Pochaev Holy Spirit Monastery

The Holy Spirit community stands on the summit of a small wooded hill a few kilometres from the Holy Dormition Pochaiv Lavra, and from the porch of its church there is a view of the Lavra³. There are two different answers to the question of how the community began. Publications of the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries place the founding of the skete at the turn of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, relying on a Polish-language text and several Cyrillic texts on the history of Pochaiv in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, published in 1896-1898; the Polish text, attributed in that publication to the Basilians and dated 1732, tells of miraculous visions in 1197-1198 on the site of the future community and of its founding in 1219 by an elder Methodius from Athos¹. The community itself, however, notes that the remaining texts are philologically inadequate, abound in anachronisms and were subjected to harsh scholarly criticism, and that during the celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the transfer of the Pochaiv icon of the Mother of God to the Lavra (1897) they were passed over in silence by the clergy; at the same time a number of twentieth-century authors allowed that the tradition of the elder Methodius had a historical basis, which is why his image is sometimes painted on icons beside St Job of Pochaiv¹.

A skete of the Pochaiv Lavra is documented here from the first half of the eighteenth century¹. The book "Pochaevskaya Uspenskaya Lavra" by Archpriest Andrei Khoinatsky and H. Kryzhanovsky (1897) says that nothing is known about the founding of this skete, and that in 1743 its Uniate superior Makarii Neronovych attended a congress of Basilian monks in Dubno¹. According to other publications which the community itself cites, in 1714 Bishop Joseph (Vyhovsky) of Lutsk handed over the property of the skete together with the property of the Pochaiv monastery to the newly elected hegumen Pachomius (Zablotsky), and the church of the Holy Trinity and cells for the monks were built by the Basilians in 1725 or in 1728 - those same publications give two different dates¹. At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the skete became deserted¹.

In 1900 the Lavra revived the skete¹. In 1901 a stone church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit was laid here, with a semi-underground chapel of St Seraphim of Sarov, and a wooden church of All Saints was raised, later faced with brick on the outside^{1, 2}. In 1903 the Holy Spirit church, with a bell tower over its vestibule, and the lower chapel of St Seraphim were consecrated^{1, 2}.

In 1959 the civil authorities closed the community and placed a psychiatric dispensary in it¹. The skete was revived in 1990¹. Since then the church of the Holy Spirit with its chapel, the All Saints church and the residential blocks have been repaired, and a second bell tower, a chapel-altar for summer services, a chapel over the well and a baptistery chapel have been built; on the upper floor of the block above the holy gates a church of St Onuphrius the Great, known as the Gate church, has been consecrated^{1, 2}.

The Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church considered the statute of this community twice in the course of 2004: by journal no. 12 of 9 March it adopted the statute of the Pochaiv Holy Spirit monastery of the Ternopil eparchy in a new redaction, and by journal no. 29 of 26 July it adopted changes and additions to it^{6, 7}. Among its holy objects the community names a copy of the Pochaiv icon of the Mother of God; a copy of the Iveron icon, painted on Athos in 1912; the icon of the Mother of God "Surety of Sinners", of which it reports that it was renewed in 1992 in a priest's house in the Kherson region and was given to the community in 1995; an iron cross of St Nikita the Stylite of Pereslavl; an icon of St Seraphim of Sarov on part of the stone on which he prayed a thousand days and nights; and a myrrh-streaming head from the caves of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra⁴. The community's patronal feasts are the Day of the Holy Trinity, the Day of the Holy Spirit and the memory of All Saints, together with the memory of St Onuphrius the Great (12/25 June) and of St Seraphim of Sarov (2/15 January, 19 July/1 August)⁵.