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Sts. Cosmas and Damian: Physician Saints
Partial source packet from The Catholic Encyclopedia article on Cosmas and Damian and the Caxton/Ellis Golden Legend tradition ยท William Caxton; modernized by F. S. Ellis for Golden Legend portions (1483; 1900)
Source
Source: Partial public-domain source packet for Sts. Cosmas and Damian. Main sources: Gabriel Meier, "Sts. Cosmas and Damian," The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 4 (1908), and the public-domain Caxton/Ellis Golden Legend tradition. Coverage: Partial. Cult and patronage from the Catholic Encyclopedia, with a brief Golden Legend-style notice of their medical charity and martyrdom. Not a complete Byzantine miracle collecti
Sts. Cosmas and Damian
on.
Sts. Cosmas and Damian
Cosmas and Damian are regarded as the patrons of physicians and surgeons and are sometimes represented with medical emblems.
Having been cured of a dangerous illness by the intercession of Cosmas and Damian, Justinian, in gratitude for their aid, rebuilt and adorned their church at Constantinople, and it became a celebrated place of pilgrimage.
When the Diocletian persecution began, the Prefect Lysias had Cosmas and Damian arrested, and ordered them to recant.
They remained constant under torture, in a miraculous manner suffered no injury from water, fire, air, nor on the cross, and were finally beheaded with the sword.
The physician saints were called anargy
Miracle of the black leg
roi, unmercenaries, because their legends remember them as healers who did not take payment for medicine.
In the medieval miracle of the black leg, the saints appear by night with surgical instruments, remove a diseased leg, and replace it with the sound leg of a dead man.