Kosmas the Hermit was a Cretan ascetic and confessor of the seventh century, remembered for his withdrawal into a cave in the wilderness of southern Crete and for his resistance to the Monothelite heresy. He is commemorated on September 2, the date on which his memory is kept at Koudoumas Monastery in Crete, near the cave in which he lived; his repose is recorded under the date September 9, 658.
According to tradition, Kosmas was born in Crete in the second half of the sixth century, in an area no longer identified. He received a good education in his youth, which later equipped him to argue against the teaching of the Monothelites. He first lived in a monastery, but his open opposition to the Monothelite bishops compelled him to leave; he withdrew into the wilderness and took up the solitary life of a hermit. Because he held firm in confessing the faith under pressure, he is numbered among the confessors rather than the martyrs.
In his cave in southern Crete he is said to have practiced an extreme asceticism, going barefoot and unclothed, and devoting himself to fasting and spiritual struggle. The tradition relates that he became a confessor and spiritual guide to those who sought him out, that he received the gift of clairvoyance, and that he worked miracles. He reposed in his cave, where his body remained until it was later discovered and translated to a larger church, by tradition associated with Gortyna.
The relic of Kosmas was the object of a notable later history. The synaxarion relates that he appeared in a vision directing that ornaments be removed from his relic, and that when this was done a drought broke and rain fell upon the parched land. In 1058, Venetian merchants took his relic from its crypt and carried it to Venice; finding it incorrupt and fragrant, they placed it in the church of San Giorgio Maggiore. His cave above Koudoumas is known as the Avvakospilio, so named for the many hermits (avvades) who dwelt there.
