Tryphon: Name Day and Patron Saint

Saint Tryphon was a young man of Phrygia in Asia Minor who was granted from childhood the power to heal the sick and cast out demons. He saved his village from a plague of locusts by his prayer and became famous across the Empire when he freed the daughter of Emperor Gordian from an evil spirit. He asked nothing of those he helped except faith in Jesus Christ. Under the persecution of Decius he boldly confessed Christ, endured terrible tortures, and received the crown of martyrdom around 250. In Russia he is honored as a heavenly protector of Moscow, where a falconer of Ivan the Terrible built a church to him after the saint helped him find the Tsar’s lost falcon, and icons show him with a falcon on his arm. Orthodox Christians pray to Saint Tryphon for honest work, and Greek vinedressers sprinkle their vines with holy water on his feast.

What the faithful pray for

• good and honest work, to God’s glory and the benefit of one’s neighbors
• deliverance from unemployment
• protection of fields, gardens and vineyards
• deliverance of crops from insects and pests
• help in every need, sorrow and illness
• deliverance from evil spirits
• the finding of what is lost (after the falconer’s miracle)

Protection

• crops from locusts and pests
• vineyards and gardens
• the possessed from demons
• the jobless from want

Miracles

• By the power of his prayer he turned back a plague of locusts devouring the grain of his village. (source)
• He cast out an evil spirit from the daughter of Emperor Gordian, asking only that people believe in Christ. (source)
• When Ivan the Terrible’s falconer Tryphon Patrikeiev lost the Tsar’s falcon on pain of death, Saint Tryphon appeared to him in a dream on a white horse holding the bird, and he found it on a pine; in thanks he built a church to the saint in Moscow. (source)

Read the life of St Tryphon