Saint Onufry

In popular culture a large group of beings with beneficial properties were the saints, who were above all the patrons of days, sometimes of seasons, and even of individual years. On a daily basis, people did not use dates, but the names of church holidays, and this is how saints were associated with seasons of the year ("Winter Begins with St Martin"), atmospheric phenomena ("On St Casimir the day and the night covenant"), farm work ("St John mows the grass"), the beginning of religious seasons ("St Catherine begins Advent"), and social phenomena ("On St Idzi come matchmaking to me"). The proverb "On St Onufry open your trunks" is one of many forgotten adages, the meaning of which is difficult to decipher today. Perhaps it is meant to remind us that on warm June days we should air out our winter wardrobe stored in trunks and chests? As a reference to chests, the saint is probably the patron saint of maidens, for whom dowries were prepared in chests. Weavers, carriage drivers, travellers and pilgrims also turned to him with prayer requests.

Saint Onufry lived in the 4th century. According to the tradition, he was the son of a Persian or Egyptian ruler, but he gave up the court life and as a young man settled in a monastery in Hermopolis. He moved to the desert near Thebaida, where he spent sixty years in prayer and penance. In iconography, he is depicted as a standing old man with long hair and beard covering his naked body. The nakedness here is a symbol of asceticism, the abandonment of all earthly riches and affairs. He is often accompanied by an angel with a chalice and the host. According to legend, apart from desert vegetation, the saint fed only on bread and water. A cave with a date tree next to it and two lions digging his tomb are often shown in the background. This image dominates the paintings and icons. The sculptures usually show the saint in a kneeling position, praying. In the compact figures the attention is drawn to the part of hair and beard covering the figure with decorative carving.

The cult of St Onufry spread especially in the churches of the East. In Poland, in the Lublin region, in Jabłeczna on the River Bug, right on the border with Belarus, there is a monastery with a relic of the saint. It is one of the main Polish centres of Orthodoxy. The indulgenced feast of the patron saint, on 24-25 June, gathers thousands of believers in the picturesquely situated sanctuary.