated at each Divine Liturgy together with the prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, illuminators, and righteous (i.e., monastics). As physicians who healed without payment, they are seen as assimilated to the likeness of Christ, “the physician and healer of souls and bodies.”