St. Onuphrius's Monastery

St. Onuphrius's Monastery stands near the village of Chubivka in the Cherkasy region, on the river Zhabotynka⁴. The house's second, historical name is the Zhabotyn monastery: it comes from its position to the north-east of the village of Zhabotyn^{2, 5}. It is dedicated to St. Onuphrius the Great, a hermit of the fourth century⁶.

The sources give no exact date of foundation. The historian Lavrentii Pokhylevych, in his «Сказания о населенных местностях Киевской губернии» of 1864, wrote that nothing is known of the monastery's beginning, and a monastery register of 1893 likewise noted that no written traditions of its founding had survived². As an indirect indication of the house's antiquity its own website points to the Kyiv printed books of the seventeenth century that were kept in the monastery library, and it traces documentary mentions of the monastery from the first half of the eighteenth century². The Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine dates the foundation to no later than 1706: it was then that Metropolitan Varlaam Yasynsky of Kyiv asked hetman Ivan Mazepa for support for the monastery¹. In 1752 the house was supported at his own expense by the Chyhyryn starosta Jan Jablonowski^{1, 4}. The Cherkasy eparchy adds that some of the monastery's archival materials attest to the house having existed for more than 600 years, and presents this precisely as the testimony of archival materials rather than as an established date⁴.

In the late 1750s and the early 1760s a wooden cathedral church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos was raised in the house: the monastery's own website dates the building to 1758-1764, the encyclopaedia to 1758-1762^{1, 3}. According to the eparchial publication, the church went up under hegumen Yefrem Bykovsky, and in 1798 hegumen Melchizedek Shakhovsky renewed it with icon painting⁴. In 1778 the side chapels of the cathedral were consecrated - the southern one in honour of All Saints and the northern one of St. Nicholas of Myra; in 1798 and in 1861-1865 the church was renewed, and at the same time, in 1798, the chapel of All Saints was renamed in honour of the holy Great Martyr Barbara³. Separately, in 1775-1779, a wooden warm refectory church of the holy Great Martyr Barbara was built in the monastery, which had fallen into decay by the end of the eighteenth century and was probably dismantled³. From 1878, continuing the practice of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, an image of the Dormition of the Mother of God stood above the Royal Doors of the iconostasis and was periodically lowered for pilgrims to venerate^{3, 5}.

The sources give differing accounts of the second church, that of St. Onuphrius the Great. The encyclopaedia places the building of the stone church of St. Onuphrius in 1711¹; the monastery's own website begins instead with a wooden church of the same dedication, known from 1732, which burned down in 1802 and was replaced in 1809-1812 by a stone one with a bell tower³. In 1904 a southern chapel in honour of the Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos was arranged in that church³. Two icons venerated as wonderworking were kept in the house - of the Dormition of the Mother of God and of St. Onuphrius the Great^{1, 6}.

From 1786 the monastery was unsalaried, and from 1904 a male monastery of the cenobitic type⁴. As of 1915 a number of schools for boys worked at the house - for copying, tailoring, shoemaking, carpentry and smithing - and in 1916 a literacy school was opened²; the eparchial publication also mentions a monastic icon-painting school⁶. According to the same publication, the young Taras Shevchenko visited the monastery in 1824 and came here again as an adult, in the 1840s⁴.

The monastery also had a metochion of its own in Cherkasy. In 1901 the townsmen Stefan Romodan and Ivan Kryvokobylsky donated to the house two undeveloped plots that belonged to them in the city, for a metochion to be set up; at that time the monastery had the financial means to maintain a brick works of its own⁷. In 1903-1906 a church in honour of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God was built on the metochion; its consecration took place on 5/18 November 1906, and the rite was led, with the blessing of Metropolitan Flavian (Horodetsky) of Kyiv, by the vicar of the Kyiv eparchy, Bishop Platon (Rozhdestvensky) of Chyhyryn⁷. Up to 1917 several monks lived at the metochion, combining the services with work on the property⁷. In 1921 the superior of the monastery, hegumen Mytrofan (Nyshchun), took the decision to close the metochion, and in the following year, in view of its difficult material position and of the high taxes laid on the Church by the soviet authorities, the monastery declared that it could not maintain it, and the metochion, apart from the church, was given over to a children's shelter⁷.

In 1919-1920 the house was repeatedly subjected to robbery and violence². The sources give different years for its closure: the monastery's own website names 1923², while the encyclopaedia and the eparchial publications name 1928^{1, 4, 6}; a year after the closure, as the eparchy writes, the Dormition church was dismantled⁴. On the eve of the closure three of the holy new martyrs of Cherkasy laboured in the house: the martyr Feodor Kyba, who was under obedience in the monastery in 1907-1908 and died in 1938 with the rank of protodeacon; the hieromartyr Tymofii (Khrapachenko), who lived in the monastery from 1895 and died in 1937 with the rank of hieromonk; and the hieromartyr Kyprian (Oliinyk), a novice from 1910 and a hieromonk by 1923, who died in 1937².

In 1944 the monastery became active again: nuns from the Motronynsky monastery lived here, but for want of funds they were moved to the Lebedynsky monastery⁴. For more than twenty years the place stood empty and its buildings were destroyed by local people; only in 1972 was the church of St. Onuphrius surveyed and declared a ruin⁴. For a long time the church was used as a farm building of the local collective and as a grain store⁴.

The house was opened again on 29 December 1993⁴; the encyclopaedia likewise dates the monastery's revival to 1993¹. Of the two historic churches only that of St. Onuphrius has survived to this day^{3, 5}. It has three altars: the central one of St. Onuphrius the Great, and on either side of it those of the Protection of the Mother of God and of St. Seraphim of Sarov; ancient frescoes have survived in the chapel of the Protection⁴. On 9 March 2021 Archbishop Theodosius of Cherkasy and Kaniv performed in the monastery the rite of consecration of the main altar in the name of St. Onuphrius the Great^{4, 8}. Near the house monastic caves have survived - according to the monastery's own website, probably from the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with inscriptions of 1916-1918 - in which an underground church was arranged in 2008 on the site of an old chapel^{3, 5}. The monastery is a monument of state significance⁴.