Cosmas of Yakhroma
Our Venerable Father Cosmas of Yakhroma
Venerable · b. early 15th century — d. 18 February 1492
Commemorated 18 February — Repose at the Dormition monastery he founded
Cosmas of Yakhroma (†1492) was a Russian monastic saint, founder and abbot of the Dormition monastery on the river Yakhroma near Vladimir. As a young man, servant to an ailing nobleman, he found by the Yakhroma river an icon of the Dormition of the Mother of God shining in a tree, and at its discovery his master was healed. Bidden by a heavenly voice to become a monk and to build a monastery, he took the icon and entered the Kiev Caves Lavra; and, later directed by an angel, he returned to the place of the vision and there raised a church and gathered a brotherhood, of which he became abbot. He lived in ascetic labour and was granted the gift of wonders, and reposed in old age on February 18, 1492. The image he found is venerated as the Yakhroma Icon of the Mother of God.
The finding of the icon
Cosmas was born in the Russian land in the early fifteenth century. In his youth he was in service to a certain nobleman (boyar), and when his master fell into a long and grievous illness he attended him faithfully, travelling with him from place to place in search of healing and reading to him from the holy books. On one such journey they halted to rest beside the river Yakhroma, in the country near Vladimir. There Cosmas beheld a wondrous light shining from a tree, and in the tree an icon of the Dormition of the most holy Theotokos; and as he drew near, a voice from the icon bade him become a monk and build a monastery. At that hour his master was made whole. Cosmas took the icon reverently, and, his service at an end, set out to fulfil what he had been commanded.
Monk of the Kiev Caves, and founder
Bearing the icon, Cosmas came to the Kiev Caves Lavra, the mother of Russian monasticism, and there received the monastic tonsure. He gave himself to the ascetic discipline of that great house — obedience, fasting, vigil, and prayer — for a season; and then, the tradition holds, an angel appeared to him and directed him to take up the icon again and return to the place of his first vision on the Yakhroma. Obeying, he came back to the wooded riverbank, and there built first a church of the Dormition of the Mother of God, enshrining the icon within it. Brethren gathered to him drawn by his holiness, and a monastery grew about the church — the house afterward known as the Kosmin (Cosmas) Dormition Monastery on the Yakhroma. Cosmas was made its abbot (igumen), and governed it in the fear of God, a father to his monks and a pattern of the ascetic life.
Repose and veneration
Cosmas labored in his monastery to a great age, adorned — the tradition says — with the gift of healing and of wonders, and reposed in peace on February 18, 1492 (some accounts give 1493 or 1494). He was buried in the monastery he had founded, where his relics became a source of blessing, and he was in time numbered among the venerable fathers of the Russian Church. The Yakhroma Icon of the Mother of God — the Dormition image he had found in the tree — is kept as a wonderworking icon, with its own commemoration on October 14; through it and through the prayers of Saint Cosmas many healings were recorded at the monastery.
Feast and commemoration
Cosmas is kept on February 18 (church date; Old Calendar civil March 3), the day of his repose, in the Russian Church and by the Orthodox Church in America. A second commemoration, of the Yakhroma Icon of the Mother of God, falls on October 14. His is a Russian local veneration, not part of the older universal Byzantine calendar; he shares February 18 with Leo the Great of Rome, whose feast leads the day.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
Desiring the life on high, beyond this world, thou didst turn away from the things below; and taking up thy cross, thou didst follow Christ, and didst settle in the wilderness, O most wondrous one, wrestling therein in psalmody, in vigils, and in fasting. Wherefore the All-Holy Spirit came to dwell in thee; and now, having boldness before Christ God, ask for the Orthodox people health and salvation, and forget not to visit thy children who keep thy sacred memory, O Cosmas, our venerable father.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Kontakion — Tone 8
Tearing out the soul's passions by the root, thou didst settle in the wilderness, O venerable one, and in sickness thou didst receive a life free of pain; and thou dost still the raging of cruel diseases for those who ask of thee in faith. Therefore loose our sicknesses of soul and body, that we may cry to thee: Rejoice, O Cosmas, wise in God.
Original translation from the Slavonic
Iconography
Cosmas is depicted in the Russian manner as a monastic saint and abbot: an elderly monk in the mantia and analavos, his head bare or cowled, with a long grey beard, holding a scroll and often a hand raised in blessing or in prayer. His distinguishing attribute is the Yakhroma Icon of the Dormition, which he holds, or before which he kneels, or which appears in the tree above him — the narrative of his vision by the river. He is frequently shown against the background of his monastery.
The stored image is a Russian icon of the saint of the late 17th – early 18th century, from the Kosmin Dormition Monastery on the Yakhroma (source, public domain, pd-old-work).