A saint's day
St Tryphon the Martyr
St Tryphon, a young man of Phrygia who tended geese as a boy, was granted from childhood the power to heal the sick and cast out demons. He turned back a plague of locusts from his village by prayer, cast an evil spirit out of the daughter of Emperor Gordian, and asked nothing of those he helped except faith in Christ. Under the persecution of Decius he confessed Christ boldly and received the crown of martyrdom around 250.
The dates
- Kept on
- 1 February (14 February on the Old Calendar)
- Next, New Calendar
- Next, Old Calendar
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
Greek and Bulgarian vinedressers sprinkle their vines with holy water on his feast, and farmers pray to him for their fields and gardens and against pests.
Russian piety prays to him above all for good and honest work, and those looking for a job ask for a moleben to him.
In Moscow a falconer of Ivan the Terrible built a church to him after the saint appeared in a dream holding the lost falcon, and icons show him with a falcon on his arm.
Name days
These names keep their name day on this feast: