Venerable Pakhomios of Keno Lake

Pakhomios of Keno Lake was a Russian monastic of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries who founded the Savior-Transfiguration Keno Monastery in the far north of Rus'. According to the synaxarion he was a disciple and fellow ascetic of Saint Alexander of Oshevensk, and he is commemorated on January 7.

After the repose of his teacher, Pakhomios left his instructor's monastery and withdrew into solitude near Lake Keno (Kenozero) in the Russian north. The tradition describes him as a strict faster and a man of prayer who spent many years in seclusion. In time local people sought him out for counsel and his blessing, and monks gradually settled near his cell, so that an eremitic settlement grew into a coenobitic community.

A church dedicated to the Transfiguration of the Lord was built and became the center of the Savior-Transfiguration Keno Monastery, an event the tradition places no later than the beginning of the sixteenth century, and possibly at the end of the fifteenth. Pakhomios reposed in 1515 at the monastery he had founded, and the tradition relates that miracles were soon reported at his tomb.