COSENZA, a city of Italy, the seat of an arch bishopric, and the capital of the province of Calabria Citra, is situated in a deep glen at the junction of the Busento with the Crati, twelve miles east of the Mediter ranean. It is intersected by the Busento, which is there crossed by two bridges. The streets are generally narrow and crooked, and the lower part of the town is said to be unhealthy. The tribunale, or palace of justice, one of the finest edifices in the kingdom, is on the eastern bank ; and an old castle, now used as barracks, crowns the summit of an eminence on the opposite side of the river. It has also a diocesan seminary, a royal college, a theatre, a foundling hospital, and academies of science and literature, manu factures earthenware and cutlery, and trades in silk, rice, wine, fruits, and flax. Population of the commune, 15,960; of the city, 12,613.
Cosenza is a place of great antiquity, having under the name of Consentia been the chief city of the Bruttii. It was possibly captured by Alexander of Epirus, and certainly became the place of his sepulture. After various vicissitudes during the Carthaginian war, it was finally reduced by the Romans about 204 B.C. ; and in the reign of Augustus it received a Roman colony. Alaric, king of the Goths, died while besieging the city in 410 A.D., and was buried in the bed of the Busento, which was turned from its course for his interment. During the Middle Ages the city retained its impor tance, and in the llth century it was raised to the rank of an arch bishopric. In 1461 it was taken by Roberto Orsini, and suffered severely ; and in the beginning of the present century, it was the seat of the French commission which made itself so notorious by its sanguinary proceedings in Calabria. Among its celebrities may be mentioned the grammarian Parrhasius and the philosopher Telesio.
COSIN, John (1594-1672), bishop of Durham, was born at Norwich, November 30, 1594. From the grammar school of his native city he passed, at the age of sixteen, to Cains College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. After a few years he took holy orders and was appointed domestic chaplain to the bishop of Durham. At the close of 1624 he was made a prebendary of Durham, and in the following year archdeacon of the East Riding of Yorkshire. Before this time he had married, and in 1628 he took his degree of D.D. He first became known as an author in 1627, when he published his Collection of Private Devotions, a manual stated to have been prepared by command of the king, Charles L, for the use of the maids of honour to the queen. This book, in connection with his insistence on points of ritual in his cathedral church and his friendship with Bishop Laud, exposed him to the suspicion and hostility of the Puritans ; and the book was rudely handled by Prynne and Burton (who both, nine years later, were set in the pillory and mutilated for their free speeches on other matters). In the year following this publication Cosin took part in the prosecution of Prebendary Smart for a sermon against Papistical bishops and priests and practices; and the prebendary was deprived. In 1634 Cosin was appointed master of Peterhouse, Cambridge; and in 1640 he became vice-chancellor of the university. In October of this year he was promoted to the deanery of Peterborough. A few days before his installation the Long Parliament had met ; and among the complainants who hastened to appeal to it for redress was the ex-prebendary, Smart. His petition against the new dean was considered ; and early in 1641 Dr Cosin was sequestered from his benefices. Articles of impeachment were, two months later, presented against him, but he was dismissed on bail, and was not again called for. He took part, in 1642, in sending the university plate to the king, and was for this offence deprived of the mastership of Peterhouse. He thereupon withdrew to France, preached at Paris, served as chaplain to some members of the household of the exiled royal family, and at the Restoration he returned to England. He was rein stated in the mastership, restored to all his church benefices, and in a few months raised to the see of Durham (December 1660). This dignity he enjoyed for about eleven years ; and during this time he applied a large share of his revenues to the promotion of the interests of the church, of schools, and of charitable institutions. He died in London, January 15, 1672.
Among his writings are a Historia Transubstantiationis Papalis, Notes and Collections on the Book of Common Prayer, and a Scholas- tical History of the Canon of Holy Scripture. A collected edition of his works, forming 5 vols. of the Oxford Library of Anglo- Catholic Theology, was published between 1843 and 1855.
COSMAS, surnamed from his maritime experiences Indicopleustes, a writer of the 6th century. We know nothing of his history except what can be gathered from one of his works which has come down to us, a book which is in itself a mere bank of mud, but is remarkable on account of certain geographical fossils of considerable interest which are found imbedded in it. The first part of the work, embracing books i.-v., can be shown to have been written soon after 535 ; to these seven more books appear to have been gradually added by the author. He was a monk when he wrote, but in earlier days apparently had been a merchant, and in that capacity had sailed on the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, visiting Abyssinia and Socotra (AWio-n-La and rj vi^ros -f] KaXov/xevT; AicorKoptSous), and apparently also the Persian Gulf, Western India, and Ceylon. The book, which was written at Alexandria, is called by the writer Xpiortavi/of ro7roy/oa<^ta TrepteKTi/o) 7rarro9 TOV Kooyxou, A Christian Topography Embracing the Whole World, and the great object of it is to denounce the false and heathen doctrine of the rotundity of the earth, and to show that the tabernacle in the wilderness is the pattern or model of the universe. Thus the earth is a rectangular plane twice as long as it is broad. The heavens come down to the earth on all four sides like the walls of a room. From the north wall to the south wall, at an un defined level, a semi-circular waggon vault is turned, and at the same level stretches the " firmament " (o-repeai/xa) like a flat ceiling. All below the firmament is this world ; the story above is heaven, or the world to come. In fact, one of the huge receptacles in which female travellers of our own day carry their dresses forms a perfect model of the universe of Cosmas. Midway in the rectangular surface below lies the inhabited earth, encompassed by Ocean. Be yond Ocean, bordering the edge, is the unvisited transoceanic land on which, in the far east, lies Terrestrial Paradise. Here, too, on a barren and thorny soil, without the walls of Paradise, dwelt man from the fall to the deluge. The ark floated the survivors across the great ocean belt to this better land which w r e inhabit. The earth rises gradually from south to north and w r est, culminating in a great conical moun tain behind which the sun sets. Repeatedly the writer overflows with indignation against those who reject these views of his, " not built on his own opinions and conjec tures, but drawn from Holy Scripture, and from the mouth of that divine man and great master, Patricius."[1] The wretched people who chop logic, and hold that the earth and heaven are spherical, are mere blasphemers, given up for their sins to the belief of such impudent nonsense as the doctrine of Antipodes, and so forth. Altogether the book is a kind of caricature type of that process of loading Christian truth with a dead weight of false science which has had so many followers and done so much mischief. Similar cosmography was taught by Diodorus of Tarsus, and other Nestorian doctors.
- ↑ This Patricius is stated by Cosmas to have been afterwards Catholicos of Persia. This and other circumstances identify Patricius with Mar Abas, who ruled the Nestorian Chinch from 536 to 552 (see Assemani, Bill. Orient, torn. ii. and iii.).
