Velyki Budishcha Holy Trinity Convent

The Velyki Budishcha Holy Trinity Convent of the Poltava eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church stands in the village of Pysarivshchyna in the Dykanka district of the Poltava region^{1, 6}. The house brought its name from another place: when its first settlement arose, the present village was not yet beside it, and the nearest settlement was Velyki Budyshcha, to which the monastery was attached; having moved in time to Pysarivshchyna, it carried its territorial name there with it⁸.

The Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine dates the beginning of the house to 1672, when a Saviour convent skete was founded on the right bank of the Vorskla, 26 kilometres from Poltava, on what is now the territory of the Dykanka district³. In 1689, on the site of the skete, the General Judge Vasyl Kochubei founded a Saviour convent and gave it a Gospel printed in Moscow in 1681, bearing the donor's own handwritten inscription³.

The monastery was originally situated near the village of Chernechyi Yar, and at the end of the seventeenth century it was moved to Pysarivshchyna². In the archival records both houses of that place, the men's and the women's, are entered under one name formed from Velyki Budyshcha⁸.

By the decree of the Empress Catherine II of 10 April 1786 on the secularisation of monastic lands, the monastery's peasants were transferred to the state, and only two water mills on the Vorskla were left to the house³.

The further change of the name and of the site is dated by the sources a year apart. The Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine places in 1886 the joining of a Holy Trinity church to the monastery, after which the name of the house itself was changed³; the monastery's own site dates to 1887 a further move of the house within Pysarivshchyna to a new site².

In the nineteenth century two stone churches were built at the monastery: of the Holy Trinity, with a chapel of the Exaltation of the Precious Cross, and of the Dormition of the Mother of God, with chapels of the Beheading of John the Forerunner and of Saint Nicholas of Myra². The three-altar Dormition church was built on the monastery grounds in 1891³. A two-grade girls' school and a one-grade parish school operated at the house³, and near the village of Matviivka the monastery owned a Transfiguration skete^{7, 8}.

During the civil war in Ukraine of 1917-1921 the monastery and its churches were plundered, and in 1922 the Soviet authorities closed the house³. In the twentieth century the monastery went through closure and partial destruction, and a zootechnical college was opened on its grounds².

The last Divine Liturgy in the skete's Transfiguration church near Matviivka was celebrated in 1961 by Ihumen Ioann (Kotliarevskyi); the church was destroyed thereafter^{9, 11}. The following year the same ihumen compiled a typescript account of the history of the Transfiguration skete of the house⁸.

For almost eighty years the walls of the monastery's former Holy Trinity church in Pysarivshchyna heard no singing of prayer⁸. On 26 January 2008 a service of God was celebrated in Pysarivshchyna, the first Liturgy in those decades; an eyewitness who wrote of it in «Полтавські єпархіальні відомості» recalls the fragmentarily restored altar chapel of the church⁸.

The revival of the shrine began in 2008, and on 26 November 2011 the house church in honour of Saint Iov of Pochaiv was consecrated². On 20 July 2012 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having heard the report of Metropolitan Filip of Poltava and Myrhorod, blessed by journal No. 56 the opening (revival) of the monastery in the village of Pysarivshchyna, Dykanka district, Poltava region¹. The house has two patronal feasts, of the Holy Trinity and of Saint Iov of Pochaiv⁴; its warm church is consecrated in honour of Saint Iov¹⁰.

Every year on 30 July a Divine Liturgy is celebrated in the open air on the site of the former Matviivka skete, in memory of the last service of 1961, and at it the known names of the clergy, hegumenias and nuns of the house are commemorated^{7, 9, 11}. On the Friday of Bright Week, at the spring of the Mother of God at Chernechyi Yar, where the monastery was originally situated², the sisters pray at a service of the blessing of water¹².

Pilgrims come to the house: in 2017 the children of the eparchy's «Орлятко» camp made a pilgrimage to it⁵, and in 2023 cycling pilgrims arrived here, who had set out in two groups, from the church of Saint Andrew in Poltava and from the Trinity church of Opishnia, and on the following day took part in the Liturgy on the site of the destroyed skete church¹³.

In that same year of 2023 the children of the Sunday schools of three parishes stayed at the monastery: they prayed at the Liturgy, sang in the choir and helped the sisters clear the fallen leaves¹⁴. In July 2024 children from the Sunday schools lived at the house for several days under its monastic rule and worked at obedience together with the sisters¹⁵.

The last obedience of Archimandrite Venedykt (Maleta) was priestly service at the Velyki Budishcha Holy Trinity Convent; he died on 21 January 2024 at the age of 51, and was buried in the brotherhood cemetery of the Mhar Transfiguration monastery¹⁶.