Cosmas I.

Cosmas I was the Patriarch of Constantinople from 1075 to 1081 . According to Anna Komnena (Alexiade, Book 2) he lived a holy and exemplary life in every respect, owned no property, devoted himself to asceticism like the early church fathers who lived as hermits in the desert and in the mountains and also had the gift of Prophecy.

He was a good friend of the emperor Nikephorus III. Botaniates, whom he successfully advised to abdicate on April 4, 1081 in order to prevent blood from being shed in Constantinople.

In 1081 he crowned Emperor Alexios I and seven days later, under pressure from her influential family, his wife, Irene Dukaena, too . After the rule of the Komnenen was secured, Alexis invited the patriarch, important members of the synod as well as some abbots to sit in judgment on him because of the uprising and his other misdeeds. After a full confession from the emperor, they sentenced him and close relatives to a penance that required them to fast and sleep on the floor. Alexios' daughter Anna Komnena vividly describes how the palace became a place of weeping and lamenting, "Lamentations that, however, were not blameworthy, but worthy of praise, the forerunner of a higher, eternal joy." The emperor also wore sackcloth under his robes for forty days and slept with a stone as a pillow. With this politically intelligent act of public penance, the usurper Alexios had secured his rule and increased his reputation.

Kosmas resigned from his office on May 8, 1081, perhaps because he disapproved of the financial policy of the Comnenen, and retired to the monastery of Kallias . Before that he had held a solemn service for the Hierarch John the Theologian in St. John's Church in the Hebdomon . His bones were buried in the Chora church . His successor was the eunuch Eustratios Garidas .

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• Anna Komnene : Alexias , ed. v. Diether Roderich Reinsch, Berlin 2001² ISBN 3-7701-3492-3

predecessor	Office	successor
John VIII	Patriarch of Constantinople 1075-1081	Eustratios Garidas