St. Nicholas's Monastery

St. Nicholas's Monastery stands in the town of Izmayil in the Odesa region, on the grounds of the former Izmayil fortress above the Danube^{1, 2}. The house lives at two ancient fortress churches, St. Nicholas's and the Dormition, around which two separate monasteries took shape in the Ottoman period^{1, 3}.

Several incompatible accounts of this shrine's beginning have survived. The first mentions of a men's monastery and of St. Nicholas's church are placed in 1077, and during a repair of the church in 1834 a walled-up stone slab bearing a Greek inscription that confirmed the date of the church's building was found in one of its walls¹.

A manuscript from the collection of the Holy Synod, cited by the same publication, refers the foundation of St. Nicholas's church to the twelfth century, although almost nothing has survived about its life in the eleventh to fourteenth centuries¹. The Odesa eparchy, in its own account of the house, writes instead that the exact date of the monastery's foundation is unknown and that the church the monks set about restoring was built at the end of the fourteenth century².

The fortress of Izmayil itself arose later, in the autumn of 1590, near the Kiliya crossing on the site of the Slavic settlement of Smil¹. In 1639 the metropolitan's residence was moved to Izmayil, from which time it took the name of the Proilav and Izmayil metropolia, and the metropolitan's seat became the courtyard of the Izmayil St. Nicholas monastery¹.

The publication "Anuarul Episcopiei Cetatii Albe-Izmail 1923-1936" carries a charter of Patriarch Ioannikios of Constantinople of 2 June 1641, by which the church of St. Nicholas in the Izmayil fortress was declared a stauropegion and handed over to the monks of the Karakallou monastery on Mount Athos¹. The eparchy likewise writes that St. Nicholas's monastery belonged to the Athonite Karakallou monastery and was founded by monks of the Holy Mountain².

The charter records that the church stood in an extremely neglected state and needed a thorough rebuilding, and that the Athonite fathers undertook to rebuild it at their own expense, on condition that once restored the house would answer to the patriarch alone¹. As a sign of that subjection the monastery was to send the patriarch each year an offering of 40 litres of caviar, about 16 kilograms, and to commemorate the patriarch's name alone at its services¹.

A copy of the charter was kept at the monastery and the original at the Karakallou monastery on Athos¹. The document related that Princess Roxanda, daughter of Petru Rares and wife of the Moldavian prince Ioan Alexandru Lapusneanu, gave the Athonite monks 36,000 lei, with which they bought St. Nicholas's monastery back from the Ottoman official Mustafa Chelebi Pasha^{1, 2}.

In 1643 Patriarch Parthenios I of Jerusalem, together with his synod, granted the neighbouring church of the Dormition of the Mother of God the same stauropegial status as that held by the Monastery of the Holy Sepulchre¹. From then on both shrines answered directly to their patriarchs, bypassing the local church authority, and kept that status for more than two centuries¹.

The document "On the metropolia" of 1644 contains an article on the church of St. Nicholas in the Izmayil fortress which speaks of rebuilding the church on the site of a ruined shrine^{1, 2}. Ottoman law forbade Christian churches to rise above other buildings, so the ancient church was sunk into the ground and steps led down into it; in that form it stood until 1852^{1, 2}.

The neighbouring Dormition monastery was built by the Moldavian voivode Stefan III the Great and later renewed by Constantin Brancoveanu, formerly prince of Wallachia^{1, 2}. In 1769 the traveller Kleiman, describing the Izmayil fortress, noted that it was weakly fortified but that two monasteries stood within it, the Dormition and St. Nicholas's².

On 12 December 1771 Iakov, hegumen of the Dormition monastery, and his brethren received an open letter numbered 1793 which gave the house the right to dispose of all the property in the fortress that had long belonged to it^{1, 2}. Under the peace of Kucuk Kaynarca of 1774 the fortress returned to the Ottoman empire^{1, 2}. The Dormition church was badly damaged during the storming of the Izmayil fortress on 11 December 1790, and as late as 1847 three gravestones of officers who fell in the assault lay beside its side entrance^{1, 2}.

After the annexation of Bessarabia in 1812 a single hieromonk remained at the monastery, and because of his age the services were performed by secular priests¹. The house owned 30 wooden shops in the town, which brought 1,663 lei of income a year, but with the founding of Tuchkov the inhabitants of the fortress moved to the new town and the monastery lost its income^{1, 2}. In 1820 the Holy Synod refused to move the house into the town, and it remained within the fortress^{1, 2}.

