Domnytsya Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God Monastery

The Domnytsia monastery of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God stands in the village of Domnytsia, Mena district, Chernihiv region⁴. The house was founded on the place where the wonderworking Domnytsia icon of the Mother of God appeared¹.

According to tradition, a blind girl named Domna saw the icon in a dream, soon found the holy image in the forest and was miraculously given her sight; the house itself notes that this tradition is absent from the old descriptions of the monastery¹.

Two different sources speak of the beginning of the house. An archival description of the monastery dated 1779 states that at the end of the seventeenth century the general obozny Ivan Skoropadsky, the future hetman of Ukraine, set up a wooden chapel on the place where the icon had appeared, and that later, in 1686-1690, a small wooden church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God was built beside it¹. The press service of the Chernihiv eparchy gives a different beginning: by its account the Domnytsia monastery was founded at the beginning of the 60s of the seventeenth century by the hermit father Klymentiy, one of the monks who were reviving the see of Chernihiv after the Polish invasion⁴.

The monastery's synodicon, compiled in 1694 with the blessing of Archbishop Feodosiy (Uhlytskyi) of Chernihiv and "by the labour of father Innokentiy Makarevych", "builder of the house of the wonderworking Dumnytsia icon", names the former hegumens Klyment and Dionisiy¹. According to the lives of St Feodosiy, in that same year of 1694 the hierarch consecrated here the new wooden church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God¹. According to the Chronicle of Samiylo Velychko, in 1696 "hieromonk Innokentiy, hegumen of the Dumnytsia monastery" took part in the election of St John (Maksymovych) to the place of the reposed St Feodosiy¹.

The universal of Hetman Ivan Mazepa of 16 May 1699 reads: "Out of our Christian piety, at the place called Dumnytsia, in the Chernihiv regiment, lying opposite the town of Berezna, where the wonderworking image of the Most Holy Mother of God newly appeared and grants healing to many, having at our own cost established a church in the name of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God and having built a monastery from its very foundation for our own salvation, we have bought for that house a mill, fields, hayfields and clearings lying about that monastery"¹.

In 1714 the sotnyk Yosyp Sichevsky put up, in place of Skoropadsky's chapel, a wooden church of St Paraskeva - it stood outside the enclosure of the house, and in its sanctuary, until 1798, was kept the stump of the tree on which the Domnytsia icon had appeared¹. At about the same time Skoropadsky himself built in the monastery a wooden refectory church of the Transfiguration¹.

In 1772-1779 a stone church of St Nicholas of Myra was raised in the house¹. About 1780 the river Dumnytsia, which flowed past the monastery, changed its course, but the name bound up with it stayed with the house and in time changed into "Domnytsia"¹.

At the end of the eighteenth century the house fell into decline and there were plans to close it, but the family of the general judge Andrey Bezborodko, who lived in the village of Stolne, wished to renew the monastery, and in 1800-1807 count Illia Andreyevich rebuilt it in stone 100 metres north of the old monastery grounds¹. In 1806 the cathedral of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God was consecrated on the place where the icon had been found, its design attributed to Giacomo Quarenghi, with side chapels of St Alexander the presbyter on the right and of the holy martyr Elias the Egyptian on the left¹. Around it stood the refectory church of the holy martyr Paraskeva of Friday, consecrated in 1807, the superior's house, the cells and the enclosure wall, into whose ring the church of St Nicholas was drawn after being converted into a bell tower¹. Count Illia Andreyevich himself was buried in the cathedral of the house in 1814¹.

In 1846 a stone church of the holy apostles Peter and Paul was built on the site of the old monastery grounds, demolished in the Soviet period, which became the burial vault of count Petro Aleksandrovich Prozorovsky¹.

The Domnytsia image of the Most Holy Mother of God was venerated not only in the years of the monastery's founding but in the centuries that followed³. In 1738 a cross procession with the wonderworking icon was made around Berezna, to guard the town from the plague that was raging in the district, and the people believed that "solely by Her intercession we were saved"³. In 1771 an epidemic of plague that had reached the town withdrew after a cross procession with the holy image through the streets of Berezna, and in memory of this, in 1772-1873, a thanksgiving cross procession was made every year from the town to the house³. The drought that gripped Berezna and its surroundings in 1868 ended after a cross procession with the wonderworking icon over the fields³. Because of frequent fires in the town in 1871 a cross procession with the holy image came here once more, after which several seats of fire were found and made safe in time³. From 1873 the cross procession to Berezna with the wonderworking icon was an annual one³. Among the holy things of the house is a copy of the wonderworking Domnytsia icon of the Mother of God, painted not earlier than the middle of the nineteenth century and preserved by the villagers³.

In the 1920s the house was closed and turned into a colony, and in the 1930s disabled children were settled here, who during the war were shot by the Nazis; a monument south of the Paraskeva church is the reminder of it¹.

In 1941-1942 the well-known elder St Lavrentiy of Chernihiv sent to Domnytsia many nuns from among his spiritual children, and they, with his blessing, set up a women's house in the monastery, serving in the Paraskeva church¹. At that same time father Lavrentiy foretold that the monastery would be closed again in 1952¹. Holding the Domnytsia abbess Arkhelaia in deep respect, the elder used to say, "She drinks her tea, and the prayer beats in her heart", and would add that "if you are in despondency, then turn to her"¹.

Until the beginning of the 1980s the house was occupied by a tuberculosis dispensary, for which an additional block was built, and since 1983 a correctional colony has stood here¹.

In 1993 the Paraskeva church in the western part of the house was handed over to the faithful and became a parish church, and in 1995 the revival of the men's monastery began at it¹. The eastern half of the house remains the territory of the colony: the cathedral, the bell tower and the blocks stand there, and in 1993-1995 the colony put up a number of new structures¹. In 2003 the Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the cathedral¹. The inmates of the colony are under the spiritual care of the monastery¹.

On 29 February 2020 a fire broke out in the house and damaged the church of St Paraskeva, built in 1714⁴. According to the police, the report of the fire came in at 6:50, and rescue brigades and a response group of the patrol police went to the scene⁴. "By the mercy of God no one was hurt while the holy things were being saved from the burning church", the eparchial press service stated, adding that the restoration of this monument of eighteenth-century architecture "will require hundreds of thousands of hryvnias"⁴. The ensemble of the Domnytsia house, in the eparchy's assessment, is a rare monument of town planning and architecture from the flowering of classicism in Ukraine and is of high scholarly and artistic value⁴.

The house keeps the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God on 8 (21) September². The celebration in honour of the Domnytsia icon of the Most Holy Mother of God falls on the 10th Friday after Pascha - by tradition this practice goes back to the time of St Feodosiy of Chernihiv - and on 8 (21) September². The memory of the holy martyr Paraskeva of Friday is kept on 28 October (10 November)².