ONOFRIO, saint. - Hermit of the Egyptian Thebaid, d. toward the end of the 4th century or at the beginning of the 5th (the date 375 is unfounded).
His feast in the Latin Church is celebrated on 12 June and in the Eastern Church on 10 June. The only source that can be drawn upon is the biography left to us by Pafnuzio, trans-
mitted in the Synaxaria. The circumstances accompanying the life of O. are for the most part legendary. Having entered the monastery of Ermopoli and heard the life of the prophet Elijah and of St. John the Baptist, he is said to have become enthusiastic for the eremitical life and, having withdrawn into the desert, to have lived there for 60 years without seeing the face of a man, except for Pafnuzio, who attended him at his death. His cult was brought to Italy (S. O. on the Gianicolo, in Rome), France, Germany, and Spain at the time of the Crusades. Art, taking its inspiration from the description left to us by Pafnuzio, represents him both in the act of receiving Holy Communion from the hand of an angel and in horrible form, shaggy-haired, clothed in wild herbs, etc.