Horodnytsya St. George's stauropegial Monastery

Horodnytsya St. George's stauropegial Monastery stands on the high bank of the river Sluch in the settlement of Horodnytsya in the Zhytomyr region^{1, 2}. The house is stauropegial: it answers directly to the Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine rather than to a territorial eparchy^{2, 3}.

Local historical accounts hold that a monastery existed at Horodnytsya as early as the seventeenth century⁴. The documented history of the present house begins with a wooden church of the Great Martyr George, built in the town at the parishioners' expense - in 1744^{4, 5} or in 1774^{1, 6}, according to different sources. A women's monastic community opened at the church in 1891^{1, 4, 5, 6}. In 1903 a masonry five-domed church of St. George was raised beside it at the expense of the landowner H. Hyzhytskyi⁶ and consecrated on 6 May¹; the old wooden church was re-consecrated at the same time in honour of St. Simeon the Stylite^{1, 5}. A parish school worked at the church, and two buildings were later put up for it⁶. In 1914 the small women's community was dissolved and a men's monastery was founded in its place^{1, 5}.

The house was closed in 1923^{1, 5, 6}. The Simeon church was destroyed in the 1930s^{1, 5}, and from 1945 the masonry church of St. George served as an ordinary parish church^{1, 5}.

Monastic life revived at that church in 1979, at first unofficially^{1, 2, 4, 5}; the monastery was legalised in 1991⁶. Since that revival two monastic communities, one of men and one of women, have stood at Horodnytsya^{4, 5}. In 1994 the house received stauropegia from the Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine^{2, 3}. A stone chapel-altar of the same dedication was raised on the site of the destroyed Simeon church^{5, 7}, and in 1996-1997 a heated church of the "Assuage My Sorrows" Icon of the Mother of God was fitted out in one of the residential buildings⁵.

That icon became the principal treasure of the house. By Journal No. 28 of 25 September 2018 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church glorified the Horodnytsya "Assuage My Sorrows" Icon of the Mother of God kept at the monastery and established its feast on 25 January / 7 February⁸. On 14 September 2021 a new church built in honour of that icon was consecrated at the house^{7, 9}.

Five churches stand on the monastery grounds today: the church of St. George of 1903, the church of the "Assuage My Sorrows" Icon of 2021, the church of the Great Martyr Barbara built in 2009, the chapel-altar on the site of the Simeon church, and the church of St. Spyridon of Trimythous⁷. By Journal No. 7 of 1 April 2015 the Holy Synod blessed the founding of the monastery's metochion in Novohrad-Volynskyi and the registration of its charter¹⁰. The patronal feast of the house is the day of the Great Martyr George, 23 April / 6 May^{3, 11}.