Transfiguration Monastery

The Transfiguration Monastery of the Khust eparchy stands two kilometres west of the village of Tereblya in the Tyachiv district, in a tract that people here call Botynske, or Tiapish^{1, 2, 3}.

The house was begun by Igumen Iov (Voitishyn): in the early 1920s he became the priest of Tereblya and resolved to found a monastery here, and it was the villagers themselves who showed him the place beyond the village^{1, 2}. Yurii Popovych gave a hectare of his own land for the house, and in 1923 he made Father Iov a gift of his own dwelling, which was moved and set up beside the chapel of the Protection of the Mother of God^{1, 2}.

As the brotherhood grew, a residential block was raised at the house - by M. Syrokhman's description, one of eight cells^{1, 2}. In the 1930s a house church of the Annunciation of the Mother of God was built alongside that block^{1, 2}.

In the documents of the interwar years the house was called a skete - the Transfiguration, or Tabor, skete^{4, 5}. In the summer of 1923 Yurii Kerechanyn entered it as a novice and served his obedience under Igumen Iov (Voitishyn); on 20 October 1924, with the blessing of Bishop Dosifei of Niš and Carpatho-Russia, he was tonsured with the name Veniamin⁴.

The Tereblya skete became, for interwar Zakarpattya, a place out of which the region's monastics came. Yurii Borshosh was transferred here and in 1924, at Igumen Iov (Voitishyn)'s request, was tonsured into the mantle with the name Feodosii; after his ordination to the priesthood he returned to Tereblya, and from there Igumen Iov sent him to parish service in Dubrivka, where he later founded a skete of his own⁶.

In 1926 Ivan Hashpar of Volovets entered here as a novice⁵, and on 1 February 1931 Dymytrii Andrishko was transferred to the house: here, on 18 May of that same year, he was tonsured into the rasa, and on 8 June 1935 into the mantle with the name Dorimedont⁷.

From 1930 the superior of the Tereblya monastic community was Hieromonk Veniamin (Kerechanyn)^{2, 4}. By the register of residents of 15 February 1931 ten men lived in the house: five hieromonks, two monks and three rasophore monks⁴.

On 15 June 1931 the superior drew up for the skete a statute and a rule of monastic life in ten points: the hieromonks served in turn, vespers were at seven in summer and at five in winter, the brothers rose at three in summer and at four in winter, and at meals strict silence and the reading aloud of edifying books were prescribed⁴. That same summer an assembly of the brotherhood resolved that the monks should help to pay off the plots of land bought for the house, and the area of the monastery's holdings on Mount Tiapish grew noticeably⁴.

In 1937 the monks, under Father Veniamin, began to build a new brick church with five domes, and the inhabitants of Tereblya gave a great deal of help in raising it⁴. On its consecration the sources differ: Yu. Danylets writes that the new building was consecrated a year later⁴, while M. Syrokhman writes that the foundation was blessed on Trinity Sunday in 1937, that the work was finished in the same year, and that Bishop Volodymyr consecrated the church in 1939².

On 10 June 1940 Hungarian gendarmes arrested the monks of the Tereblya monastery together with their Igumen Veniamin; in a letter to the eparchial administration the superior wrote that the monks had been driven down into the village and into the church house⁴. He himself was sent to Debrecen, where on 20 December 1941 he was sentenced to death by hanging, but as early as January 1942 he was released⁴.

In the Soviet years the house had between thirteen and thirty inhabitants⁴. In 1947 Igumen Veniamin was raised to the rank of archimandrite and appointed dean of the monasteries of Zakarpattya⁴.

On 19 February 1959, by a decision of the Tyachiv district executive committee, the monastery's holdings were cut back to one hectare and the confiscated land was handed to the collective farm⁴. After the closure of the skete in Horodylovo and the monastery in Iza the monks of those communities were transferred to Tereblya, and by the beginning of 1960, of more than twenty monasteries and sketes in Zakarpattya, four were left, of which the Tereblya house was the only men's one⁴.

At the beginning of 1960 Archimandrite Veniamin was arrested on a charge of buying stolen paraffin, from which candles were made at the monastery; on 30 March 1960 the court gave him a year and six months, on 14 April his appeal was rejected, and he served the sentence in a camp in Kyiv⁴. Having worked through the material of the court case, Yu. Danylets notes that the paraffin transaction itself had taken place back in 1958⁴; M. Syrokhman, by contrast, dates the superior's imprisonment to 1953 and writes that he was held for almost a year².

After that arrest Igumen Iov (Kundria), glorified by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 2008, was appointed acting superior of the house⁴; by the monastery's own account the Venerable Iov Uholskyi laboured here in 1959-1960¹.

The brotherhood and the villagers tried to save the house: at the beginning of 1961 a letter against the closure of the monastery was signed by 97 inhabitants of Tereblya⁴. In spite of this, on 28 March 1961 the Zakarpattya regional council took the decision to close it⁴; in his study of the monasteries of Tereblya and Chumaliovo, Yu. Danylets sums up that the house, closed in 1961, came back to life only in 2001⁸.

Archimandrite Veniamin himself, after his imprisonment, served in Shyrokyi Luh, and in 1962, at the villagers' many requests, he was transferred to Tereblya; he died on 29 March 1975 and is buried in the village cemetery⁴.

The monastery buildings were destroyed afterwards¹: according to M. Syrokhman, in the early 1970s the house was pulled down with the help of the village head of the day, and only the wooden cell cottage survived, in which a chapel was later arranged².

In 1993 the restored Transfiguration church was consecrated¹. The opening of the Transfiguration Monastery in the village of Tereblya was blessed by the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at its session of 22 January 2001, by Journal No. 3, on the report of Bishop Ioann of Khust and Vynohradiv⁹.

Among the holy things of the house is a portion of the relics of the Great Martyr and Healer Panteleimon and of other saints¹⁰. On the patronal feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord in 2014 the Divine Liturgy at the monastery was celebrated by Metropolitan Mark of Khust and Vynohradiv, who blessed the fruits after it¹¹, and on the same feast in 2019 an ordination to the priesthood took place in the house¹².

The house lives alongside the village: at the end of 2016 the monks of the monastery, together with the senior class of the Tereblya school, visited the children's residential home in Vilshany, and the brotherhood thanked the inhabitants of Tereblya who had taken part in gathering the gifts¹³. At Christmas in 2018 the women's choir of the monastery sang in the performance given by the young people of the village Sunday school¹⁴.