14 Facts About Onuphrius

Onuphrius lived as a hermit in the desert of Upper Egypt in the 4th or 5th centuries.

Onuphrius was one of the Desert Fathers who made a great impression on Eastern spirituality in the third and fourth centuries, around the time that Christianity was emerging as the dominant faith of the Roman Empire.

The name Onuphrius is thought to be a Hellenized form of a Coptic name Unnufer, ultimately from the Egyptian wnn-nfr meaning "perfect one", or "he who is continually good", an epithet of the god Osiris.

Onuphrius said that it was his guardian angel who had brought him to this desolate place.

Onuphrius took Paphnutius to his cell, and they spoke until sunset, when bread and water miraculously appeared outside of the hermit's cell.

The years of Onuphrius' youth were passed in a monastery that observed the rule of strict silence; a hind instructed him in Christian rites and liturgy.

The legend of Saint Onuphrius was depicted in Pisa's camposanto, and in Rome the church Sant'Onofrio was built in his honor on the Janiculan Hill in the fifteenth century.

Antony, the archbishop of Novgorod, writing around 1200 AD, stated that Onuphrius' head was conserved in the church of Saint Acindinus, Constantinople.

Saint Onuphrius was venerated in Munich, Basel, and southern Germany, and the Basel humanist Sebastian Brant published a broadside named In Praise of the Divine Onuphrius and Other Desert Hermit Saints.

Onuphrius was depicted in a 1520 painting by Hans Schaufelein.

Images of Saint Onuphrius were conflated with those of the medieval "wild man".

Onuphrius is depicted at Snake Church in the Goreme valley open-air museum in Cappadocia, Turkey.

Onuphrius became the patron saint of weavers due to the fact that he was depicted "dressed only in his own abundant hair, and a loin-cloth of leaves".

Onuphrius's name appears very variously as Onuphrius, Onouphrius, Onofrius and in different languages as Onofre, Onofrei, Onofrio, etc.