Hieromartyr Cosmas, Equal-To-The-Apostles

Life

A native of Aetolia, from the village of Megadendron (Great Tree). As a young man he went to the Holy Mountain, where in the Philotheou Monastery he was tonsured as a monk. But driven by a constant desire to preach the Gospel to the people, he went to Constantinople, where he obtained a blessing for this from Patriarch Seraphim II. He traveled through all the lands along the Danube preaching the Gospel, but he spent the most time in Albania, where he also suffered at the hands of a certain Kurt Pasha, whom the Jews had incited against Cosmas. Cosmas was strangled by the Turks and then thrown into a river in the year 1779. His wonder-working relics rest in the village of Kolkondas in the Church of the Holy Theotokos, not far from the city of Fier. He suffered for his Lord at the age of sixty-five.