Pochaev Holy Dormition Lavra

Pochaiv hill, which rises about 70 metres above the surrounding country³, has been since the end of the sixteenth century the site of the Dormition Pochaiv Lavra - a men's house of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the town of Pochaiv in the Ternopil region; the monastery's ensemble dominates the landscape around it⁴.

Church tradition places the arrival of monks here in 1240-1241, when, as the accounts have it, they moved here from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and settled in natural caves, over which they raised a wooden Dormition church⁴. The same tradition carries the appearance of the Mother of God in a pillar of fire and the imprint of her right foot left on the rock, in the hollow of which water gathers⁴; the earliest account of it, the book Nebo Novoie (Lviv, 1665), names no date².

In the first half of the sixteenth century a masonry Dormition church already stood below Pochaiv hill⁴. The monastery was founded by documented act in 1597: the owner of Pochaiv, Princess Hanna Hoiska (d. 1617), granted the house lands and funds at the church of the Dormition which, by her own charter, had stood here "from ancient times"^{1, 2}. In the same year she gave the monks an icon of the Mother of God, later known as the Pochaiv icon, which she had herself received in 1559 from the Greek metropolitan Neophytos; the icon is today in the Dormition cathedral above the royal doors^{1, 2, 4}.

From 1604 to 1651 the house's hegumen was Venerable Iov of Pochaiv, Ivan Zalizo in the world; he reposed on 28 October 1651, was canonised in 1659, and his relics rest in the cave church that bears his name^{2, 4}. In 1618 Kyrylo Trankvilion-Stavrovetsky moved a printing house here from Univ and issued the book Zertsalo Bohoslovia⁴, and in 1649, at the expense of Fedir and Yeva Domashevsky, a masonry church of the Holy Trinity was built - set over the imprint of the foot⁴.

When Andrii Firlei, the foundress's heir, took away the monks' land and their access to water, the brothers dug a well 46 metres deep at the top of the hill^{2, 3}; in 1623 his servants plundered the monastery and carried off the icon^{1, 2}. In July 1675 the house withstood a siege by an Ottoman army^{1, 2}.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the monastery passed to the Uniate church - in 1712, 1713 or no later than 1721, according to different sources^{1, 4}; a printing house worked at it, issuing liturgical books, textbooks and irmologia in both Cyrillic and Latin type^{1, 4}. In 1720-1740, to a design by Pavlo Hizhytsky, two-storey masonry blocks of brothers' cells with a refectory were built, laid out on the principle of a Benedictine cloister - around a rectangular inner court⁴.

From 1759 the building up of the house was taken in hand by Count Mykola Potocki (1707/1708-1782), who is buried in the monastery vault; he brought in the architects Pavlo Hizhytsky and Gottfried Hoffmann⁴. At his expense the Dormition cathedral was raised in 1771-1784: Hoffmann prepared the general design and Petro Poleiovsky carried the work forward^{1, 3, 4}. In place of two ruined churches there rose on the high terrace of the hill a three-aisled domed basilica with a transept and two multi-tiered towers flanking the main facade, with an unusual orientation - the main facade turned south and the altar north; the model was the Benedictine abbey of Melk in Austria^{1, 4}.

In 1831, after the suppression of the Polish uprising, the house was returned to the Orthodox, and in the 1830s the title of lavra was fixed to it - in 1833 or in 1838, according to different sources^{1, 2, 4}; from 1833 to 1841 the see of the bishop of Volhynia, who became the lavra's archimandrite, was here⁴. The grounds were enclosed by a wall of 1830 strengthened with buttresses; in 1825 a classicist bishop's block was built on the slope, its facades carrying different numbers of storeys - two on the north and four on the south - and in 1835-1836 the Holy Gate was raised⁴.

The four-tier belfry 65 metres high (1861-1869, architect Kostiantyn Rastrukhanov) replaced an older small one built in 1771^{1, 3, 4}. The Holy Trinity cathedral (1906-1912) was built to a design by Oleksii Shchusev and Oleksii Rukhliadiev in modernised forms of medieval Novgorod and Pskov architecture; its southern and western portals carry the mosaics "The Saviour Not Made by Hands and the Holy Princes" and "The Mother of God of Pochaiv and the Synaxis of the Volhynian Saints", made to designs by Mykola Rerikh and worked out in detail by Petro Neradovsky^{1, 3, 4}. In the nineteenth century an icon-painting workshop, a church teachers' school and a hospital operated at the lavra, and in 1895-1896 a separate building was raised for the printing house⁴.

In the first post-war decade the house's position was relatively comfortable: it held ten hectares of arable land, repair work was carried on, and in 1954-1956 the cave church of Iov of Pochaiv was restored⁵. At the end of the 1950s the pressure grew: the tax on that same land reached 400 thousand karbovanets, and the decree of 28 November 1958 on ending pilgrimage to "so-called holy places" turned into the persecution of pilgrims - visitors' documents were checked minutely and they were forbidden to lodge in the monastery's buildings⁵. In 1959-1966 a large part of the lavra's structures was confiscated and handed over for a museum of atheism and a psychiatric hospital, monks and pilgrims were persecuted and the brotherhood shrank - but the monastery was not closed^{1, 2, 4}.

In 1991 a theological school was opened at the Lavra, which in 1994 received the status of a seminary^{1, 2}. Since 1997 the Lavra has been a stauropegion of the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church².

Besides the Dormition of the Mother of God and the Day of the Holy Trinity, the house keeps the memory of Venerable Iov of Pochaiv, Venerable Amfilokhii of Pochaiv and Venerable Kuksha of Odesa, and of Venerables Antonii and Feodosii of the Caves⁶.