Horodyshche Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God Monastery

The Nativity of the Theotokos Monastery of Horodyshche stands in the village of Horodyshche in the Shepetivka district. In the village itself archaeologists uncovered the remains of a town of Rus' burned by the Mongols in 1241; the archaeologist Mykhailo Karger held that town to be the predecessor of Iziaslav, founded nearby at the end of the thirteenth century². The first written mention of Horodyshche is dated 1534² - a deed of 31 January in which it appears as a possession of Prince Illia Kostiantynovych of Ostroh³. From the sixteenth to the second half of the seventeenth century the village belonged to the nobility: to Prince Illia Kostiantynovych of Ostroh, son of the Lithuanian hetman Kostiantyn Ivanovych of Ostroh, and to the Khomiakov and Pohroshevsky families⁴. From the sixteenth century a wooden parish church of St Nicholas stood in the village, at Selyshche, its parish belonging to the eparchy of Lutsk and Ostroh⁴.

By the house's own account, a monastery was founded here in 1538 by the owner of Horodyshche, Prince Bohush Fedorovych Koretsky, who in 1576 charged his son Ioakym to keep the Orthodox faith in it; at the beginning of the eighteenth century the monastery grew poor and ceased to exist¹. The Orthodox Encyclopedia, however, records that reference literature wrongly identifies the Horodyshche house with the monastery of Horodysk in the Rivne uyezd, founded in Volhynia in 1538 by Prince B. F. Koretsky, and it names three works that repeated the error⁴.

The present complex of buildings began as a Catholic one. According to the register of Roman Catholic shrines in Ukraine, in the second half of the seventeenth century the Pohroshevsky family founded a monastery of the Calced Carmelites at Horodyshche, which received the villages of Horodyshche, Pashuky and Reshnivka and served as the residence of the provincial of the order's Ruthenian province³. The stone baroque monastery-and-church complex was laid down in 1746 on the foundation of Princes Stanisław and Józef Lubomirski, owners of Horodyshche from the end of the seventeenth century, and completed by 1782 on the site of the earlier house^{1, 3}. Funds were given also by Ya. Pohroshevsky and by neighbouring landowners; a spacious crypt was made beneath the church, one of the burial vaults of the Volhynian Catholics, and orchards and ponds were laid out around the buildings⁴. On 12 May 1782 the new building was consecrated by the Lutsk auxiliary bishop Jan Chryzostom Kaczkowski^{3, 4}. In the second half of the eighteenth century the monastery's capital stood at 102 thousand Polish zloty; it held the villages of Horodyshche and Pashuky with their inhabitants - 311 male and 228 female - and in 1777 it was assigned to the Basilian monastery of Hoshcha⁴. The church held the venerated image of the Horodyshche Mother of God of the Holy Scapular³.

In 1832 the imperial authorities closed the church and the monastery, for the Carmelite monks' part in the Polish uprising of 1830-1831, and the building became the Orthodox church of the Nativity of the Theotokos^{3, 4}.

In 1858, by decree of the Holy Synod, sisters headed by Hegumeness Vasylysa were moved into the buildings of the former Carmelite monastery from the Orthodox Dormition house of Polonne; the monastery was placed in the 3rd class and granted a plot of forest⁴. It held the unheated cathedral of the Nativity of the Theotokos and the heated church of St Nicholas, arranged in the north-western block of the former kliashtor⁴. In 1868 the parish church of St Nicholas at Selyshche was handed over to it as well, and in 1880, at the request of the peasants, that church became a separate parish again⁴. In the second half of the nineteenth century the monastic ensemble was enlarged by a school building and a guest house, and in 1902 a stone winter church of the Nativity of St John the Forerunner was raised^{1, 4}. A school, a literacy school for orphans and, from 1900, a hospital operated at the monastery⁴; the house also maintained a school for day pupils and a hospice¹. In 1905-1906, at the monastery's metochion in Oranienbaum, today Lomonosov, a stone chapel was built to the design of P. P. Sokolov and consecrated to St Seraphim of Sarov, St Nicholas and the martyr Alexandra; from 1917 to 1931 it was a church, and in 1991 it was restored as a chapel⁴.

In the cathedral, to the right of the entrance, was kept the Horodyshche, or Scapular, icon of the Mother of God «of the Seven Arrows»: after the Catholic monastery was closed it passed to the Orthodox faithful⁴. Kept there too was a gilded silver cross with a particle of the wood of the Cross of the Lord, donated to the cathedral in 1866⁴.

In 1923 the house was closed: a communist party cadre school was placed here, from 1926 to 1936 a Komsomol sanatorium, and from 1936 a military hospital and sanatorium^{1, 4}. In 1941 the nuns returned to the monastery^{1, 4}. In 1944 the house held the superior, the schemanun Kheruvyma, and 32 sisters; in 1951 there were 54, in 1954 there were 63, and in 1958 there were 70⁴. On 30 June 1960 the monastery was closed a second time, the sisters were transferred to the house at Sataniv in the Horodok district⁴, and the premises were given over to a psychiatric hospital¹.

On 28 January 1995 the house was opened as a men's monastery, and on 28 January 1997 its charter was registered by the state committee for religious affairs⁴; the house itself dates its revival to 1995-1996¹. On 6 December 2001 the restored winter church of the Nativity of the Forerunner was consecrated, and daily services have been held there since^{1, 4}. In 2004 the repair of the church of the Nativity of the Theotokos was completed and a guest house for pilgrims was arranged¹. As of 2005 about 20 brethren lived at the house; it had a cell block, a brethren's refectory, joinery and metalwork workshops, a garage and a farm, while part of its premises was still occupied by regional psychiatric hospital No. 2⁴.

Among the holy things of the house is the venerated icon of the Mother of God «of the Seven Arrows», brought in 1999 from the Protection cathedral of the city of Khmelnytskyi⁶. The monastery's patronal feasts are the Nativity of the Theotokos on 8 (21) September, the Nativity of St John the Forerunner on 24 June (7 July), and the commemoration of the icon «of the Seven Arrows» on 13 (26) August⁵.

On 21 September 2015, the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church celebrated the festal Divine Liturgy at the Horodyshche house, concelebrated by the superiors of the Kyiv Caves and the Pochaiv Lavras⁷. On 8 January 2016, after the great vespers, the traditional monastery carols were sung there by five choirs of the Shepetivka diocese⁸. On 20 January 2016, the day of the Synaxis of St John the Forerunner, the ruling bishop, who is the sacred archimandrite of this monastery, celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the house's church of the Nativity of the Forerunner⁹, and on 20 September of the same year he led the all-night vigil there on the eve of the patronal feast¹⁰.