Venerable
Venerable Serapion of Kozheozero
† 1611
Also known as: Серапион Кожеозерский, Туртас, Сергий (в крещении)
A Tatar prince of Kazan named Turtas, baptised Sergius, who became the monk Serapion and the first builder of the Theophany monastery on Lake Kozhozero in the Russian North. He died in 1611.
St Serapion was born a Tatar prince named Turtas. After the capture of Kazan in 1552 he was brought to Moscow, lived in the house of the boyar Zakhary Ochin-Pleshcheyev and was baptised Sergius. Around 1559–1560 he went north to the shores of Lake Kozhozero, where the hermit-priest Niphon tonsured him with the name Serapion. After Niphon's death Serapion cared for the growing brotherhood, collecting food in the villages along the Onega river.
In 1585 Tsar Feodor Ioannovich granted the monastery land; the brethren cleared fields and built the churches of the Theophany and St Nicholas, and in 1589 Patriarch Job confirmed Serapion as builder of the monastery. Despite the hostility of some monks, many of them disgraced exiles, he persevered. In 1608 he withdrew into seclusion, handing the monastery to his disciple Abraham, its first abbot. Serapion died on 27 June 1611 (10 July, new style), the date of his feast.