Nifont of Kozheozero

Venerable Nifont of Kozheozero (died after 1566, before 1585, at Moscow) was a hieromonk, founder of the Theophany Monastery of Kozheozero, in the Arkhangelsk region. He is venerated as a local saint; his commemoration is on the third Sunday after Pentecost, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod.

News of him is very scarce. According to oral tradition recorded in the nineteenth century, he was tonsured in the Syria Dormition Hermitage, founded by monks of the Alexander Oshevensky Monastery. In 1552, seeking stillness and solitude, Hieromonk Nifont came to the Lopsky peninsula, washed by the waters of Lake Kozheozero, in the Onega basin, and set up there a chapel of the Theophany. The main source is the "Tale of the Beginning of the Place of the Holy Monastery of Kozheozero and of the Life of Its Blessed Founders and Wonderful Builders, the Priest-⁠monk Nifont and the Monk Serapion," preserved in two copies of the first half of the eighteenth century, in two redactions. The old redaction, of 1613, does not have his name in the title, but a word written later in the margin says: "before him was Nifont." The tale says that the ascetic lived in complete solitude, by a strict rule, in unceasing prayer, silence and strict fasting, feeding on berries and herbs.

Soon there came to him, from Moscow, a certain Sergius, a former tsarevich of Astrakhan, Turtas Khan Gavirovich, taken prisoner at the capture of Kazan in 1552, who asked him to tonsure him. Nifont received him with joy, tested him carefully, "tonsured him and gave him the name Serapion." They began to live together a hermit's and silent life, and other monks began to come from many places, wishing to live with them; they received them with joy. According to some scholars Sergius had learned of the hermit during his stay at the Oshevensky Monastery, near the Kargopol road. The year in which Serapion came to Kozheozero is given in the second redaction, from the beginning of the eighteenth century, as 1566. Other reckonings put it in 1557 or 1558-1559. After a time Nifont went to Moscow on the monastery's business, died there and was buried in one of the monasteries of Moscow. Serapion († 1611) became abbot. As to how Nifont died, the eighteenth-⁠century editor learned nothing from the "monastery chronicle": "this we do not know for certain." According to Bishop Nikodim Kononov he died between 4 May 1563 and 1564. The oldest manuscripts of the monastery (a Festal Menaion and the "Rules of the Councils of the Holy Fathers," fifteenth century; a Prologue and the "Dioptra of Philip the Hermit," sixteenth century) were probably brought to Kozheozero by him. In the synodikon of 1887 his name stands first among the builders of the monastery.