Krupytsky St. Nicholas's Convent

By tradition the monastery was founded in antiquity on the spot where an icon of St Nicholas appeared, and at first it stood half a kilometre west of the present grounds. The same tradition holds that the monks and the people of the neighbourhood, sheltering in the house during a Tatar raid, satisfied their hunger with grains that fell miraculously from the sky - and from that the monastery came to be called Krupytsky, "of the grains". In 1767 Archimandrite Varsonofii stated that those grains "were kept in a silver casket even to the time of Hetman Mazepa"¹.

From 1633 documents give the names of the house's superiors. A notable ascetic was Hegumen Isaakii (Hryhorovych): he governed the house in 1669-1672, then received the schema and remained the instructor of the brethren until his repose in 1677¹.

In 1679-1681 St Dimitry (Tuptalo), the future Metropolitan of Rostov, laboured among the brethren of the monastery with the rank of hieromonk, having been invited by Hetman Ivan Samoilovych of Ukraine to the neighbouring town of Baturyn, which served as the hetman's residence. In 1680-1681 the stone five-domed cathedral of St Nicholas was completed and consecrated at the monastery, built at the expense of the general judge of Ukraine Ivan Domontovych, who died soon after and was buried in it¹.

The years 1682-1683 are the first of St Dimitry's two terms as superior of the Krupytsky house. In 1684 the superior of the Kyiv Caves Lavra, Archimandrite Varlaam (Yasynsky), proposed that he compile a new collection of the lives of the saints of the Orthodox Church, and the ascetic agreed, moved to the Lavra and set to work. His second term as hegumen was 1686-1692: without laying aside his work on the Lives, he had, in his own words, "written six months of the lives of the saints" by the middle of March 1688, and in 1689 the Lavra's press published the first volume. Wishing to give the Lives more time, in 1690 he withdrew to the monastery's skete on the site of the ancient Krupytsky house, in 1691 built himself a new cell there, and in 1692 laid down the office of hegumen a second time¹.

On 13 January 1691 St Dimitry solemnly brought a particle of the relics of the Great Martyr Barbara from Baturyn to the house in procession; Hetman Ivan Mazepa gave permission for the translation. As the translation took place on a Tuesday, the saint established in the house the custom of reading the akathist to St Barbara on Tuesdays¹.

St Theodosius of Chernihiv also stayed in this monastery: soon after his tonsure at the Kyiv Caves Lavra the young monk, seeking solitude, left Kyiv and settled in the remote Krupytsky Baturyn monastery, known for the strictness of its monastic life, and was ordained hieromonk there².

In 1708 the house was laid waste by the Russian army, which took Baturyn by storm after Hetman Ivan Mazepa went over to the Swedes in the war between Russia and Sweden. The old description of the monastery says that in it "the bell tower, the superior's and brethren's cells and the guest house were destroyed to their foundations… for this only, that it was called the Baturyn one"¹.

In the first half of the nineteenth century most of the monastery's main buildings were replaced with stone ones. In 1823-1825 a two-tier bell tower was raised from the brick left after the destruction of 1708; it proved unsound, and when Hegumen Avhustyn decided to add a storey the bell tower was taken down and built anew - now with three tiers. The church of the Transfiguration of the Lord, as first built in 1803, held the church and the refectory under one roof, and in 1858 it was enlarged. The cell building, formerly the superior's, was put up in the 1830s¹.

The existence of the Krupytsky Baturyn monastery ended in 1922, when the Bolsheviks closed the house and dispersed the brethren. The church, the brethren's buildings, the library and the estate were plundered; the great cathedral of St Nicholas, some of the buildings and even the brick wall were taken apart brick by brick down to the foundations, and the monastery well at the skete was filled in. In the 1920s a club was opened in the warm church of the Transfiguration, and the desecrated church was then used as a granary; its dome was removed, the roof finally fell in, and the building began to collapse. In the 1930s the wooden church of St Nicholas at the skete was taken apart as well. During the war two attempts were made to blow up the bell tower, but it withstood the explosions and remained undamaged. After the war a collective farm occupied the monastery grounds, and a school worked in the surviving brethren's building².

In May 1999 the school was moved out of the brethren's building because its walls were unsafe, and what remained of the monastery was returned to the eparchy. In the same year the nuns Dorofeia and Afanasiia of the Yelets Dormition convent were sent to restore the derelict house. They arrived in October, two weeks before the snow fell; among ruins and heaps of rubbish overgrown with nettles and weeds, in the building of the former school they managed to find two whole and relatively dry rooms with a stove².

Hegumena Dorofeia (Khokhlova) led the house from its revival until her repose on 6 August 2026; during her years as hegumena large-scale restoration works were carried out on the main church, the sisters' buildings and the monastery wall³. On 16 September 2019, the twentieth anniversary of the house's revival, she was decorated with the Order of St Olga Equal-to-the-Apostles at the Divine Liturgy in the church of the Transfiguration⁴.

Three old stone buildings of the nineteenth century survive today on the main grounds - the bell tower, the warm church of the Transfiguration of the Lord and the cell building. The wall with its round turrets and the holy gates, an arched passage with two side wickets, were built in 2005-2006. The hegumena's house is a wooden building of 1961 faced with brick in 2005¹.

Half a kilometre west of the house lies the Skytok - the place where, by tradition, the monastery was founded and where it later kept a skete in which St Dimitry of Rostov lived. By the end of the twentieth century the Skytok was derelict: the saint's cell had been sold at the end of the first half of the nineteenth century and moved to the school of the well-known Baturyn beekeeper Petro Prokopovych, and the church was destroyed in the Soviet period. In 2008 springs of water opened at the Skytok, and in the same year the spring began to be laid out⁵.

Among the holy things of the house are the Melenska icon of the Mother of God, brought in 2005 from the village of Melnia; the icon of St Nicholas of Myra, which a woman of the neighbouring village of Kholymonove hid when the skete was destroyed and which was returned to the house in 2001; and the icon of St Dimitry of Rostov with a particle of his relics⁶.

The house keeps the Transfiguration of the Lord on 6 (19) August, the memory of St Nicholas of Myra on 9 (22) May and 6 (19) December, and the memory of St Dimitry of Rostov on 21 September (4 October) and 28 October (10 November)⁷. On 10 November 2022, the day of St Dimitry, a festal Divine Liturgy was served in the main church of the house, and after it a moleben before the venerated icon of the saint⁸.