Exaltation of Cross Monastery

The Exaltation of the Cross Monastery for men stands in the town of Starokostiantyniv in the Khmelnytskyi region¹.

The place is ancient. It is supposed that the Old Rus town of Kobud stood here, named in the Hypatian Chronicle under the year 1241 in an account of princely strife: on the grounds of the sixteenth-century stone castle here traces of an Old Rus fortified settlement have been found, and on the monastery's own land an archaeological layer of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries³. Later there was here the "selyshche" of Kolyshchyntsi, documented no later than 1505³. In 1560-1561 Kolyshchyntsi was bought by prince Vasyl-Kostiantyn Ostrozkyi, who soon built a town on its site and named it Kostiantyniv, after his father Kostiantyn Ivanovych Ostrozkyi³. About 1600 Vasyl-Kostiantyn founded a New Kostiantyniv in the Vinnytsia country, and so by the middle of the seventeenth century the former Kostiantyniv came to be called Starokostiantyniv³.

In the 1560s the prince raised a stone castle in the town². Besides it, a free-standing stone defensive tower has survived at Starokostiantyniv: reaching a height of 70 metres, it is the tallest building in the town, and it is dated either to the time the castle was built or to the first half of the sixteenth century². On the north the stone church of the Exaltation of the Cross adjoins the tower, and its appearance is characteristic of Catholic churches².

The building of the church is placed in the second half of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century². By one account, in 1612 prince Janusz Ostrozkyi, the son of Vasyl-Kostiantyn, turned the Orthodox church of the Exaltation of the Cross then active at Starokostiantyniv into a Catholic church and founded a Dominican monastery at it². The house itself draws the consequence: if the first date of the stone building is right, it was Orthodox from the beginning and may later have been rebuilt; if the second is the true one, the building was raised as a Catholic church on the site of an earlier Orthodox one².

In 1832 the Dominican monastery was abolished and its buildings were handed to the Orthodox². In the spring of 1837 services were resumed in the church, but they were held rarely². In the former Catholic church there was kept a carved Crucifix held in great veneration; the historian Mykola Teodorovych supposed that it had been made in the sixteenth century². In the summer of 1837 this holy thing was carried from the church of the Exaltation of the Cross to the Dormition church, which gained the standing of the town's cathedral, and in 1838 the church of the Exaltation of the Cross was closed because of damp².

The occasion for the church's renewal, as the house relates it, was an event of 1852 bound up with that same Crucifix: a father, a priest of the Dormition cathedral, vowed to restore the church of the Exaltation of the Cross and to return the holy thing to its former place². In the summer he was appointed acting rector of the Dormition church and so gained the further authority to carry out his purpose, and in September the works of renewal began at the church of the Exaltation of the Cross². Not only the Orthodox took part in them with labour and money: local Catholics gave donations, and soldiers of the Poltava infantry regiment stationed in the town were engaged in the repairs².

The renewed church was consecrated exactly a year after the works began - on 13 September 1853². On the morning of that day, before the Divine Liturgy, a procession went from the Dormition church to the church of the Exaltation of the Cross with the Crucifix². At the same time the standing of cathedral passed from the Dormition church to the church of the Exaltation of the Cross². Soon a chapel of the Resurrection of Christ was arranged in the lower storey of the tower².

In 1911-1914 the hieromartyr Arkadii Ostalskyi served among the cathedral's clergy - then a priest, later bishop of Lubny and vicar of the Poltava eparchy².

Under Soviet rule the cathedral was closed². In 1997-2000 the process of returning the shrine to the faithful took place². As of 2003 monastics were already living at the church².

On 26 July 2004 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, presided over by His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and All Ukraine, heard the report of archbishop Antonii of Khmelnytskyi and Shepetivka on the opening of the Exaltation of the Cross Monastery for men in the town of Starokostiantyniv, Khmelnytskyi region, and blessed that opening¹.

Since then great works have been carried out in the house to put its living and working quarters in order, a house church has been opened, and in 2009-2010 a separate church of St Seraphim of Sarov was built². On 23 December 2023, the day of the memory of St Ioasaph of Belgorod, archbishop Viktor of Khmelnytskyi and Starokostiantyniv performed the great consecration of that church and served the Divine Liturgy in it⁵; at the end of the service he congratulated those present on the consecration of the altar and awarded the benefactors the eparchial order of the Protection of the Mother of God⁵. In the walls of the ancient church of the Exaltation of the Cross, which needs major repair and restoration, a service is held at least once a year².

The patronal feasts of the house are the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, 14 (27) September, and the memory of St Seraphim of Sarov, 2 (15) January and 19 July (1 August)⁴.