The Tradition of the Worship and Iconography of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Hispanic Territory

Abstract

Healing and miracles have always been closely related, and miraculous healing includes the presupposition that an illness is incurable by any earthly means. Namely, in the established pattern of a miraculous account, earthly medicine fails, is not available or is useless. The early irruption of their worship and the miracles attributed to Cosmas and Damian have led some authors to suggest that they occupied a space that used to belong to the mythological twins and sons of Zeus, Castor and Pollux (or Polydeukes in Greek mythology). They have also been associated with the cult of Romulus and Remus or Jupiter Stator in Rome; a temple that, according to tradition, would have been in the Via Sacra of the Forum, close to the basilica built by Pope Felix IV. The development of the worship of the physician saints in Europe brought with it a varied figurative representation, not just of them as individuals, but also showing some of their miraculous cures, as well as telling the story of their lives and martyrdoms. Depictions that very often, as we have already seen, were to be used by religious and professional corporations (brotherhoods and guilds of physicians, surgeons, barbers and apothecaries). In these contexts, the saints of ten appeared with a series of attributes that identified the professional activities of the members, who adopted them as their patron saints. Similarly, these same attributes could also appear in votive or devotional artistic depictions unconnected with these corporations, materialized in paintings and sculptures, and in the miniatures of religious literature, historical works and medical engravings.