Onuphrius of Vologda

Venerable Onuphrius of Vologda (also called Onuphrius of Pertsov or Pertsevsky) lived at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century and is a saint of the Russian Church. His commemoration is on 12 June (25 June by the new calendar) and on the third Sunday after Pentecost, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vologda.

Almost no information has survived about his childhood and life in the world, and the other news about him is scanty and scattered. Together with Venerable Auxentius he founded in 1499 a hermitage and a church dedicated to the Holy Trinity, thirty-⁠five versts from Vologda, in the Gryazovets district, settling in a place that was then very remote and wooded. With humility they overcame many needs and privations of every kind and so fulfilled the labours of monastic life. The hermitage was called Persova, and in other charters Pertsova.

The Pertsova hermitage was attached as early as 1588 to the Kornilievo-⁠Komel Monastery. In 1764 it was closed altogether and turned into a parish church, in which, beneath the floor, the relics of the founders rest. In 1999 celebrations were held for the five hundredth anniversary of the founding of the hermitage, and on the day of the venerable ones' commemoration, 12 June 1999, a festal moleben was served by the abbot of the Spaso-⁠Prilutsky Monastery, Hegumen Dionysius (Vozdvizhensky).