St. Panteleimon's (Feofaniya) Convent

The tract where the monastery now stands was called Lazarivshchyna. By an imperial decree of 16 October 1799 the office of vicar bishop was restored in the Kyiv eparchy, and this very tract was set aside for his country house⁴; by a decree of the treasury chamber of 28 April 1802 Lazarivshchyna was taken out of state administration and handed "as an apiary place" to Feofan (Shyianov), bishop and vicar of the Kyiv eparchy⁴. In that same year 1802 a country summer residence of the superiors of the Kyiv St Michael Golden-Domed monastery appeared here⁵. On 23 August 1803 Havryil (Banulesco-Bodoni), metropolitan of Kyiv, consecrated a church in honour of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael and blessed the renaming of Lazarivshchyna as Feofania, after Bishop Feofan⁴.

In 1835 Bishop Volodymyr (Aliavdin) attempted to set up a hermitage here, and the attempt failed⁴. Innokentii (Borysov), vicar of Chyhyryn, who lived at Feofania from early spring to late autumn, gave its various corners the names of holy places of the Bible - Tabor, Sinai, Eleon, Horeb, Kedron, Siloam, the valley of Jehoshaphat¹. In 1861, on the initiative of Serafym (Aretynsky), bishop of Chyhyryn, the arranging of a skete began, and until 1871 it was led by the elder Vonifatii¹, who before his tonsure had served twenty-five years in the army as a sergeant-major of the 4th Little Russian Uhlan regiment⁴. Already a hegumen, on 26 September 1866 he laid a brick church in the name of All Saints, consecrated on 8 June 1869 by Porfyrii (Uspensky), bishop of Chyhyryn⁴; on 27 December 1871 hegumen Vonifatii died, having the day before handed the governance of the skete to the hieroschemamonk Irynarkh (Dorohovtsev)⁴.

On 28 September 1900 Serhii (Lanin), bishop of Uman, together with the schema-hegumen Irynarkh consecrated a church in the name of the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God⁴. The following year Feofania was turned into a men's cenobitic skete attached to the St Michael Golden-Domed monastery⁴. In 1903 nine hieromonks, five hierodeacons, eighteen monks and eighty novices lived here⁵. On Mount Tabor, in 1904-1914, the chief church of the house was built - the cathedral of the Great Martyr and healer Panteleimon, to the design of the Kyiv eparchial architect Yevhen Yermakov^{2, 4, 5}. The number of brethren grew: forty-six monks in 1879, seventy in 1896, ninety-one in 1900, and in 1914 between forty and fifty monks with more than a hundred novices⁴. By an imperial order of 26 February 1915 the skete was granted the status of an independent monastery⁴.

At the beginning of the 1920s the Soviet authorities placed a children's home on the grounds, where some fifty monks and nuns still lived, and afterwards a poultry-and-dairy state farm, "Feofania", of the Kyiv union of workers' co-operation was organised on the basis of the skete - in 1923 it numbered ninety-seven workers⁴. As of 1929 sixty-nine monks and twenty-two nuns lived at Feofania⁵. By a decision of the secretariat of the presidium of the VUTsVK of 15 September 1930 all four churches were closed and the monastery premises handed to the union of workers' co-operation and its agricultural school⁴. During the Second World War services in the Panteleimon cathedral were resumed^{1, 4}; being the highest point of the ground, the cathedral was used in turn as an observation post by both warring sides, and its walls were damaged by artillery fire⁴. After the war the cathedral, its domes destroyed, was handed to the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR and rebuilt inside into a five-storey building; departments of the Institute of Mechanics and of the Institute of Energetics were placed on the grounds, and the computing laboratory of the latter, which occupied the former monastery hotel, was headed by academician Serhii Lebedev⁴. In 1961 the skete's premises were handed to the Institute of Mechanics⁵.

In 1990 part of Feofania, with its half-ruined buildings, was returned to the Church - to the Kyiv Pokrovsky monastery, for the founding of a new women's house⁴. From 1993 it was a skete of the Pokrovsky convent⁵, in 1998 the repaired Panteleimon cathedral was consecrated⁵, and in 2002 the skete became an independent monastery^{1, 4}. In 2003 the church of All Saints was handed to the house, restored and consecrated in 2009^{2, 5}; in 2005 a monastic block with a house church in honour of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael was raised^{2, 5}, and in 2010 the building of the holy gates². From 2011 the country residence of the Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine has been at the monastery⁵, and on 27 October 2015 a session of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was held here⁷. The founder of the skete has been glorified among the saints: on 25 August 2012 the Synod blessed the inclusion of St Vonifatii of Kyiv and Feofania in the Synaxis of the saints of Kyiv⁶. Connected with the house is also St Havryil of Athos (1849-1901), who lived here as a young novice until he set out in 1867 for the Holy Land and Athos⁸. Among the holy objects of the monastery are a sixteenth-century copy of the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God and an ark with portions of the relics of the Great Martyr Panteleimon, St Nicholas of Myra, St Seraphim of Sarov, the hieromartyr Volodymyr of Kyiv and the venerable fathers of the Kyiv Caves³.