Transfiguration Monastery

The monastery that stands today in the village of Kniazhychi, Brovary district, Kyiv region — the Transfiguration Monastery for men of the Boryspil Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church — began to be revived in the early 1990s by Archimandrite Sophronius (Shynkarenko), a monk of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, where he carried the obedience of treasurer; the blessing for this was given by Volodymyr (Sabodan), Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine⁵. In November 1998 the monastery was listed in the Kyiv Eparchy⁹; today it stands in the Boryspil one^{6, 7}.

The founder of the house is here held to be the Venerable Nikola Sviatosha, Prince of Chernihiv^{1, 4}. The monastery holds no documents from those times: it presents its own early history as tradition and relates that in the XII century the Tatars burned the church together with the people inside it^{1, 4}. The village itself is named as a settlement of monks in a Polish royal charter of 1489², while the first chronicle mentions of Bron-Kniazha are dated to 1125—1147².

Twice in the XX century the church at Kniazhychi was burned and the monks were deported to Solovki to hard labour — in 1917 and in 1940^{1, 4}. From the 1980s the church began to be rebuilt, monastic life returned at the same time, and a monastery for men began to be established in the village^{1, 4}.

In the autumn of 1992, when the house was already functioning, the foundation of the Transfiguration cathedral was laid^{5, 8}. The masonry church was raised at the turn of the XX—XXI centuries: it is crowned by five domes and a belfry above the main entrance, and the rich decoration of its facades and drums is executed in brickwork of white and bright pink, the building being left unplastered on the outside¹. The cathedral was consecrated in 2014 by the Metropolitan of Boryspil and Brovary^{5, 8}.

In the first decade of the XXI century a two-storey fraternal building with a heated church was put up in the monastery, its construction begun in 2003¹. Through the labours of Archimandrite Sophronius a skete also came into being, and the house obtained land for its own farming needs⁵. He himself departed to the Lord on 20 June 2021, in his 77th year, and is buried in the monastery he founded⁵.

The liturgical year of the house is made up of the Transfiguration of the Lord on 19 August, the day of the Pochaiv Icon of the Mother of God on 5 August, the Apostle Andrew the First-Called on 13 December, the Great Martyr Barbara on 17 December and the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste on 22 March^{3, 4}. One of the side-chapels of the main church is consecrated in honour of the Pochaiv Icon, and on 5 August 2026 the patronal feast here was led by the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church⁶.