Kosmas the Zographite

Venerable Kosmas the Zographite was a hieromonk and Bulgarian saint, who struggled on the Holy Mountain Athos, at the Bulgarian Zograf monastery, in the second half of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth. He died on 22 September 1323. The Orthodox Church remembers him on 22 September and calls him "our venerable and God-⁠bearing father Kosmas, the wonderworker of Zograf".

Life

He was born in the second half of the thirteenth century at Tarnovo, the capital of the Bulgarian empire, into a boyar family. He received a good education and knew Greek very well. His family wished to marry him, but he desired to be a monk and at length left for Mount Athos. He went to the Bulgarian Zograf monastery, founded in 898 by three Bulgarian brothers from Ohrid, Moses, Aaron and John. He became ecclesiarch in the main church of the monastery. At length he withdrew to a cell in the rock, which he carved himself not far from the monastery, and lived there as an ascetic until his death, on 22 September 1323.

Miracles

According to his life, written in Greek and translated into Bulgarian by the protohegumen Euthymius in 1802, he could see spiritual things hidden from bodily eyes. The life relates the wonders which the Lord disclosed to him to bear witness to: the Mother of God set his evening meal before him, when he was a guest at Vatopedi, on the feast of the Annunciation, the patronal feast of the renowned monastery; a conversation between the Mother of God and the Lord was revealed to him in the church of Zograf; he saved two hieromonks of Hilandar, warning them that a snake lay hidden in their wine jar, a thing he learned in some unknown way; he foretold, from his distant cell, the death of the abbot of Hilandar, which none of the monks knew, though they had served with him in church shortly before; he explained the miraculous carrying of the monk Damian of the Esphigmenou monastery from the distant forest where he had lost his way to the front of his cell; a mountain eagle brought him fresh fish, which he shared with the monk Christopher; and the Lord foretold to him his last hour: Satan would attack him with his hosts, torment his body, and then he would depart from the earthly world.

In Bulgaria only one place of worship is dedicated to him, the chapel of Kosmas the Zographite at the mineral baths of Stara Zagora.