Our Venerable Fathers Onouphrios and Auxentios of Vologda
Life
Onouphrios and Auxentios were two monastic fathers of the Russian north, remembered together for founding a forest hermitage near Vologda at the turn of the sixteenth century. In 1499 they settled in a wholly uninhabited place in the Gryazovets district, recorded in the synaxarion as some thirty-five versts from Vologda, and there established a hermitage with a church dedicated to the Holy Trinity, known as the Pertsov (or Pertsev) hermitage.
Little of their personal history survives. The sources relate that the two ascetics struggled in that harsh and trackless forest, enduring hardship until their repose, the date of which is not preserved. They were nonetheless held to be holy by later generations and came to be numbered among the ancient saints of the Russian land, commemorated together on June 12.
Timeline 3 moments
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1499Foundation of the Pertsov hermitageThe two fathers settled in a deserted place in the Gryazovets district near Vologda and founded a hermitage with a church of the Holy Trinity.
Date unknownReposeThe fathers reposed after a life of ascetic struggle in the forest; the date is not recorded.
1588Hermitage assigned to Cornelius of Komel's monasteryThe Pertsov hermitage was attached to the monastery founded by Venerable Cornelius of Komel; that house was later abolished in 1764.
Contributions & Legacy
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Historical Background
The Pertsov hermitage belonged to the broad monastic colonization of the northern Russian forests in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the era of the so-called Northern Thebaid, when ascetics withdrew into the wilderness of the Vologda region to found small communities. Onouphrios and Auxentios are placed within this movement, their foundation of 1499 being a characteristic example of two hermits clearing a remote site and raising a church.
In 1588 the hermitage was assigned to the monastery founded by Venerable Cornelius of Komel, and that monastery was later abolished in 1764 amid the reorganization of Russian monastic houses. The site of the Pertsov hermitage was in time given to the women's monastery of Vologda, where a skete for nuns was established.
Relics & Shrines
According to the synaxarion, the relics of Onouphrios and Auxentios were buried in a concealed place within the Holy Trinity Church they had founded. That church afterward became a parish church, the hermitage itself having been suppressed.
