Serapion of Kozheozero

Saint Serapion of Kozheozero (born Tursas Ksangarovich, baptized Sergius, died 1611) was the founder and builder of the Theophany Monastery at Kozheozero in the Kargopol district, from 1565 to 1611. He is commemorated on 27 June. The date of his canonization is not known; in 2018 he was entered in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Arkhangelsk Metropolis.

The Tatar who became a monk

In 1552, after the conquest of Kazan by the army of Ivan the Terrible, many Tatar prisoners, among them the young Kazan khan Tursas Ksangarovich, settled in Moscow, in the house of the boyar Zachary Ivanovich Ochin-⁠Pleshcheyev. He received baptism together with others, with the name Sergius. Having come to love the new Orthodox faith, Sergius resolved to give himself to monastic life and soon set out to wander among monasteries, seeking a desert place for quiet. Our record gives his birth in 1600, which does not agree with this history; the Russian source does not give the year of his birth.

Around 1565, after fourteen years of wandering, Sergius found on a wild island of Lake Kozha the hermit Niphon and stayed with him. Together with him and the monk Abraham he founded the hermitage of Kozheozero, where he lived about eighteen years, feeding on herbs and berries, and received monastic tonsure with the name Serapion.

The monastery

When a sufficient number of monks had gathered, Niphon went to Moscow to ask for land for the monastery, but died there without finishing what he had planned. Learning of his companion's death, Serapion went himself to the tsar's court. At his petition, on 30 September 1585 the monastery was granted a royal charter by which it received lands "four versts on every side". He built two churches, of the Theophany and of the Annunciation, and was appointed first builder of the monastery, and Patriarch Job gave him consecrated antimensia. When people fallen from favour began to be sent to the monastery, Serapion wrote to the tsar in 1595 that "the elders themselves have nothing to eat", and Tsar Feodor Ivanovich freed the monastery from many taxes and duties.

Toward the end of his life he endured much oppression and insult from the brothers. In 1608 an abbacy was established, but Serapion avoided that office, and his disciple and companion Abraham was made abbot. He reposed in 1611, leaving behind up to forty monks in his cenobitic monastery.

Veneration

In 1613 the monk Bogolep, tonsured at Kozheozero, wrote the tale of the founding of the monastery and of Saint Serapion and composed his Life. There are reports of miraculous appearances of the saint after his death. The date of canonization is not known. The surviving Life is poor in historical data and rarely found in manuscripts; N. Barsukov pointed out only two copies, one from the library of the Anthony of Siya monastery and one from that of Solovki, the first probably lost, but it was from this one that the text was printed in the Arkhangelsk Paterikon. In 2008 an Orthodox missionary society bearing his name was founded, and in 2018 he was entered in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Arkhangelsk Metropolis.