Saint Cosmas Bishop of Chalcedon, and Auxentius

Saint Cosmas, Bishop of Chalcedon, and his fellow ascetic Saint Auxentius lived during the ninth century, when the iconoclast emperors oppressed the Orthodox who venerated the holy icons. Cosmas entered a monastery in his youth and received the monastic tonsure; he was later consecrated bishop of Chalcedon, the ancient see on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus opposite Constantinople.

Together with Auxentius, his companion in the ascetic life, Cosmas withstood the persecution of the icon-venerators. Because the Church remembers Cosmas as a confessor rather than a martyr, he is understood to have suffered for the faith through hardship rather than being put to death. The two are commemorated together on April 18.

Few biographical particulars survive. Cosmas and Auxentius are known chiefly through brief synaxarion notices, which preserve the essentials of their witness — Cosmas's progress from monk to bishop, their shared ascetic life, and their constancy during the iconoclast oppression — while leaving the details of their birthplace, repose, and relics unrecorded.