St. John the Theologian's Monastery

The men's monastery of St John the Evangelist stands in the village of Khreshchatyk on the high right bank of the Dniester, opposite Zalishchyky, and belongs to the Chernivtsi-Bukovyna eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church¹. By tradition, monks of the Great Skete of Maniava settled here as early as the seventeenth century: having seen an unusual light above a spring on the eve of the feast of the Apostle John the Evangelist, they raised a cross on that spot, and the village took its name from it¹.

The skete was closed after a dispute with the bishop of Rădăuți and was restored in the middle of the eighteenth century; the first known monk to settle there in that period was hieromonk Venedykt¹. In the 1760s a stone church of the Apostle John the Evangelist was built here at the expense of the Serbian merchant Teodor Predoi, and his son, who bore the same name, completed the work; the lands were secured for the skete by the Moldavian ruler Hryhorii Kallimakh¹.

In 1775 Bukovyna passed to the Austrian empire, and in the early 1780s the policy of secularisation closed the monasteries and sketes of Bukovyna, Khreshchatyk among them, while its church remained a parish church¹. Part of the property was sold off during the financial crisis of 1811–1812, and most of the monastery's own documents burned during the First World War¹.

In 1931 the Synod of the Romanian Church decreed the restoration of the Khreshchatyk skete¹, and in 1932 hieromonk Metodii (Menzak) came here².

At the end of April 1957, during Holy Week, St Kuksha of Odesa was transferred to the monastery; his Life records the words he spoke here: "Here I am at home, here I am on Athos"⁴. The same comparison with Athos is repeated by church reporting of later years⁵. In 1960 the Soviet authorities closed the women's monastery in Chernivtsi and moved its nuns to Khreshchatyk, while the monks of this house were sent to the Pochaiv Lavra and St Kuksha to the monastery in Odesa^{1, 4}. The community was closed altogether soon afterwards, and that closure lasted a quarter of a century¹.

On 27 August 1989 the Chernivtsi oblast executive committee returned the former monastery buildings and land to the diocesan administration, and from 1991 monastic life resumed at Khreshchatyk¹. Since 1993 the annual cross processions on the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist have been held again¹.

The old church of the Apostle John the Evangelist, rebuilt in 1975, is a listed architectural monument and holds relic particles of the saints of the Kyiv Caves, while the Annunciation cathedral with its lower church of the Nativity of St John the Baptist was completed in 1998; the lower church holds relic particles of St Kuksha the New and St Lavrentii of Chernihiv and a renewed icon of the Great Martyr Barbara¹. Beside them stand a chapel over the spring of the Apostle John the Evangelist and a chapel of St Kuksha the New of 1996, a refectory building with its church of 1999–2001, three brotherhood buildings of 1992–1996 and an outbuilding; the monastery holds 10 hectares of land with a subsidiary farm¹.

The brotherhood celebrates the services daily, and every week from Friday to Saturday night vigils are held, beginning at two in the morning¹. The patronal feasts are 9 October and 21 May, the Annunciation on 7 April and the Nativity of St John the Baptist on 7 July, on the eve of which, on 5 July, the traditional cross procession sets out from Chernivtsi¹; church reports of different years testify that these feasts are kept to this day^{5, 6, 7}. The Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine, among the monuments of the Zastavna district, names the Khreshchatyk monastery of St John the Evangelist as active³.