Kyiv Mezhigirsky Transfiguration Monastery

The Kyiv Mezhigirsky Transfiguration Monastery of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church is being revived in the Mezhyhiria tract near the village of Novi Petrivtsi, Vyshhorod district, in the Kyiv Region^{1, 5, 6}. The ancient house stood here in a hollow between the wooded slopes of the right bank of the Dnipro and was, according to the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine, the second stauropegial monastery of the Kyiv eparchy after the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra^{2, 3}.

The traditions about its beginning disagree with one another. According to the monastic legend recorded by the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine, the house was founded in 988 by Greek monks led by Metropolitan Mykhailo, or else in 1164 by Prince A. Boholiubskyi². The same encyclopedia's article on Novi Petrivtsi relates instead a legend by which the monastery already existed at the beginning of the tenth century⁴, while the historical note of the Petrivtsi village council places the arrival of Greek monks on the Dnipro bluffs in the ninth century⁷.

As early as the second half of the nineteenth century the Kyiv historians M. Zakrevskyi and M. Petrov cast doubt on these legendary accounts and dated the appearance of the legend itself to the beginning of the seventeenth century². The first reliable evidence of the house belongs to the beginning of the sixteenth century^{2, 4}; the Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia writes that the monastery arose in the days of Kyivan Rus, but that the first documentary mentions of it are known from the beginning of the sixteenth century³.

The chronicles call the holy place the Southern Lavra, and the first stone church to appear on its grounds was called the White Saviour; in the time of Khan Batu's invasion that building was destroyed, and the Mezhyhiria brotherhood raised a new one, now of wood, the church of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker⁵. The village council's historical note places the destruction of the house by the Mongol invasion in 1240⁷.

In the first decades of the sixteenth century a church of Saint Nicholas stood here, and the brotherhood received a tribute of honey from the villages of Vyshhorod, Petrivske, Tovstyi Lis, Orane, Kozarovychi and Varemlia². In 1500 Prince Yu. Slutskyi presented the monastery with a Gospel book².

In 1523 King Sigismund I granted hegumen M. Shcherbyna a privilege over the house - land and exemption from dues - and the Kyiv voivodes and metropolitans were forbidden to interfere in its affairs²; to the same year the Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia assigns the restoration of the monastery after a period of desolation³.

After the Union of Lublin of 1569 the Polish kings began to grant the house in tenure to the scribes of the crown chancery for Ruthenian affairs: in 1571 and 1572 the monastery, together with the Vyshhorod hillfort, went to the royal scribe Ye. Vysotskyi, and after his death in 1580 to Ya. Vysotskyi, who held them until 1595². At the end of the sixteenth century Prince K. Ostrozkyi cared for the house, and in 1592 it was plundered by the rebel Cossacks of K. Kosynskyi^{2, 7}.

It is held that in 1610, through the efforts of hegumen Afanasii, the monastery obtained stauropegia under the direct authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople^{2, 3}; according to the account of the Church's Information and Education Department, it was the elder Afanasii, who had come from Mount Athos, who succeeded in restoring the house in the seventeenth century⁵.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century there were three churches here - the Transfiguration church of 1611, the church of Saint Nicholas with a refectory of 1609 and the over-gate church of Saints Peter and Paul with a belfry of 1607 - as well as a cave church, and the whole complex was built of wood³. The monastery is depicted in that state in a drawing of 1651 by the Netherlandish artist A. van Westerveld; all the wooden buildings perished in the fire of 1665³.

The house became renowned for its spiritual care of the Zaporozhian Cossacks². After the destruction of the Trakhtemyriv monastery it became the military monastery of the Zaporozhian Sich - in 1672-1709 and 1734-75 - and the Cossacks placed under it the Sich church of the Intercession, the Samara monastery with its lands and a number of campaign churches, confirming this by their universals².

The Mezhyhiria monks sent clergy to the Sich churches and to the Samara monastery of Saint Nicholas^{2, 3}, received the Zaporozhians who came on pilgrimage, for penance, for the novitiate and for monastic tonsure, gathered alms for the monastery every year and carried out the commissions of the Sich elders². From 1672 a hospital for old and infirm Sich Cossacks operated at the house, and for its upkeep the Sich transferred landholdings to the monastery^{2, 3}.

The hetmans' universals granted the house considerable estates: in 1656 B. Khmelnytskyi conveyed to it the town of Vyshhorod with the villages of Petrivtsi and Moshchony^{2, 7}, and by the tsars' charters the monastery received the settlements of Bobrovychi, Kozarovychi, Yasnohorodka, Ihnativka and Hlibivka². The Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia names among those who cared for the house the hetmans B. Khmelnytskyi and I. Mazepa and the last kish otaman of the Zaporozhian Sich, P. Kalnyshevskyi³.

According to the historical note of the Petrivtsi village council, Metropolitan Petro Mohyla of Kyiv held up the monks of Mezhyhiria and their strict observance of the rule as an example, and the brotherhood at that time numbered about one hundred and fifty men⁷.

In 1652 Patriarch Ioakym (Savielov) took monastic tonsure in the monastery; he went on to care for the house and financed the building of the masonry Transfiguration cathedral of 1676-1690^{2, 3}. In 1703, by a charter of Peter I, the monastery lost its stauropegial status and was subordinated to the Kyiv Metropolia, and in 1710 the stauropegia was restored².

