Ascension Monastery

The Ascension Monastery stands in Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy in the Kyiv region, in the centre of the town's ancient trading suburb, north of the ground of the citadel⁵. Its cathedral, bell tower and collegium building form an ensemble of architectural monuments of national significance, and the Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia calls the cathedral and the bell tower the principal townscape dominants of the town⁹.

The making of the ensemble began in 1695, when construction of the masonry Ascension cathedral was started at the expense of Hetman Ivan Mazepa^{9, 5}. The Pereyaslav Reserve gives 1 June 1700 as the date of the church's consecration¹⁰. As early as 1698 Mazepa petitioned Peter I to restore the ancient Pereyaslav episcopal see in the town^{9, 8}.

A year after the cathedral was finished a male monastery began to operate on this ground, receiving as a gift woodlands, a village and a ferry crossing⁹. When the episcopal see was restored in Pereyaslav in 1700, the house became the residence of the ruling hierarch, and Bishop Zakharii Kornylovych was the first to occupy it⁵. By 1713 the space around the cathedral had been built up with cells, kitchens and houses for visitors, and the church acquired the status of a cathedral⁸.

The cathedral had three altars: the central one in honour of the Ascension of the Lord, the one to the right of the sanctuary in honour of the Nativity of the Mother of God, and the left one consecrated at first in honour of the Nativity of John the Forerunner, the guardian angel of Hetman Mazepa^{10, 8}. After 1708 that altar was abolished by order of the tsarist government, and in 1851 it was restored in the name of the Venerable Martyr Makarii of Ovruch, wonderworker of Pereyaslav^{10, 8}.

The reliquary with the relics of the Venerable Martyr Makarii was moved into the cathedral on 4 August 1786 from the abolished St. Michael's monastery^{10, 8}. In October 1766 the head of the executed church-builder Danylo Kushnir was brought here from Mliiv for burial; the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church canonised him in 1994^{10, 5}. The wonderworking Pereyaslav icon of the Mother of God was also kept in the cathedral, and the church was a place of pilgrimage^{10, 9, 8}.

A distinct treasure of the house was the altar Peresopnytsia Gospel, which Ivan Mazepa presented to it in 1701; the book was later removed and transferred to the library of the Pereyaslav collegium^{10, 5}.

The collegium itself was founded at the monastery in 1738 by Arsenii Berlo, bishop of Pereyaslav, and after his name the teachers called the school the Berlian one⁵. Tuition was open to men of every estate and lasted eleven to twelve years, beginning with the lower classes - the fara, the infima, grammar and syntax; the higher classes of philosophy and theology were opened in 1773 and 1781⁵.

In 1753-1754 Hryhorii Skovoroda taught poetics at the collegium⁵. The Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia notes, however, that the time of his teaching coincides only with the beginning of construction of the masonry building that survives today, so that the lessons of 1753 took place in other quarters that have not survived - although the philosopher's close connection with Pereyaslav is beyond doubt⁹. In 1776 the collegium was turned into a theological seminary, and in 1862 it was moved to Poltava⁵.

The town fire of 1748 destroyed all the wooden buildings of the house^{9, 6}. After it the cathedral was rebuilt and its facades adorned with moulding, while the remaining structures were raised in masonry: in 1753-1757 the collegium building, at the expense of Ioann Kozlovych, bishop of Pereyaslav, and in 1770-1776 the bell tower, at the expense of Bishop Iov Bazylevych^{9, 8}. At the same period, in 1782, the church of the Holy Great Martyr Barbara was attached to the bell tower^{9, 8}.

The Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia describes the architecture of the ensemble: the cathedral is cruciform, nine-part and single-domed, all its parts of equal height and brought under a single cornice, while above the crossing rises a two-tier baroque top on a high octagonal drum⁹. The gate bell tower is three-tiered, a square with concave faces in plan⁹. Three portals are set in the longitudinal facade of the collegium, and above the right-hand one is placed a bas-relief of episcopal insignia with the monogram of Ioann Kozlovych⁹.

In the assessment of that publication, the ensemble belongs among the most outstanding architectural ensembles of the eighteenth century, the cathedral is a monument unique in composition from the age of Mazepa, and the collegium building is a rare surviving example, for Left-Bank Ukraine, of an educational building of its time⁹.

