Katerlez St. George's Convent

Near Kerch, on a hill by the village of Voykovo in Crimea, from the second half of the nineteenth century there stood the Katerlez St. George's Monastery, founded on a hill long venerated by local people as the hill of St. George. Bishop Hermogen wrote that the reason for opening the kinovia was a local legend about the miraculous finding of an icon of St. George in a spring¹, while F. V. Livanov records an account, told by Avksentiy Mitilino and the brothers Dmytro and Fedir Katsyko, of an apparition of St. George the Victory-Bearer on the hill, after which a hoofprint remained on a stone¹.

In 1852 a first chapel was put up on the site with funds from N. Dzhanibekov and F. Sozonov, but it was destroyed during the Crimean War¹. In 1856, visiting Kerch, Archbishop Innokentiy of Kherson and Tavrida inspected the hill and proposed building a church there in honour of St. George¹.

With funds from well-off townspeople a new church with a wooden dome was built in 1857, and a bell tower was added in 1862¹. At the archbishop's own petition, only after his death, the Holy Synod on 12 January 1859 resolved to open a supernumerary cenobitic kinovia there¹.

Over 1859-1869, mainly with funds from the merchant I. Ye. Salatych, three brothers' wings were built, and a refectory with a kitchen was added to one of them that same year, 1859¹. In 1871 a stone hotel for pilgrims appeared, funded by the honorary citizen of Kerch A. Averkiyeva, and over 1889-1893 the house gained a further refectory, a prosphora bakery, a kitchen, a bathhouse, new pilgrims' quarters, workshops and a smithy¹. Only on 22 October 1898 was a heated church built in honour of the venerable Anthony and Theodosius of the Caves, in which the relics of eight saints were kept¹.

History has preserved the names of the men's community's superiors - Hieromonk Mikhail, Archimandrite Petr, Hegumen Filofey; the last to lead the kinovia was Hegumen Sergiy¹. According to another account, the house was begun, together with Father Mikhail, by two elders - Hryhoriy Hryhoryev and Antoniy Petrenko⁴. Where in 1877 the Katerlez kinovia counted ten residents including the hegumen, by the end of the nineteenth century the brotherhood had grown to twenty-four¹.

Because of the intemperate way of life of some of the monks and breaches of their monastic vows, in 1900 the men's community was turned into a women's one¹; the same reason, though more guardedly, is given by another source, according to which the monastic rule was broken and the house's inner life did not always follow God's laws⁴. Hegumeness Leonida, who had come from Moscow's Strastnoy Convent, was appointed head of the new women's community, and the number of residents soon grew: in 1912 the Katerlez kinovia counted five nuns, three novices and eighty women - eighty-eight in all¹.

The Kerch city government allotted the kinovia ten and a half desyatinas of land, part of it donated by landowner K. A. Khamarito, and by 1887 its landholding had grown to twenty-one desyatinas¹. Among its sources of income were interest on an inviolable capital fund, a significant part of which consisted of bank bonds worth five thousand rubles bequeathed to the house by Archbishop Innokentiy himself, and by 1912 its income had grown to 8094 rubles in cash and securities¹.

On 20 February 1921 the Katerlez monastery was closed and a children's home was opened on its grounds; its metochion in Kerch was soon liquidated as well¹. The church served for a while as a parish church, but it too was closed in 1923, and in 1924, after the children's home was liquidated, all the monastery's buildings were dismantled for building materials¹. According to one source, this house was the first in Crimea to be closed by the Soviet authorities⁴; the stone on which, according to tradition, St. George had appeared also suffered then - it was blown up, but a fragment bearing the hoofprint survived⁴.

The monastery was revived at the end of the twentieth century: on 12 March 1998 the Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Journal No. 16) blessed the opening of the St. George's monastery in Kerch, in the Simferopol eparchy², and on 22 November 2000 the same Synod (Journal No. 19) blessed its opening specifically as a women's monastery of the same eparchy, appointing Oleksandra Liashko senior sister of the newly formed community, with monastic tonsure to follow³.

In these years nuns and novices settled in two buildings barely fit for habitation, under the leadership of Hegumeness Akylina (Liashko); a temporary church was set up in a small cell, a chapel was built, and the procession from the Church of St. John the Forerunner was resumed⁴.