St. Nicholas's Monastery

St. Nicholas's Monastery stands in the town of Sharhorod in the Vinnytsia region. In the middle of the former monastery courtyard, which occupies the upper plateau between the two rivers, rises the cathedral of St. Nicholas of Myra, visible from every part of Sharhorod and from the surrounding hills⁶.

The exact time of the house's foundation is unknown¹. The Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine records that before 1676 there was an Orthodox monastery of St. Nicholas at Sharhorod, destroyed during the Ottoman invasion⁵. The house began in the neighbouring village of Kalynivka, where the monastery was named in memory of St. Onuphrius the Great and fell desolate during the wars of the seventeenth century^{1, 4}.

In 1718 the monastery was restored at Kalynivka, by then as a Basilian house: the lord of Sharhorod, Oleksandr Konetspolsky, endowed it with land and settled here monks of the Uniate Basilian order^{1, 4, 5}.

In 1748 Stanislav Liubomyrsky moved the house from Kalynivka into Sharhorod itself^{1, 5}, placed it at the church of the Holy Prophet John the Forerunner and charged the monks with the education of the young; by 1760 a school and a hospital had opened here¹. According to the eparchy's account, that school was known throughout Podillia, and as many as 600 pupils sometimes studied within its walls⁴.

Around 1782 the new owner of Sharhorod, Yosyp Sosnovsky, allotted the monastery its present plot¹. According to the account of the Sharhorod town community, he gave the Basilians the ruins of the castle and the means needed to build a monastery and a school, a bursa, and the school, in which at times as many as 600 pupils studied, was renowned throughout the Right Bank⁶.

After the region was annexed to the Russian Empire the monastery was reformed into an Orthodox house; the Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine dates this to 1795^{1, 5}. In 1795-1799 the house was the residence of the first bishop of the newly established Orthodox eparchy of Bratslav, later of Podilsk - Bishop Ioannikii (Nykyforovych-Polonsky), who later became an archbishop¹.

In 1797 that hierarch founded a seminary at the house^{1, 5}. Its theological class was moved to Kamianets-Podilskyi to form a separate seminary there: by differing accounts this happened in 1806¹ or in 1808⁵. What remained was turned in 1817 into a theological school, a bursa¹. From 1861 the monastery was governed by archimandrites⁴.

In this bursa the poet Stepan Rudansky studied in 1841-1849, and the writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky in 1876-1880¹. The Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine also names among its pupils the composer Mykola Leontovych⁵, the author of Shchedryk⁶. Memorial plaques on the facade of the former bursa recall these names⁶.

The building of the cathedral was begun by the Basilians, who managed to raise the walls only to the level of the lower windows, and was continued by the Orthodox^{2, 6}. Its main facade, with a four-column portico, is turned, contrary to the canon, to the south rather than to the west, so that the altar faces north^{2, 6}. Construction was completed in 1806-1818⁶, and the cathedral was consecrated in 1829²; according to the eparchy's account, the church was finished after the model of the cathedral of Alexander Nevsky in Petersburg⁴.

The main buildings of the complex were raised at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century². The warm church in the middle of the brothers' block was at first dedicated to St. Nicholas and stood on the ground floor; in 1834-1840 it was rebuilt to two storeys and later rededicated in honour of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God². The church of the Holy Archangel Michael and the other Bodiless Heavenly Powers was rebuilt from the refectory in 1874².

The bell tower was raised in 1806-1848²; three-tiered, it stood in the stone wall with towers at its corners, opposite the cathedral's main facade, and merchants' stalls were housed in that wall⁶. The corner tower dates from the eighteenth century². A two-storey block of cells with porches and stairs adjoins the cathedral's eastern wing, and across its end stretches the long building of the bursa, whose porticoes of paired columns repeat, in reduced proportions, the portico of the cathedral⁶.

The Hieromartyr Ioann (Semeniuk) laboured at the monastery. Born at Sharhorod in 1878, he became a novice of the house in 1910, headed its brotherhood as a hieromonk by 1924, served in parishes from 1925, was then exiled to Uman, and in 1937 was arrested and shot¹.

In 1937 the monastery was closed⁴. From 1946 to 1963 an agricultural technical school was housed within its walls, and after that school closed the ancient walls stood empty⁴. At the beginning of the 1980s the town museum of fine art was placed in the monastery's premises, and portraits of leading workers of socialist labour appeared on the monumental columns in place of the old icons⁴.

In 1990 the cathedral of the closed monastery was handed over to a parish Orthodox community¹. On 26 June 1992 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed the revival of the male house¹; according to the eparchy's account, monastic life began to revive here from 1996⁴. In 1996-1998 the community was temporarily a women's one¹ - the Synod acts of 12 March and 29 July 1998 still call it the St. Nicholas's convent of Sharhorod of the Vinnytsia eparchy^{8, 9}.

On 5 January 2013 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, by journal No. 18, created the Mohyliv-Podilskyi eparchy, separating it from the Vinnytsia and Tulchyn eparchies; among other districts, the Sharhorod district of the Vinnytsia region was assigned to the new eparchy, and the ruling bishop was given the title of Mohyliv-Podilskyi and Sharhorod⁷. The monastery passed to it together with the district⁴.

On 22 May 2000 monks of the Holy Dormition Pochaiv Lavra brought to Sharhorod a copy of the Pochaiv icon of the Mother of God, which became a venerated relic of the house^{3, 4}. After the Bar convent was closed by the Soviet authorities, the place where the old copy of the Bar icon of the Mother of God was kept was St. Nicholas's Monastery of Sharhorod, and on 4 November 2022 that image was returned to the Bar convent of the Vinnytsia eparchy¹⁰. A school of bell-ringers has been set up at the house⁴.