The life of St Cosmas the Hymnographer
The friendship formed in that shared schoolroom lasted the rest of their lives: the two young men left Damascus together for Jerusalem and became monks side by side at the monastery of Saint Sabas nearby.
In 743 Cosmas left the monastery to take up the office of bishop of Maiuma, the port town serving ancient Gaza on the Phoenician coast. When the controversy over the veneration of icons broke out and threatened to overturn a practice the Church had long kept, Cosmas stood with John of Damascus in its defense, adding his own voice to his old friend's in resisting the iconoclasts of their day. In his later years he turned to writing hymns for the Church, composing a number of canons still sung on the great feasts and a Triodion for use during the middle days of Holy Week, work that placed him, alongside John, among the finest voices of later Greek liturgical poetry. He died in old age, having spent a lifetime tied to the friend with whom his education, his monastic vows, and his defense of the faith had all begun.
