Sofronievo-Molchansky Nativity of the Mother of God Monastery

The Sofronievo-Molchansky Nativity of the Mother of God Monastery, a men's house, stands on Chudna Hill near the village of Nova Sloboda in the Sumy region, twenty-five kilometres from Putyvl, and belongs to the Konotop eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church^{7, 9}. The complex occupies the summits of two hills joined by a saddle above the valley of the Seim, and to the south-east of it lay, from of old, the Molche marsh, from which the second half of the house's name comes^{5, 8}.

The house has preserved several incompatible accounts of its own beginning. The description of 1837 placed the founding between the Baptism of Rus and the death of Prince Volodymyr; the description of 1845 attributed it to monks of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra who left Kyiv after the Mongols sacked it; the description of 1895 combined the two - the monastery arose before the invasion, was thinly peopled, and after 1240 monks of the Lavra joined its brotherhood³. The Putyvl reserve relates an older tradition still, of monks who came from Greece together with Metropolitan Michael⁹.

The material trace of those centuries appeared only recently: in 2002 and 2004 an archaeological expedition of the Hlukhiv state historical and cultural reserve found in the hermitage traces of the pre-Mongol and post-Mongol periods, and the chief dating material was fragments of pottery of the twelfth to thirteenth and the thirteenth to fourteenth centuries³. The Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine dates the monastery's origin simply to the sixteenth century⁷.

The next link the traditions date precisely. On 18 September 1405 a beekeeper who had come to the hill for honey saw a radiance from a lime tree, and on it an icon of the Mother of God^{3, 9}. The people of Putyvl went out to the place with their clergy, set up a small house of prayer there and carried the image into it, and sent a messenger to Metropolitan Cyprian for a blessing to build a church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God³. So arose a small house, named the Molchenska Nativity of the Mother of God hermitage⁸.

The first documentary mention of the hermitage belongs to 1591: a fragment of the Putyvl cadastral books survived in the text of a charter sent to the Putyvl authorities from Moscow on 23 March 1593, and from it we learn that the hermitage owned in Putyvl the church of Holy Sophia, the Wisdom of God³.

In 1592, during a raid by the Crimean Tatars, the Molchenska hermitage was burnt, and the following year the monks, led by hegumen Pafnutii, moved into Putyvl, where they founded a new monastery^{8, 7}. From then on these are two separate houses: the one in Putyvl came to be called the Great Molchenskyi monastery, and the one above the Molche marsh the Little Molchenskyi hermitage⁸.

In 1605 the hermitage was formally assigned to the Putyvl monastery: on the site of the burnt church a wooden church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God of the Caves was put up with cells beside it, and about 1630 the first masonry church of the Nativity of the Mother of God was raised here^{8, 7}.

The further fate of the hermitage is told by a charter of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich of 11 March 1653: the house stands without chanting, it has neither priest nor brotherhood, though pilgrims come every day - and on a petition from the people of Putyvl the tsar ordered the voivodes to restore the former order here despite the view of the hegumen of the Putyvl monastery³.

The monks were not drawn from the Putyvl brotherhood: voivode Feodor Khilkov moved into the hermitage, against their will, the hermits of the Shyriaiv forest - Aleksandr and Sofronii with their companions³. Of Sofronii the nineteenth-century historians of the hermitage write that he was a native of Putyvl, in the world Stefan Batovryn, a merchant of standing, and that having resolved to become a monk he left his family and was tonsured by Father Aleksandr³.

The Putyvl monastery gave the hermits no means of living and took even the offerings of pilgrims, so they complained to Patriarch Nikon, and on 10 March 1656 he informed the voivode of Putyvl that at the request of the elder Sofronii he was granting their house independence³. When the claims were renewed, a charter of 12 May 1670 confirmed that independence; in the document Sofronii is called the builder of the hermitage, and of his rank the charters are silent - by tradition he did not dare, out of humility, to accept the priesthood³.

Under Sofronii two men of letters lived in the hermitage, whom the Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine calls enlighteners of the end of the seventeenth century⁷. Semen Medvediev, a former officer of the tsar's chancery exiled here in 1672, was tonsured here with the name Sylvestr in 1674 and wrote to his teacher Symeon Polotskyi that this place was richer in beauty, seclusion and plenty than other such places³. At his invitation his kinsman Karion Istomin lived in the hermitage in 1672-1675, the future compiler of the illustrated Primer of 1694³.

In December 1692 Sofronii died, and in his memory the Molchenska hermitage came also to be called Sofronieva^{3, 8}. The Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia writes that under his rule the monastery became one of the best known in the Poseimia region⁸, and the Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine that in the eighteenth century the house became one of the most important religious centres and at the same time one of the richest landowners of the region⁷.

Sofronii's successor was hieromonk Serapion, who died on 17 July 1718 at the age of eighty-one³. The monastic tradition preserved the story of how he was driving to Sumy for iron for the Dormition church he was building and, caught between robbers and the Seim, told his bewildered driver to drive across a bridge that was not in fact there - and the cart raced across the waters³.

From 1779 until his death on 9 December 1802 the house was governed by the elder Feodosii (Maslov), a native of Hlukhiv, a disciple of Saint Vasyl of Poiana Marului in the Moldavian house of Berezun and afterwards superior of the Tismana monastery in Wallachia³. Having received the Sofronieva hermitage to govern, he introduced into it that same year the rule of the monasteries of Athos, and in 1787 he was raised to the rank of archimandrite³. A correspondence survives in which Saint Paisius Velychkovskyi tells him of his labour translating the works of the ancient fathers into Church Slavonic³.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century future ascetics of the neighbouring Hlynska hermitage lived here. Foma Danylevskyi was received into the Sofronieva hermitage in 1802 and was tonsured then with the name Filaret, in 1806 became a hieromonk and dean, in 1815 declined out of humility to be superior, and in 1817 took charge of the Hlynska house^{3, 12}. Ioann Holovanytskyi, afterwards the schema-archimandrite Iliodor, also moved from here to the Hlynska hermitage^{3, 12}; both were glorified among the saints in 2008¹².

