Niphont of Valaam

Holy Venerable Martyr Niphont of Valaam is one of the thirty-⁠four monks of the Valaam Monastery killed by the Swedes in 1578 for the Orthodox faith.

The Valaam monastery lay near the border between Novgorod and Sweden and was ravaged several times. After the Reformation introduced in Sweden under King Gustav Vasa, in the time of his son John III, a band of soldiers newly turned Lutheran, who were pursuing the Orthodox Karelians, crossed the ice from the mainland to the island and attacked the monastery. On 20 February 1578 eighteen elders and sixteen novices were killed for their steadfastness in the faith. Their names were entered in the memorial book later kept at the Vasilievsky Monastery, and among them is the monk Niphont.

It is told that in the nineteenth century a monk near the hermitage of Abbot Nazarius saw a procession of radiant monks, sprinkled with blood and covered with wounds, singing the funeral prayers, who then vanished into the green thicket. By order of Abbot Damaskin, the Divine Liturgy and a common memorial service were celebrated for them at Valaam every year on 20 February (4 March in the new style).

They were numbered among the saints by the Jubilee Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000. Niphont is commemorated on 5 March, on 3 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Karelia, and on 22 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of Valaam.