COSMA il MELODE. — The date and place of C.’s birth are unknown; it is known only that he was the brother of Giovanni Damasceno and that, in his father’s house, he had as his teacher a monk named C., who had been enslaved by the Saracens and deported from Calabria to Damascus.
Tradition holds that both Cosma di Calabria and C. il Melode were authors of ecclesiastical hymns. C. the cantor became a monk in the laura of S. Saba near Jerusalem and, in 743, bishop of Mayuma, the port of the city of Gaza (cf. the Arabic Life of Giovanni Damasceno, published by G. Graf in Katholik of 1913, p. 183). Like Giovanni, C. too wrote Gonones, following the model of Andrea di Creta, for the great feasts; each consisted of nine odes, and they were greatly admired by Byzantine writers (Teodoro Prodromo, in the Suda, and others). The 14 canons were published by Christ-Paranikas
in their collection: Anthologia graeca carminum christianorum, Leipzig 1871, pp. 161–204. The commentary by Teodoro Prodromo was (in part) published by H. M. Stevenson, senior, Theodor. Prodromi Commentaria in Carmina sacra melodorum Cosmae Hierosolymitani et Ioannis Damaszeni, Rome 1885. Mai published under C.’s name also an extensive Collectio et interpretatio historiarum quorum meminit Divus Gregorius in carminibus suis (cf. Spicilegium Romanum, II, 1839, II, pp. 1–373, or PG, 38, 339–680). The source of this compilation was a commentary on four orations of
Gregorio di Nazianzo by the monk Nonno.