Danivka St. George's Convent

St George's Convent at Danivka stands on a low rise on the right bank of the river Oster, between the town of Kozelets and the village of Danivka; the village's name is the source of the house's second common designation¹. It was founded in 1654 as a men's monastery, and the community here became a women's one after 1917¹.

On how exactly the house came into being the sources differ, and this text does not choose between them. The encyclopaedia assigns the founding to a universal of hetman Bohdan Khmelnytskyi¹; the history the house itself publishes, following the «Историко-статистическое описание Черниговской епархии» of 1873, says that in 1654 the monastic community under ihumen Symeon Chaikovskyi bought the land near Kozelets from Tetiana Zavadska-Voinylovych². That same description of 1873 observes that the universal in question is dated 9 July 1645, whereas Khmelnytskyi became hetman only in 1648 - and so casts doubt on the date itself². The year of the founding is the same in every source.

Later benefactions tied the monastery to people whose names remain in its history. The Kyiv colonel Kostiantyn Solonyna gave the house the village of Danivka in 1687². In 1708 monks moved here from the Pochaiv monastery¹, and in 1713 hetman Ivan Skoropadskyi granted it a charter for the possession of a mill¹.

A wooden church of St George is thought to have stood in the house as early as 1654, while the completion of a new wooden church is documented under 1735³. The contract with the master builder for the stone cathedral was concluded on 4 April 1741, while the document expressly required the church to be raised after the plan and facade of the Ascension cathedral of the Florivskyi monastery in Kyiv, of 1722-1732¹. The Empress Elizabeth gave two thousand roubles towards the building - her signature stood on the charter by which the archbishop of Kyiv allowed the house to collect funds^{1, 3}. The work went slowly: in 1754 the cathedral still stood without a roof¹, and in 1756 the almost finished building was damaged by fire, after which the Kyiv colonel Yevfymii Darahan covered its domes with tin³. The cathedral was consecrated in 1770, when the finishing work was completed^{1, 3}.

The cathedral is cross-domed, three-apsed and three-domed, a rare type for the Left Bank: its composition reproduces the masonry churches of Old Rus, and only three examples of the type survive in Ukraine¹. As an architectural monument of national significance the cathedral carries the protection number 848¹. Beside it stand the building with the warm church of the Holy Trinity and the refectory of 1811, given a second storey in 1854 to the design of the Chernihiv provincial architect M. S. Shchytynskyi, and the cell buildings of 1832 and 1873; the grounds are enclosed by a wall with gates of 1811¹. The four-tier baroque bell tower that stood north-west of the cathedral is gone - it was demolished in the Soviet years, and its appearance is known from an old engraving^{1, 3}.

The house traces its list of superiors from ihumen Symeon (Chaikovskyi), who led it in 1654-1675⁵. In the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries former naval hieromonks were more than once appointed superiors here; one of them, ihumen Varlaam, received after the Russo-Turkish war a gift from the Patriarch of Constantinople of particles of the relics of the martyrs Tryphon and Marina, which remained among the house's chief treasures and were lost in the Soviet period².

In the years of the civil war ihumen Valentyn was shot by a Red Army soldier on the threshold of his cell, and one of the hierodeacons was taken outside the gates and shot^{2, 5}. Most of the brotherhood were driven out, but the closure was postponed by the arrival at the monastery of nuns from other houses² - and so the house became a women's one.

In 1934 the nuns were evicted, and a community of Uzbeks, deported from their homeland for refusing to join the collective farms, was settled in the monastery². They kept their customs, national dress among them, and lived at peace with the surrounding villages; before their eyes and before the eyes of local people the valuables were carried out of St George's cathedral under military guard. The Uzbeks lived in the monastery until 1937². In that same year a boarding home for the disabled was set up on the grounds¹; by the house's own account the Home for the Disabled and Elderly was placed here in 1938².

In 1941 the occupiers kept the Home for the Disabled but shot the Jewish and Roma patients, and placed a police post in the house². In 1942-1943 they allowed services to resume in the warm church of the Holy Trinity, and as they retreated they damaged the cathedral^{1, 2}. Until its own closure in 1947 the Trinity church served as the parish church for the people of Danivka².

Conservation works were carried out on the complex in 1952 and in the 1970s¹. The church revival of the house began in 1995², the main restoration ran until 2004¹, and the cathedral itself was repaired in 1997-2000 and adorned with a stone iconostasis in the Ukrainian baroque style³.

In 1997 the icon of the Mother of God «Аз есмь с вами и никтоже на вы» came to the monastery, and on 23 April 2002 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed the veneration of the image as wonderworking, named it the Danivka icon of the Mother of God and set its feast on the fifth Sunday of Great Lent⁴. Another image with a history of its own survives in the house: after the valuables were carried out of the cathedral in the 1930s, the people of Danivka found an old copy of the Kazan icon on the church floor among broken glass, took it to one of their houses, later placed it in the village cemetery church, and in 2000 one of the villagers returned the icon to the monastery⁴.

The house keeps its patronal feast on the day of the Great Martyr George, 23 April (6 May)⁶. The three hundred and seventieth anniversary of the founding was marked here on 19 October: three hierarchs served the Divine Liturgy, and at the end of the service a procession was made in the house with the reading of the Gospel and sprinkling with blessed water⁷. Archimandrite Irynei (Voronkov), the oldest cleric of the Chernihiv Eparchy, spent the last years of his life in this monastery, having given almost eighty years to the service of the Church, fifty-six of them in priestly rank; he reposed on 2 March 2026, in his 99th year, and on 4 March he was given the funeral rite and buried at the house⁸.