Onouphrios of Koronisia

Venerable Onouphrios of Koronisia was a humble monk of the Monastery of the Nativity of the Mother of God on the island of Koronisia in Arta, who died probably in the seventeenth or eighteenth century, some say about 1780. He is commemorated on 12 June together with Saint Onouphrios the Great of Egypt and locally honoured as the only patron of the island; he has no known canonization.

Little is known of him except what the people of Koronisia, an island of the Metropolis of Nikopolis, have handed down. He was pious and humble, and a monk of the Monastery of the Nativity of the Mother of God. His humility was so great that the other monks, not understanding his holiness, laughed at him. Two miracles changed their view. First, the other monks left him as a joke on a small island, Vouvala, where they were gathering wood, and he, after prayer, threw his cassock on the sea and crossed the water on it, as in a boat, to the monastery. Then, after prayer, he received a beard that reached the ground, although he had been beardless, so as to resemble his patron, Saint Onouphrios of Egypt.

It is not known exactly when he died. Over his grave a small church was built in his honour, a tiny vaulted chapel beside the old church of the Mother of God, with wall paintings from the Ottoman period. His relics are kept there. Near the church is a well that the saint dug in the rock, from which the islanders still draw water. The hymns of the Church praise him for the garment he made a ship and for the ascetic labours by which he sanctified the land of Koronisia.