Svityaz Sts. Peter and Paul's Monastery

The Sts Peter and Paul Monastery of Svitiaz stands in the village of Svitiaz, Shatsk district, in Volyn, beside the largest lake in Ukraine^{1, 2}.

The first mention of the settlement dates to 1444, and already in archival documents of 1531 a church and a parish of the village of Svitiaz are mentioned as part of the Liuboml protopopy². The settlement itself belonged to the Liuboml starostwo of the Chełm land of the Ruthenian voivodeship of Poland, and by the tax registers the church paid 16 groszy of tax a year, and in 1564 and 1589 two forints². At that time Svitiaz belonged to the princes Sanguszko².

On 6 July 1659, by a diploma of king John Casimir, the Liuboml starostwo by hereditary land right, Svitiaz within it, was granted to the voivode of Kyiv, hetman of the Zaporozhian host Ivan Vyhovskyi, and after his death to his son Ostap; in law the Vyhovskyi family held it until 1768². On 2 May 1775 Liuboml with its adjoining lands was granted anew to count Franciszek Ksawery Branicki, and the count allowed free cutting of timber at Svitiaz for the church². After the third partition of Poland in 1795 the whole territory of the Liuboml starostwo was joined to Volyn².

On 22 January 1834 the church burned down from an unextinguished candle, but already in 1835 the people of Svitiaz raised a wooden chapel with a bell tower of the same dedication². At the beginning of the 1840s, through the efforts of count Vladyslav Branicki (1782-1843), the building of a stone church began at Svitiaz, and it was finished after her husband's death by Vladyslav's wife, countess Roza Stanislavivna Potocka². In 1846 the church was consecrated².

The building stands on the eastern shore of the lake². From the south and the north it is flanked by four-column Tuscan porticoes with gabled roofs²; from those distant times the iconostasis has survived in the church². By a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR the church was taken under state protection as an architectural monument, protection number 1043².

In 1891 a church-parish school was opened in the village, and in 1900 a building for it was put up at state expense³. In 1911 65 boys and 5 girls studied here, and the parish numbered more than 3 thousand parishioners³. In 1905 the Sts Peter and Paul church was visited by bishop Arsenii of Volodymyr-Volynskyi, and in 1910 by St Fadei (Uspenskyi)³.

The First World War did not pass the church by: the bells were taken from its bell tower, evidently to be melted down for weapons³. When the war ended the parish entered the Orthodox Church in Poland and belonged to the Warsaw eparchy³.

From 1918 to 1943 the rector was the priest Anastasii Abramovych, and this was one of the hardest periods in the church's history⁵. The Polish authorities cut back the church lands³, and yet in 1923 the parish built a chapel in the village of Holiadyn³ - it was moved there under father Anastasii's direction⁵ - and in 1926 it roofed the church with sheet metal at the parishioners' expense³; a brotherhood of the holy prophet Elijah was active at the church³. Father Anastasii sat on the executive committee for help to the unemployed in Shatsk⁵. At a time when the Polish language and the Catholic faith were being pressed forward, he preached only in Ukrainian and read 18 lectures a week in the church-parish schools⁵. He set out the results of his work in a manual, "The Method of the Law of God", meant for teachers and priests; the editor of the edition was the director of the Lutsk Ukrainian gymnasium, Ivan Vlasovskyi, and in 1938 the book was printed at Kremianets⁵. At the end of 1943 the priest and his family met a martyr's death⁵.

In 1939, with the coming of Soviet power, the Svitiaz church was assigned to the Volyn eparchy³. By God's mercy the church was never closed³: only in 1967-68, for nine months, were there no services in it³. At the parish's expense, in 1988, a group of restorers from the Rivne country carried out the necessary internal and external repairs³.

From 1999 to 2004 an Orthodox summer camp for orphaned children was held every summer at a holiday base of the Svitiaz parish, founded by archbishop Symeon of Volodymyr-Volynskyi and Kovel⁴. The day at the camp began and ended with prayer and a procession with an icon and candles round the grounds⁴.

The house here came into being over five years. By the account the deanery publishes, on 27 September 2001 the Pochaiv icon of the Mother of God in the Svitiaz church began to stream myrrh, and from that time the stream of people coming to pray grew⁴. On 29 March 2002 the first monastic tonsure in the parish's history took place here: the rector of the church became a hieromonk⁴. At the same time bishop Symeon announced the renaming of the church of the village of Svitiaz as the Sts Peter and Paul skete of the Nyzkynychi monastery⁴.

On 28 October 2003 the archbishop of Volodymyr-Volynskyi and Kovel served the Liturgy and a moleben and laid the cornerstone of a church in honour of the icon of the Mother of God "The Increaser of the Grain", together with a capsule holding the document of the founding of the Sts Peter and Paul house⁴. On 16 April 2005, at the Divine Liturgy, bishop Symeon announced the renaming of the skete as the Sts Peter and Paul Monastery of Svitiaz⁴.

On 13 July 2006 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, presided over by His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and All Ukraine, heard the report of archbishop Symeon of Volodymyr-Volynskyi and Kovel on the opening of the Sts Peter and Paul Monastery in the village of Svitiaz, Shatsk district, Volyn region, and blessed that opening¹. This is Journal No. 31 of that session¹.

Holy things were brought to the house. In the summer of 2004 the Bleeding image of the Saviour was brought here in procession, in the summer of 2005 icons from the church of St Elijah in Chornobyl, and on 23 June 2007 the relics of the holy martyrs of Chełm and Podlachia⁴. In February 2007 a particle of the relics of a saint of God from Mount Sinai came to the monastery⁴, and on 11 July 2007 a reliquary with particles of the relics of the venerable fathers of the Kyiv Caves was brought here⁴.