Bishops of Pereyaslav are buried in the cathedral. The Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia and the Boryspil Diocese name four - Nykodym Srebnytskyi (1751), Ioann Kozlovych (1757), Hervasii Lyntsevskyi (1769) and Iov Bazylevych (1786)^{9, 8}; the Pereyaslav Reserve adds to that list Ahei Kolosovskyi and Feofan Shyianov-Cherniavskyi¹⁰.

In 1816 the monastery was moved to the unestablished class, and the greater part of its monks were enrolled in the Transfiguration monastery of Saratov^{9, 5}. The cathedral nonetheless remained a cathedral until 1847, when the episcopal see was moved to Poltava; after that the house passed into the property of the Poltava bishop's house, and the church into the direct authority of the bishop of Poltava and Pereyaslav^{9, 8, 5}.

At the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century an elongated two-storey masonry building with a columned gallery was raised south of the cathedral: trading rows occupied the ground floor and a hostel for seminarians the upper one⁹. In 1916 this building burned down and was dismantled^{9, 6}.

In 1845 Taras Shevchenko, in Pereyaslav on a commission from the Kyiv Archaeographic Commission, made a drawing of the cathedral from the monastery grounds¹⁰. The house's own site describes this watercolour in detail: in the foreground the stone chapel north-west of the cathedral, in the second plane the cathedral itself, on the left the eastern gates, on the right the top of the bell tower showing through the trees⁶.

In 1925 a military unit occupied the grounds of the house and put up barracks, garages and stores there^{5, 6}. At the beginning of the 1930s the cathedral was taken from the believers and turned into a grain store^{10, 5}. During the Second World War the church lost its cupola, vertical cracks ran through the walls, and the sacristy annexe raised in 1820 was destroyed outright; for a long time the cathedral stood empty^{10, 5}.

In 1946 the Academy of Architecture of Ukraine, headed by Academician V. H. Zabolotnyi, drew up a list of the outstanding monuments that had survived the war, and the cathedral was among the first entered on it¹⁰. The dating of the first major restoration differs: the Pereyaslav Reserve and the Boryspil Diocese give 1953-1955, the Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia and the house's own site 1954-1964^{10, 8, 9, 5}. At the same time the structure was granted the status of an architectural monument of national significance, with the protection number 49/0¹⁰.

After the restoration and until 1974 the cathedral stood closed and served as a store, while the bell tower had already been converted into a water tower in 1953 and was used so until 1986^{10, 8, 5}.

In 1972 the Memorial Museum of Hryhorii Skovoroda was opened in the collegium building^{9, 5}. In May 1975 a museum display devoted to the fighting for the Dnieper in the Pereyaslav area in the autumn of 1943 was installed in the main nave of the cathedral^{10, 9}.

In 2002 the transfer of the former military unit's grounds to the National Historical and Ethnographic Reserve "Pereyaslav" began⁵, and the ensemble is now part of the Reserve⁹. The Boryspil Diocese notes on its own page that the cathedral continues to be used by the Reserve and has not been transferred to the Church⁸.

On 10 February 2011 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, by journal No. 8, blessed the opening of the Holy Ascension Monastery in Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy^{1, 8}. On 26 August of the same year, by journal No. 67, the St. George skete was opened under the house in the village of Lazarivka in the Brusyliv district of the Zhytomyr region², and its church, according to the monastery's own site, was consecrated on 2 September 2011⁷. On 25 September 2013, by journal No. 58, the Synod formed the Boryspil Diocese, separating it from the Kyiv one and assigning the Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyy district to it³, and on 19 June 2014, by journal No. 9, the name of the house and its statute were changed in accordance with the new diocesan subordination⁴.

On 19 June 2020 research staff of the Pereyaslav Reserve found and examined the remains of the brick enclosure wall of the monastery of the eighteenth century, exposed by a utility trench in the town¹¹. In the profile of the trench they recorded masonry laid on a clay mortar with an admixture of lime, and its foundation of small brick fragments, and with them cultural layers running from the eleventh to the nineteenth century¹¹.

In August 2025 archaeologists of the Reserve found on the grounds of the former house a granite slab that proved to be the obelisk of archimandrite Genadii, Heorhii Machuhovskyi in the world, superior of the Pereyaslav Ascension monastery¹². He was born on 28 April 1857, entered the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in 1867, where for eighteen years he was precentor of the metropolitan's choir, received the monastic tonsure in 1888, moved to the Poltava diocese in 1892 and headed the Pereyaslav house for six years; he died on 7 February 1905¹².

The obelisk was moved within the monastery grounds to a centuries-old oak, to the site of a future restored monastic necropolis¹².