St. Charalampias the Priest-Martyr's Convent

St. Charalampias the Priest-Martyr's Convent stands in the village of Hamaliyivka in the Shostka district of the Sumy region; the Konotop Diocese lists it in its own register of monasteries beside the Molchenskyi and the Sofroniievo-Molchenskyi houses⁸. The convent occupies an old monastic ensemble that the Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia calls the latest fortified-type monastery on the Left Bank of Ukraine, noting that it holds considerable historical and memorial value as the only preserved burial of a hetman of Ukraine anywhere in the country².

The settlement on this spot arose at the end of the seventeenth century. In 1676 Hetman Ivan Samoylovych allowed Stepan Buhai, a Cossack of the Voronizh sotnia, to build a water mill on the river Shostka, a third of whose income was to go to military needs; in the 1680s the mill was bought out by the general osavul Andriy Hamalia, who settled people here and named the hamlet after his own surname — Hamaliyivka⁵.

After Andriy Hamalia's death the hamlet passed by inheritance to his son Anton, who founded a church there in the name of Saint Charalampias; a women's hermitage soon arose beside it, maintained by Anton Hamalia at his own expense⁵. The Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia dates the building of the wooden Charalampias church to 1702 and calls the community that arose beside it the Charalampias hermitage, or skete — a small women's monastery².

Anton Hamalia fought in the Great Northern War on the side of Hetman Ivan Mazepa and lost Hamaliyivka: in 1710 it passed into the ownership of the Skoropadskyi family⁵. As early as 1713 Anastasiia Markivna, the wife of Hetman Ivan Skoropadskyi, resolved to raise a monastery for women on the site of the hermitage, and in the same year she gave the house a mill, several plots of land, woodland and a farmstead, while at the end of the year the hetman confirmed those holdings and added several villages more⁵.

The Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia describes the same event as the transformation of the skete into a women's monastery with the corresponding rights and estates through the hetman's wife's efforts, and by that article the hetman became the house's ktitor in 1714². On 25 January 1714 the Skoropadskyi family obtained from Peter I permission to build the Charalampias monastery⁵.

The beginning of the house is also described quite differently. The Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine states that building here began in 1700, that the first church in honour of Saint Charalampias was opened in 1702, and that the monastic buildings, raised at Ivan Skoropadskyi's expense, were finished in 1708, when a men's monastery was opened; the article makes no mention of a women's community on this site at all³.

At the hetman's expense the masonry ensemble of a great patronal monastery of the fortified type was begun, modelled on the Transfiguration Monastery in Novhorod-Siverskyi. Its principal structures were the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God, the warm (refectory) church of Saint Charalampias, the cell blocks, and defensive walls with four blind corner towers and three gate towers².

The hetman died in 1722 without having completed the building work. He was buried in the crypt of the masonry Charalampias church, and above the grave a carved white stone slab was set into the wall of the church interior, bearing the inscription: "Here rests in body the servant of God Ioann Skoropadskyi, hetman of the Zaporozhian host, founder of this house, who departed at Hlukhiv in the year 1722 on the third day of the month of July". Anastasiia Skoropadska died in 1729 and is buried beside her husband under a slab of the same kind². Ya. Kulibova dates the building of the Charalampias church to 1721 and notes that several generations of the Skoropadskyi family are buried there⁵.

The cathedral church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God was built over sixteen years, from 1719 to 1735, and was consecrated by Archimandrite Lenkevych — the Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia gives his name as Mykola, Ya. Kulibova as Nykodym, and she dates the consecration to 14 September 1735^{2, 5}. It is a three-nave, three-apse, six-pier, five-domed church²; inside stood a four-tier carved iconostasis⁵.

Full-length portraits of the hetman and his wife hung on the cathedral walls. The sources differ on what became of them: the Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia attributes the portraits to Ya. Hlynskyi and writes that in the nineteenth century they were moved to the superior's quarters and later handed to the Hlukhiv museum, where they have not survived and are known only in later copies²; Ya. Kulibova writes that they can now be seen in the Sumy Art Museum named after N. Kh. Onatskyi⁵.

Almost every structure of the ensemble was raised on the Skoropadskyi family's donations, but others gave too: Ivan Manuylovych presented the house with a farmstead and a mill in 1714, Vasyl Dzvonnyk gave twenty plots of land at Voronizh in 1717, and the wife of Sava Hryhorovych gave a third of her fortune to the monastery in 1718⁵. Besides the churches and the cells, the grounds held a dining hall, a bakery, farm buildings, a water mill and a distillery⁵.

Under Anastasiia Skoropadska's will the monastery was to be turned from a women's into a men's house; this was carried out in 1733, when monks were transferred here from the Mutyn Monastery near Krolevets². The decree on the exchange — the Mutyn monks to Hamaliyivka and the nuns of this house to the Mutyn monastery — was signed on 24 March 1733, and in September the Kyiv eparchy appointed Herman Konashevych superior⁵; the Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia calls him the first hegumen of the men's house².

