Holy Trinity male skete

The Holy Trinity male skete stands in the village of Mala Komyshuvakha in the Izyum area and belongs to the Izyum eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Its church, the Trinity church, today forms part of the Pisky Icon of the Mother of God Monastery in Izyum as a separate skete^{1, 2}.

The church, however, is considerably older than the monastery: according to the reference book of the Kharkiv eparchy of 1904, it was built in 1826 at the expense of the parishioners, of stone and with a single altar^{3, 1}.

Sources date the beginning of the church differently. A Kharkiv local-history publication cites the researches of Archbishop Filaret (Humilevskyi) of Kharkiv, by which the church in Mala Komyshuvakha arose in 1793 and in 1850 numbered 2286 parishioners, and sets beside them the reference book's evidence for 1826, suggesting that in 1793 a first wooden church stood on the site⁴.

As of 1904 the parish numbered 1825 souls of the male and 1776 of the female sex³. Besides the village itself it took in the khutirs of Topalskyi, Burkhanov, Shpakovka and Brazhkyn and the villages of Semenivka, Petropillia, Poltavske and Dmytrivka³.

The church held about one desiatyna of homestead land and 41 desiatynas of arable and hay land, together with an inviolable capital of 1500 roubles³. Its establishment provided for a priest, a deacon and a psalm-reader³.

A parish school worked at the church^{3, 4, 1}. Its head and teacher of the law of God was Archpriest Oleksandr Kasianov, who served in Mala Komyshuvakha from 1856 and in 1902 received the Order of Saint Volodymyr, fourth class^{3, 1}. The teacher in the school was the psalm-reader Mykola Buldovskyi, appointed here in 1901^{3, 1}.

The deacon at the church from 1902 was Yakiv Kiktiev, and the church warden from 1894 was the peasant Hryhorii Kriachko³.

A plan of part of the village showing the position of the Trinity church survives, together with the sheets of a project for its enlargement drawn up in 1908⁵.

The present community at the Trinity church was formed on 24 June 1993⁶.

Until 2012 the village belonged to the Kharkiv eparchy. On 8 May 2012 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church separated the Izyum eparchy from it⁷.

The monastery to which the Trinity church belongs as a skete is considerably younger than it: the community of the Pisky Icon of the Mother of God Monastery in Izyum was formed on 5 October 2014⁸, and on 1 April 2015 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed the establishment of this monastery⁹.