Nicetas of Kozheozero

Venerable Nicetas of Kozheozero, called Nikodim in monastic life, was a hermit in the Kargopol region and reposed on 3 July 1639. He was born near Rostov, in the village of Ivankovo, to farming parents, and in the world was named Nicetas.

After his parents died he moved to Yaroslavl, where he learned blacksmithing, then to Moscow. There he left his trade and asked to become a monk. Archimandrite Pafnuty of the Chudov Monastery received him and named him Nikodim. For eleven years he lived in complete obedience at Chudov, and when Pafnuty was raised to be Metropolitan of Krutitsy, he asked him to stay at his side. Nikodim, however, longed for the quiet of the wilderness and, with the metropolitan's blessing, set out north, carrying the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God.

He reached the Kozheozero Monastery, on Lobsky Island in Lake Kozha, where he set the icon above the altar, and then withdrew deeper, to the Khoz-⁠Yuga river, where he made himself a lonely hut among the marshes. For this he was called the hermit of Khoz-⁠Yuga. The local people came to him for counsel, and Patriarch Joasaph of Moscow sent him the gift of a costly fur coat, which the saint sent back to the monastery, since he covered himself only with rags. He died in great old age, after fifty years of monastic life, thirty-⁠seven of them continuously in the wilderness, and was buried beside the church of the Theophany, on its south side. His disciple Jacob wrote his life and miracles. In the Prologue printed in Moscow in 1662, in the time of Patriarch Nikon, he was counted among the saints, with commemoration on 3 July, old style.