Annunciation Monastery

The Annunciation Monastery stands in the town of Nizhyn in the Chernihiv region. From its consecration in 1716 a second name has stayed with it, "Nazareth of the Most Holy Theotokos", by which the Nizhyn Diocese still calls the house today^{1, 4, 11}.

It was founded by Metropolitan Stefan (Yavorskyi) of Riazan and Murom. He was born in 1658 in Halychyna, from where his family moved to the village of Krasylivka near Nizhyn; he studied at the Kyiv-Mohyla College, was tonsured at the Kyiv Caves Lavra, and after the death of Patriarch Adrian became locum tenens of the patriarchal throne^{1, 5}.

For the stone church of the Annunciation the hierarch chose Nizhyn precisely because his brother, Archpriest Pavlo Yavorskyi, served there as rector of the St Nicholas cathedral^{1, 4}. The foundation was laid in 1702, and in 1704 the founder concluded a building contract with the master Hryhorii Ustymov¹. The diocesan account remarks that this is the only church built by Metropolitan Stefan, and that for it he chose not the place of his long service but the land of his homeland⁴.

The victory at Poltava in 1709, which fell during the building works, the founder saw as one more reason to raise a church with a monastic house, writing that henceforth let there be in the Nizhyn monastery a memorial of that victory^{1, 4}. The consecration took place on 22 July 1716, and with it the monastery was formally established: the house received the name "Nazareth of the Theotokos", was endowed with lands, and its superior received the rank of archimandrite¹.

In 1721 Metropolitan Stefan gave the monastery his library, stipulating in his "Testament" that the house should have a book collection of its own for learned hieromonks¹. He died on 27 November 1722, and his last instruction was to finish the painting of the church, to complete the refectory church and the library room, and to build an almshouse and a bell tower with a large clock for the whole town¹. That design was not carried out: nine years after the founder's death, in 1731, the books were taken out of Nizhyn by government decree to the collegium at the Protection Monastery in Kharkiv^{1, 4}.

In the second half of the eighteenth century the house suffered three times from fire⁴. Under Archimandrite Mytrofan (Horlenko), who governed it from 1749 to 1756, the refectory burned down in 1750, and in the same year the superior raised a stone cell block^{1, 2}; in 1757 the monastery was partly damaged by a town fire, and in 1797 a great internal fire laid it waste. There was a plan to close the house then, but the people of Nizhyn persuaded the government to keep it¹.

The monastery was rebuilt by Archimandrite Viktor (Cherniaiev), superior from 1803 to 1823. Vasyl in the world, he was born in 1761 in Montenegro to a Bulgarian merchant family, finished the Kyiv theological academy in 1791 and was tonsured in 1793⁶. Finding only 732 roubles in assignats in the monastery's treasury, he settled in Nizhyn itself and gave himself to the house⁶.

In 1808 the archimandrite reported that since his arrival the stone bell tower, the sacristy and the warm church of the Apostles Peter and Paul had been completed, and beneath them, from the bell tower to the corner of the eastern wall, twenty-one stone shops, and that a wall had been raised on the west side together with two holy gates⁶. The shops on the lower floor were let out, and the warm church was placed on the second floor of the eastern half of the block².

In 1811 he reported to his bishop that dangerous cracks had opened in the great church⁶. The major repair of the cathedral ran from 1811 to 1816: the domes and pediments were given features of classicism, the church was painted anew - among the new compositions appeared portraits of Metropolitan Stefan (Yavorskyi), of Peter the First and of Alexander the First - and the seven-tier iconostasis was restored². At the same time a hostel for pilgrims was arranged at the house and the dependent Vetkho-Rizdvianyi monastery was renewed⁶.

The means for this were largely his own: the archimandrite drew 12 000 chervonets from his homeland, which came at the rate of the day to 140 000 roubles in assignats, and spent them on the restoration of the house⁶. For the brethren he composed a rule of life, and in 1818 he was awarded the Order of Saint Anna of the second class⁶.

His superiorship ended in a conflict with the bishop of Chernihiv: by a synodal decree of 6 June 1823 Viktor was deprived of his office, and the people of Nizhyn, struck by the removal of their beloved archimandrite, petitioned with one voice on his behalf to the highest name; in 1827 he left the country⁶. The description of the monastery of 1867-1868 recorded that Saint Stefan and Archimandrite Viktor are inseparable in popular memory: the first created and the second re-created this house¹.

A page of the house's history of its own is the veneration of the relics of an ascetic known as Saint Mykhail the Greek. By Nizhyn tradition this hierarch came from the Balkans, died of illness in Nizhyn in 1721 and was buried in the Annunciation church³. By order of Archimandrite Viktor his image was painted over the crypt in 1816 with an inscription saying that the incorrupt relics of Saint Mykhail, who died in 1721, rest here; in the nineteenth century memorial services were ordered at the ascetic's tomb almost weekly³.

In 1943 members of the parish of the Greek church of St Michael secretly carried into their own church the part of the relics that remained after the desecration of the Annunciation cathedral in the 1930s; the further fate of the shrine is unknown³.

The Soviet authorities closed the house and used it for warehouses: the cathedral's iconostasis was destroyed, the burials in the church were plundered, and gates were broken through the western wall wide enough for tractors to drive in⁴. The main church fell into a dangerous state of disrepair¹.

Monastic life returned within these walls in 1999^{1, 4}. In 2022 the diocese marked with the brethren the 320th anniversary of the monastery's founding⁹, and on 12 July 2024, the feast of the chief Apostles Peter and Paul, the brethren of the "Nazareth of the Theotokos" celebrated the 25th anniversary of the restoration of liturgical life in the house¹⁰.

The services are celebrated in the church of Saints Peter and Paul, revived on the second floor of that same old block^{2, 10, 12}; for the patronal feast of 2024 the sisters of the Nizhyn convent, Orthodox townspeople and hundreds of pilgrims came to the house¹¹. Among the house's shrines are old copies of the icons of the Mother of God "of Mercy", "of Augustovo" and "She Who is Quick to Hear"^{3, 4}.

On 21 December 2017 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, by journal No. 33, blessed the glorification of the icon of the Mother of God "O All-Hymned Mother" that is kept in this monastery⁷. The name of the image comes from the border of the Theotokos's maphorion being adorned with a band bearing the text of the strophe of the 13th kontakion of the Great Akathist in Church Slavonic⁸.