The house's particular standing was confirmed by a case of 1833: on the death of hieromonk Patricius, superior of the Dormition monastery, Archbishop Dimitri of Chisinau replied that the eparchial authority had no right to dispose of that property, since the monastery and its reposed superior belonged to the Holy Sepulchre¹. The inventory drawn up on that occasion listed 22 icons and 46 liturgical books, more than 20 of them in Greek, as well as three bells¹.

In 1841 Emperor Nicholas I came to Izmayil and approved the design for rebuilding the old St. Nicholas's church¹. The new building was raised in brick in the Byzantine manner, in three parts in plan, with a semicircular apse and a dome on an octagonal drum, and its inner walls were decorated with frescoes^{1, 2}. A local-heritage catalogue places the building of this church on the grounds of the fortress in 1852⁶.

For the building of the new Dormition church Patriarch Athanasius of Jerusalem sent 8,000 roubles; the church was raised and consecrated in 1841 on the foundations of an older church of the Mother of God^{1, 2, 6}. Rectangular in plan, with a semicircular apse, a single dome and four internal piers, it had lancet window and door openings in stone surrounds, features characteristic of Armenian-Gregorian churches^{1, 2}. By the descriptions of that time, the church could hold no more than 200 people^{1, 2}.

In 1856, when the region passed under Moldavian administration, both monasteries were closed and their churches turned into parish churches^{1, 3}. After the return of southern Bessarabia in 1878 the houses were restored under the common name of the Fortress Monastery; at the same time two wings of cells, a superior's house with the senior brethren and a refectory were built for the brotherhood^{1, 2}.

Hieromonk Feofan was appointed superior, and according to the local historian Pavlo Kolomoitsev he found the monastery in complete desolation and set about rebuilding it^{1, 2}. The monks laid out an orchard, an irrigated kitchen garden by the Danube and an apiary, sowed the free plots with grain crops and opened a bookshop and an icon-painting shop¹. Behind the monastery house stood a greenhouse where lemons were grown, and almonds and hazelnuts grew in the gardens^{1, 2}.

At the end of the nineteenth century the stone cells that stand to the west of the church appeared; at the same time the monastery and the church passed under the Holy Synod^{1, 2}. In 1912 St. Nicholas's church, the house's principal church, was thoroughly repaired and its frescoes restored².

In 1918 Izmayil passed under Romanian administration, and the church institutions here were placed under the Romanian Orthodox Church¹. A medical post, a primary school and the eparchial administration with a winter church and a baptistery operated at the monastery, and the eparchial library numbered 1,703 volumes, among them rare books in Romanian, French and Russian².

In 1924 an eparchial museum began working here, and in 1935 a shelter for orphaned children of Izmayil and the Izmayil district was opened at the house². In documents of 1936 the monastery is listed as included in the tourist route through the town of Izmayil².

In 1946 the house was closed³. The churches were used as storerooms; in the 1960s the building of St. Nicholas's church was handed to the film-distribution office and rebuilt inside, destroying most of the painting, while the Dormition church lost its belfry and its vaults². At the same time, in 1947, the Dormition church was surveyed by the architectural expedition of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR and entered on the list of architectural monuments of republican significance, and by a decision of the town executive committee of 13 February 1957 protection zones were established around the Dormition, St. Nicholas's and Exaltation of the Cross churches².

On 25 April 1995, by a decision of the Odesa regional council, both churches were transferred to Orthodox parishes^{2, 3}. By decree number 3 of the ruling bishop of the Odesa eparchy of 25 September 2002 the parishes of St. Nicholas's and the Dormition churches were converted into St. Nicholas's Monastery of the Odesa eparchy²; the house's own account places its restoration at these churches in 2003³.

On 27 March 2002 a six-metre worship cross, made and consecrated a year earlier on the Solovetsky Islands, was set up beside St. Nicholas's church^{3, 4}. Among the house's holy things is the icon of the Mother of God the Deliverer⁴. Since 2005 a monastery skete of the Holy Archangel Michael has been arranged⁵, and in 2008 the buildings of the film-distribution office, put up on the monastery's grounds in the 1970s, were handed over to the monastery³.