Historical Context and Legacy
Niphon's withdrawal to Lake Kozhozero belongs to the broader monastic colonization of the Russian north, in which hermits sought out the remote lakes and forests of the Onega and White Sea regions for solitary ascetic life. His hermitage on the lake peninsula became the seed of the Kozheozersky Monastery.
The fullest surviving account of Niphon comes not from a life of his own but from the OCA synaxarion life of his disciple, Venerable Serapion of Kozhe Lake. There Niphon appears as the elder who received Serapion — originally the Tatar myrza Turtas Gravirovich, captured and brought to Moscow in 1551, baptized as Sergius, and once a member of the household of the boyar Zachariah Plescheev — and gave him the monastic tonsure. Under Serapion the community he began was formally established: a land charter was granted by Tsar Theodore, dated September 30, 1584, and with a metropolitan's blessing the monks cleared the forest and raised two churches, one dedicated to the Holy Theophany and one to Saint Nicholas. Serapion reposed on June 27, 1611, leaving roughly forty monks.
No details of Niphon's death date survive, and his prior monastic background is preserved only in the Russian sources. A note in the Wikipedia article on the Kozheozersky Monastery observes that the only monastery saint recognized there was Nikodim of Khozyuga, which suggests that neither Niphon nor Serapion carries a confirmed formal act of glorification; the OCA calendar nonetheless commemorates them as Venerable. Niphon has no separate feast attested and is commemorated among the Kozheozersk saints. This entry needs clergy and source review.