In 1829 the novice Serhii Tikhonov, a native of Yelets, came to the hermitage from the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. He lived here half a century, bore his obedience in the kitchen and the bakery, was a fool for Christ's sake, and died on 30 November 1879 at the age of seventy-five³.

The masonry ensemble took shape over the eighteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century⁸. The cathedral church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, raised about 1630, was rebuilt in the classicist style at the end of the nineteenth century⁸. Beside it stood a two-storey church - with a warm Annunciation church below and a Dormition church above - built in 1710 and 1718, and a five-tier bell tower of the end of the eighteenth century adjoined its western end^{4, 8}. The Ascension church was raised in 1801-1808^{4, 8}.

The gate church of the Protection with the Holy Gates appeared in 1757 in the baroque style^{4, 8}. The new hospital block with the church of the Prophet Elijah was built in 1911 in the so-called neo-Russian style, the decoration of its unplastered facades executed in brickwork⁴. On the eastern slopes of the hill lie several cave complexes; the walls and vaults of the chief of them are faced with brick of the eighteenth century, and the underground church of Saints Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves the nineteenth-century descriptions call renewed in 1766 and renamed in 1805 in honour of the Nativity of Christ⁴.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the ensemble numbered about fifty buildings, and in the hermitage itself and in its skete of John the Forerunner about three hundred residents lived, among them 108 monks⁹.

The decline began with the revolution: the year 1917 opened the destruction, two years later the Bolsheviks plundered the house, and soon it adopted the statute of a labour artel⁹. On the year of the final closure the sources disagree: the monastery's own site puts it in 1920 and connects it with an accusation that the brotherhood sheltered participants of the peasant rising in the Putyvl uezd, the Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine and the Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia name 1921, and the Putyvl reserve 1922^{3, 7, 8, 9}.

In the monastery buildings there was placed first a shelter for children from the starving Volga region, then a hospital, a school and storehouses^{3, 9}. In 1926 the lands around Putyvl, including the district of the hermitage, were transferred from Russia to Ukraine³.

On 19 September 1939, by order of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR L. Beria, the Putyvl NKVD camp for holding Polish prisoners of war was set up in the monastery, and it operated until July 1941; in 2014 a granite obelisk with Polish symbols was erected by the monastery gate in memory of that crime⁸. In 1942 the headquarters of Sydir Kovpak's partisan detachment was in the house, and at that time the monastery suffered devastating bombing^{7, 8, 9}.

In the post-war years most of the masonry buildings - about thirty - were taken apart for building material; there survived, in ruined condition, the gate church of the Protection, the former refectory, the vestry, the hospital block with the church of the Prophet Elijah and part of the wall with the southern gate, together with the cave complex^{7, 8, 9}.

In the 1980s the remains of the ensemble were studied by V. Vecherskyi, after which the monastery was entered in the Register of Monuments of History and Culture of Ukraine, and by a decision of the Sumy oblast executive committee of 20 May 1988, No. 112, it was declared a monument of architecture and town planning of local significance with protection number 106-См⁸.

In 1999 monks returned to the house^{3, 7}. On 29 August 2001 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, by journal No. 20, blessed the opening of the men's monastery of "the Sofronieva Molchanska Nativity of the Mother of God Hermitage of the Caves" in the village of Nova Sloboda, Putyvl district, Sumy region¹.

In 1999-2001 archaeological research was carried out here and the main building of the restored house was rebuilt to a design by the architect V. Bykov, and in 2001-2004 a road from Nova Sloboda and utility networks were laid, the gate church of the Protection and the former refectory were restored, and the rebuilding of the cathedral church was begun⁸.

On 14 April 2009 the Holy Synod, by journal No. 25, blessed the local glorification of four ascetics of this house: archimandrite Feodosii (Maslov), hieromonk Serapion and the elder Sofronii (Batovryn) among the venerable, and the novice Serhii Tikhonov among the fools for Christ's sake². The rite of glorification was performed in the hermitage itself on 28 June of the same year³.

The Synaxis of the Molchensk saints has since been kept in the house: in 2014 the festal service here was led by the Chancellor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church¹⁰, and in 2020 and 2021 by the ruling bishop of the Konotop eparchy^{15, 16}. On 1 October 2014, on the day of the veneration of the Molchenska icon, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the monastery¹¹.

Among the house's holy things is a copy of the Molchenska icon of the Mother of God. The nineteenth-century descriptions disagree about what became of the icons that appeared, and the monastery's own site sums up that neither of the icons revealed in 1405 and 1635 has come down to our time, and that the copy kept in the hermitage was painted later⁶.

The cave labyrinth with its church, cells, burial niches and air well is open to visitors; most of the passages and chambers are blocked, and 72 metres have been cleared⁹. By the monastery walls grow two ancient oaks, a botanical monument of local significance⁹.

A traditional cross procession goes to the house: in 2020 it set out on 27 September¹³. On 1 October of the same year the ruling bishop celebrated the Divine Liturgy here on the day of the Molchenska icon¹⁴.

The Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia calls the Sofroniivskyi monastery one of the largest on the Left Bank of Ukraine and writes that the surviving gate church of the Protection now has no analogue at all, that the refectory is the only example of a two-pillared refectory hall, and that the cave complex is comparable with the Anthony Caves of the Trinity-Elijah monastery in Chernihiv and the caves of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra⁸.