Monastic Martyr Cosmas of Saint Anne Skete

Monastic Home

Cosmas belonged to the Skete of Saint Anne, a dependent monastic community on Mount Athos subordinate to the Great Lavra, the oldest and largest of the Athonite monasteries. The skete's central church, or kyriakon, was built in 1680 when the community was enlarged under Patriarch Dionysius III of Constantinople; it stands near the Aegean shore, close to the New Skete.

As an idiorrhythmic community, Saint Anne's was organized around small individual cells in which monks lived a largely eremitic life, gathering at the kyriakon for the Divine Liturgy while managing their own cells and income. From such communities monks periodically left the Mountain for preaching, pilgrimage, or business, and those who were confronted by Ottoman authorities faced pressure to apostatize to Islam.

Martyrdom

Cosmas was executed in Constantinople on December 3, 1760, for refusing to convert to Islam. His death places him among the many New Martyrs of the Ottoman era whose steadfast confession of Christ under compulsion is commemorated by the Church, even where the circumstances of their suffering went unrecorded.