Fires occurred at the house in 1663, 1665, 1717, 1764 and 1787, after each of which it was rebuilt more than once². In the eighteenth century the monastery ranked among the middling ones: it had landholdings and an economy with mills, lakes, glassworks and taverns, and the peasants owed it two days' labour service².

In 1766 an elongated two-storey masonry brothers' block was raised opposite the western facade of the cathedral, and in 1772-1774, at the expense of kish otaman P. Kalnyshevskyi, a masonry block with an over-gate belfry and a church of Saints Peter and Paul; the author of both was the Kyiv architect I. Hryhorovych-Barskyi^{3, 7}. At various times the house had a Transfiguration cathedral, a church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, a refectory church of Saint Nicholas, a hospital church of the Annunciation and an over-gate church of Saints Peter and Paul².

Buried here are S. Palii, colonel of Bila Tserkva and Fastiv, and the acting hetman O. Hohol²; the Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia dates the burial of O. Hohol to 1679 and that of S. Palii to 1710, and names as a novice of the monastery M. Zalizniak, the leader of the Koliivshchyna³. The so-called Mezhyhiria Chronicle of 1608-1700, which belonged to the Mezhyhiria precentor I. Koshchakivskyi, was compiled at the house².

The monastery was suppressed in execution of Catherine II's decree of 10 April 1786 on the secularisation of church and monastic landholdings, and its estates were taken into the treasury^{2, 3, 7}. According to the village council's historical note, the house was to be moved to Tavria and a military infirmary placed on its site⁷. In April 1787, on the eve of the empress's visit, the monastery burned down³.

The Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia notes that a version circulated in Kyiv that the fire was arson ordered by Catherine II, and that T. Shevchenko left a mention of it in the poem "Nevolnyk"; the monastery complex itself was drawn by T. Shevchenko in 1843³, and in the same year he visited Novi Petrivtsi⁴.

The cathedral suffered a second time from the fire of 1810, after which the architect I. Kedrin rebuilt it in classicist forms, and in 1820 the church was consecrated anew³. On the grounds of the former house, on the initiative of the Kyiv magistracy, the Kyiv-Mezhyhiria faience factory operated in 1798-1884^{2, 3}; for it I. Kedrin built eight production blocks in 1812-1817 and rebuilt the masonry brothers' block in 1816-1817³.

In 1885-86 the monastery was restored through the efforts of Metropolitan Platon (Horodetskyi)². By a decree of the Holy Synod of 17 January 1886 Saint Iona of Kyiv was appointed superior of the house with elevation to the rank of archimandrite⁸; according to the account of the Holy Trinity Ionynsky Monastery, he was made manager of all the building works, and before long, through the efforts of the superior and the brotherhood, the house began to prosper⁹.

In 1894 the monastery was converted into a convent and subordinated to the Kyiv-Pokrovsky Convent^{2, 3}. At the end of the nineteenth century the Transfiguration and the Saints Peter and Paul churches were in use here, and a parish school and an agricultural school were opened at the house². The monastery operated until 1919, when it was closed by the Bolsheviks^{2, 3, 4}.

In 1921 a group of artists seeking to revive the traditions of Ukrainian ceramics settled within its walls, and in 1923-1931 the buildings were occupied by the Mezhyhiria art and ceramics technical school, from 1930 an institute, transferred to Kyiv in 1931; the cells were settled by the Boichukist commune^{2, 3, 4}. In 1930 F. Ernst proposed creating a state cultural and historical reserve here, but this was not carried out, and in 1931 the iconostasis of the Transfiguration cathedral was destroyed³.

In execution of the Politburo decision of 13 April 1935 the cathedral and all the monastery buildings were demolished in the course of 1935-1936³; the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine dates the dismantling of the monastery buildings to 1933-35². The Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia calls the monastery an outstanding complex of architectural monuments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whose destruction significantly impoverished the historical and cultural heritage of Ukraine³. Of the ancient house there survives the monastery spring Dzvinkova Krynytsia, which since 1984 has been a hydrological nature monument of local significance⁴.

The opening of the Kyiv Mezhigirsky Transfiguration Monastery for men in the village of Novi Petrivtsi, Vyshhorod district, Kyiv region, was blessed by the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at its sitting of 14 June 2011, by journal No. 31¹. In the same year the Church began work on restoring the holy place⁵.

On 10 April 2021, on the Parental Saturday of Great Lent, a Divine Liturgy and a memorial service were celebrated at the house according to the ancient seventeenth-century chronicle commemoration list of the monk-Cossacks and ktitors of the monastery⁵. On 29 July 2021 the chancellor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Antonii of Boryspil and Brovary, performed the rite of consecration of the dome cross of the church being built in honour of Saint Leo of Optina, after which the cross was set on the central dome of the church⁶.

In his address after that service Metropolitan Antonii said that the house had closed several times and that, "if the Lord allows, this will already be the third re-establishment of this house"⁶. Specialists hold that, thanks to the chronicles, the drawings and the archival photographs, rebuilding the house is entirely possible⁵.