Chygyryn Holy Trinity Convent

Several irreconcilable accounts survive of how the Holy Trinity convent in Chyhyryn began, and the monastery's own historical essay sets them side by side without reconciling them⁴. It records that in 1925 a slab was found under the altar of the Church of the Holy Trinity bearing an inscription about the founding of the church in 1542 by Dmytro Vyshnevetsky, one of the early leaders of Ukrainian Cossackdom, and the essay itself presents this not as an established fact but as something mentioned in descriptions of the house^{4, 7}.

Beside it stands the old work "История Российской иерархии" (1807-1815), which under the year 1627 names hegumen Martyrii as superior of the Chyhyryn house⁴. A further line of evidence leads to Ivan Vyhovsky, army scribe under Bohdan Khmelnytsky and later hetman: a letter of his is known reporting that in 1653 the Church of the Holy Trinity stood in the monastery, built by Vyhovsky himself^{4, 7}.

In 1656 the house was visited by Patriarch Macarius of Antioch, and his son and secretary, archdeacon Paul of Aleppo, wrote in his travel notes that the founder of the monastery is the scribe Vyhovsky and that a church of St John the Theologian stands here^{4, 7}. The press service of the Cherkasy Diocese, for its part, gives 1542 simply as the date of the first mentions of the monastery, and adds that, on the information available to it, the site of the founding was indicated by a manifested Hodegetria icon of the Mother of God¹⁰.

The house was a men's monastery at first^{4, 7}. From 1663 it became the residence of Metropolitan Joseph (Neliubovych-Tukalsky) of Kyiv, who after his death in 1675 was buried in it; in 1678 the hierarch's body was moved to the Mhar Monastery^{4, 7}.

After the devastations of 1678 and 1711 the monastery was revived in 1730, and in 1735 it was turned into a convent^{4, 7}.

In 1759-1767 a new wooden Church of the Holy Trinity was raised here; in 1847-1852 it was renewed and given five domes, with side altars in honour of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God and of All Saints, and in 1882-1883 it was joined through the narthex to the bell tower^{4, 7}. In 1776 a wooden refectory Church of the Transfiguration appeared, repaired in 1835, 1859-1860 and 1907⁴. In the nineteenth century an almshouse was opened at the house, and in 1874 a girls' school^{4, 7}.

From 1920 the house was headed by the venerable martyr Rafaila (Tertatska)^{5, 7}. Foreseeing the Soviet authorities' campaign against the Church, she herself proposed placing an orphanage in the monastery, as preferable to the placing of other secular institutions there, and she tried to preserve the house and protect its sisters^{4, 7}.

But in 1923 the monastery was closed, and part of the sisters, led by Rafaila, settled in a separate house in Chyhyryn^{4, 7}. In 1926 militant atheists broke in there, seized the hegumenia and took her to a slaughterhouse, where she was tortured; she departed to God in the arms of a sister^{4, 7}. According to the Chyhyryn narrative retold by the diocesan press service, her name in the world was Raisa Tertatska, she was born in 1877 into a pious noble family, and the nuns buried her in the town's Kazan cemetery¹¹.

Beside the house lived blessed Varfolomii (Bondarenko), a fool for Christ: he was born in 1870 not far from the monastery, from his youth led a secluded life of prayer, and was venerated by the hegumenia and the sisters⁷. It was he who, half an hour before they came to take hegumenia Rafaila away to be tortured, warned her of the sufferings that would kill her, but she refused to leave the sisters⁷. In the years that followed Varfolomii was persecuted by the Soviet authorities and repeatedly sent to a psychiatric hospital; he departed peacefully to the Lord in 1931, and the people of Chyhyryn venerated his burial place through all those years⁷.

A children's colony was set up on the monastery's grounds, and in 1929 an agricultural commune replaced it⁴; on the diocesan press service's account, the commune later grew into a collective farm, whose workers put a butter-making shop in the church¹⁰.

In 1932 the churches of the house were demolished, and in 1939 an agricultural technical school was opened on the site of the commune^{4, 7}. In 1941-1948 part of the monastery's premises was again occupied by a women's monastic community^{4, 7}. In 1973 the technical school changed address, and the remaining buildings became private flats^{4, 7}.

In 2003 the relics of the venerable martyr Rafaila were found and moved to the Kazan Cathedral of Chyhyryn^{4, 6}. On 22 November 2006 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having heard the report of Archbishop Sophronii of Cherkasy and Kaniv, blessed by journal no. 57 the opening of the Holy Trinity Convent in Chyhyryn of the Cherkasy Diocese¹; the house's own essay likewise dates the beginning of its revival to 2006⁴. In 2008 the relics of Rafaila were returned to the monastery^{4, 6}.

On 9 July 2009 the Holy Synod, having considered the life, labours and ascetic feats of hegumenia Rafaila (Tertatska), blessed her local glorification and veneration, approved her iconographic image and the drafts of a troparion and a kontakion, and resolved that her remains be regarded as holy relics². On 16 September 2014 the Synod likewise blessed the local glorification and veneration of Varfolomii Bondarenko within the Cherkasy Diocese, and resolved that the remains of blessed Varfolomii of Chyhyryn be regarded as holy relics³.

The glorification itself took place in the house: on 7 December 2014 the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy of Kyiv and All Ukraine, celebrated the Divine Liturgy here, during which blessed Varfolomii was glorified among the locally venerated saints of the Cherkasy Diocese^{7, 8}.

On 27 April 2021 Archbishop Feodosii of Cherkasy and Kaniv performed a tonsure into the Great Schema at the monastery: the nun Kypriana was tonsured with the name Varakhiil, in honour of the Archangel Varakhiil⁹.

A cross procession is made to the house from time to time with a venerated copy of the Hodegetria icon of the Mother of God: this holy object was in the monastery until the 1920s, its later fate was unknown, at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries the image was found in the Pokrova Krasnohirskyi Monastery, and in 2003 it was moved to the Kazan Cathedral of Chyhyryn^{4, 6}.

In 2022 and 2023 the day of the memory of the venerable martyr Rafaila was marked in the house with a Divine Liturgy and a moleben at her relics, and in 2022 with a cross procession around the monastery's grounds as well^{10, 11}. In that same year of 2022 the diocesan press service reported that the monastery is being rebuilt, and that the church holds about 4,000 particles of holy relics and, permanently, the relics of the venerable martyr Rafaila¹⁰.