Kozman

Holy Hieromartyr Kozman (Cosmas) was a hieromonk in the Gareji wilderness in Kakheti. Over the centuries the monastic complex founded by Saint David of Gareji became a spiritual and cultural center for all of Georgia, and many of the faithful flocked there with a desire to serve Christ. Among them was the hieromonk Kozman, who would end his earthly life as a martyr.

Few details of his life have been preserved. According to the Georgian catholicos Anton I, Kozman was a learned and righteous ascetic, well versed in the canons of the Orthodox Church, the son of a great vizier; the catholicos had met him when Kozman was a guest at his mother's house. Kozman composed "Hymns to the Great Martyr Queen Ketevan," a work that has not survived but that the catholicos had seen. According to the nineteenth-⁠century historian Platon Ioseliani, Hieromonk Kozman was taken captive and tortured to death during a raid of the Dagestanis on the Davit Gareji wilderness. The calendar of the Georgian Church gives, in error, the year 1630 for his death; he in fact died in 1735, killed by the Lezgins. He is commemorated on 18 July (new style; 31 July on the old calendar).