In the eighteenth century the monastery suffered repeatedly from fire. The great fire that damaged every monastic structure is dated by the Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia to the night of 5 October 1738, and by Ya. Kulibova to 28 September of the same year^{2, 5}. The house then owned thirteen villages, yet its income did not cover the rebuilding: in 1741 the superior Sofronii Myhalevych appealed for help to Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, a decree of 21 May 1743 returned six confiscated villages to the house, and the repairs were finished only at the end of the 1740s⁵.

At the end of the eighteenth century the house was granted the status of a second-class monastery⁵. There followed a fire that destroyed most of the monastic buildings: the Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia and the Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine date it to 1794 and write that the monastery was closed after it^{2, 3}; Ya. Kulibova dates the fire to 1795 and adds that almost nine thousand roubles were lacking for the restoration, which neither the house nor the eparchy had, so that for the next six years the monastery served as a parish church⁵.

In 1827 the nuns of the abolished Kerbutivskyi convent, which stood not far from Baturyn, were moved into the emptied house, and after 1834 all the monastic buildings were repaired²; the Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine dates the rebuilding to 1827—1834³. The monastery's chief shrine became the wonderworking Kerbutivska Jerusalem icon of the Mother of God in a silver riza². For a time the house was called the Nativity of the Mother of God monastery and in the years before the revolution was a women's house again⁵; the Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine carries "Rizdvo-Bohorodytskyi Kharlampiivskyi monastyr" as a separate headword referring back to its article on the Hamaliyivka monastery⁴.

The sources describe the Soviet period differently. The Great Ukrainian Encyclopaedia writes that the monastery was closed in 1920, that a handicraft artel was set up here from 1921, that in the 1930s to the 1950s the buildings belonged to the local collective farm, that a grain store was made in the cathedral, that the warm Charalampias church remained the village's parish church, and that people lived in the monastic cells². The Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine, by contrast, writes that the monastery was inactive from 1924, that in 1941, under the German occupation, its work was resumed, and that it went on functioning for a time after the liberation as well³.

From 1956 the Hamaliyivka monastery was declared an architectural monument of republican significance, yet in 1962 the Sumy regional executive committee handed it to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, which converted the ensemble into a strict-regime place of imprisonment; the colony bore the name "Enterprise 319/66", later the Shostka Penal Colony No. 66².

In 1963 the ensemble was struck from the state registers of monuments, and a new stage of destruction began: the defensive walls and towers were destroyed, three of the gate towers among them, the cathedral and the Charalampias church were turned into production shops, the single-storey cell block was built up and converted into cells for holding prisoners, and the carved gravestones of the Skoropadskyi family were covered over with concrete. On the monastery grounds and on the adjoining plot to the east, twenty-one masonry structures were built for the needs of the penal institution².

In 1979 what remained of the monastery was placed under state protection again as an architectural monument of republican, now national, significance under protection No. 1553. The residents of Hamaliyivka and Shostka repeatedly demanded that the authorities move the colony out of the monastery, and in February 2010 the President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko issued a decree on freeing the monastery grounds of the corrective-labour colony; in 2011 the warm refectory church of Saint Charalampias was handed over to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church².

By its resolution of 19 June 2019, No. 527, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine supported the Sumy regional state administration's proposal to declare the ensemble of the Hamaliyivka monastery, together with the monuments of Shostka, the State Historical and Architectural Reserve "Державотворці Сіверщини", and the Shostka Penal Colony No. 66 was closed^{2, 6}. The Ministry of Culture did not carry out the instructions concerning the reserve, and by the resolution of 21 July 2021, No. 758, the earlier one was rescinded as unimplemented^{2, 7}; the document card of resolution No. 527 on the Verkhovna Rada site records that it lost force on 28 July 2021⁶.

The present women's house was opened by a decision of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. On the report of Roman, Bishop of Konotop and Hlukhiv, journal No. 63 of the sitting of 25 September 2013 blessed the opening of a women's monastery in honour of the Priest-Martyr Charalampias of the Konotop Diocese in the village of Hamaliyivka, Shostka district, Sumy region, and the registration of its statute¹.

The Konotop Diocese names the myrrh-streaming "Vsetsarytsia" icon of the Mother of God, kept here since 2013, as the greatest shrine of the revived house⁹; the monastery also holds particles of the relics of saints¹⁰.

In October 2019 the diocese held its Day of Bread celebration at the monastery: the festal liturgy was led by Roman, Archbishop of Konotop and Hlukhiv, more than a thousand faithful prayed at the service, after the liturgy the bishop opened a fair, the mayor of Shostka joined in the greetings, a folk choir sang, and every deanery put on an exhibition of its own¹⁰.

On 21 April 2020 a fire broke out at the monastery. The flames destroyed the monastic refectory, the sisters' cells and the site of the burial vault of Ivan Skoropadskyi, hetman of the Zaporozhian host, and of other members of that Cossack family; the second floor burned out entirely and no roof was left, but the church and the iconostasis survived¹¹.

The fire was fought for about two and a half to three hours, ten vehicles were at work, and by the account of eyewitnesses the flames did not reach the dome. The whole village came running to help, and the next day, together with the ruling bishop, almost a hundred people cleared the water out of the burnt block¹¹.