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[Above: Icon of Cosmas Aitolos—public domain, Wikimedia File:Kosmas Aitolos.jpg]

 

IMAGINE having a Christian testimony so effective that your enemies put a bounty of over one million dollars on your head. That happened to Cosmas Aitolos (also known as Cosmas of Aetolia). 

When Cosmas was born, the Turks controlled much of Greece and the Balkans. Formerly Orthodox people had become isolated in mountain valleys, and scholars and educators had fled to safer lands. Knowledge of history was lost. Although some teachers made attempts to awaken the common people and restore a measure of Christian knowledge, none succeeded. The failure of revolutions against the Turks brought Christians to despair. Many converted to Islam to make their lives easier. 

Cosmas sought an education. Eventually this brought him to Mt. Athos, Greece, an important center of monastic learning. Under Eugenios Voulgaris he and several other students, “seeing the threat to Orthodoxy and their nation, unanimously agreed in the name of the Holy Trinity to help the nation in the spread of literacy.” 

For Cosmas, this was no idle vow. After ten years of study at Mt. Athos, he became a monk at the monastery of Philotheos and eventually priest to the monks. Meanwhile, his desire to evangelize among the Greeks grew more intense. Aware of the enormity of the undertaking, he opened the Scriptures, asking for a word. His eyes lit upon 1 Corinthians 10:24: “Let no one seek his own, but each one his neighbor’s good.” Reassured, he sought and received the blessing of Patriarch Seraphim of Constantinople. 

At first Cosmas was no more successful than earlier preachers. However he persisted and made sure to speak in simple terms that uneducated peasants could understand. He lived frugally and showed no desire for worldly goods. Eventually his hearers began to respond as he called them to put off their sins and live in unity. He prophesied that the day would come when they would throw off the yoke of Islam. To hasten the arrival of that day they needed to return to Christ and educate themselves. He demanded a high standard from priests: “In this consists the task of the priest—to lay down his whole life and head for the good of Christians.” 

Eventually he became so well-known he could go nowhere without crowds flocking around him. He reminded them that a single soul is worth more than the entire world. Therefore, Christians should seek to read and understand their faith. In a sermon, he told his followers, 

I have found the words and the commandments of Christ pure, holy, true, splendid, brighter than the sun; and whoever believes in Christ and calls Him God and lives in accordance with His teaching, contained in the Holy Gospels, is fortunate and thrice blessed. 

Cosmas founded dozens of schools himself, including two for educators, and inspired hundreds of localities to provide teachers from their own resources. More importantly, he led a revival of Orthodox faith and he restored hope. Some listeners could remember the gist of his sermons decades later and passed his prophecies to their children and to their children’s children. 

Among the reforms the saintly preacher inspired was the cessation of buying and selling on Sunday, which ought to be a day for communion with God and fellow Christians. The drop off in trade infuriated merchants, especially Jews, who suffered when market day was moved to Saturday, their sabbath. Village elders resented their loss of authority as people began to think for themselves. A combination of enemies bribed a local Turkish authority in modern-day Albania to execute Cosmas. On this day, 24 August 1779, Kurt Pasha hung the preacher and flung his body into the Aps River. Cosmas’s followers pulled the corpse from the water and buried it with honors. Many Greeks added “Cosmas” to their family names, and today he is regarded as a saint in Greece and regions of the Balkans.

—Dan Graves

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Cosmas died a martyr. For more on modern martyrdoms, consult Christian History #109, Eyewitnesses to the Modern Age of Persecution