Early Church (3rd century)
Feast: September 26
The other half of the 'silverless' twins — a doctor who believed every healing was God's to give away.
Damian is never mentioned without his brother Cosmas, and that is part of the point. They were twins who worked together, prayed together, died together. In the Syrian countryside of the third century, they ran what amounted to a free clinic. People called them the Anargyroi — the ones who take no silver. One legend says Damian once accepted three eggs from a grateful patient and Cosmas was so upset he asked to be buried separately. They were buried together anyway. When the Diocletian persecution arrived, the governor tried multiple methods of execution — fire, water, stones, arrows — and the brothers reportedly survived them all until a simple sword ended it. The stories are exaggerated, but the exaggeration serves a purpose: people wanted to say that killing these two was harder than it should have been. Pharmacists adopted Damian in particular, likely because the twins mixed their own medicines. In Florence, the Medici family — whose name literally means 'doctors' — made Cosmas and Damian their patrons and commissioned painting after painting of the two brothers. Damian's life says that serving people side by side with someone you love is itself a kind of prayer.