Mgar Transfiguration Monastery

The Transfiguration Monastery of Mhar occupies the upper plateau of an outlier hill on the high right bank of the Sula where the Olshanka runs into it, beside the village of Mhar six kilometres north-east of the centre of Lubny; because of that position the cathedral and the bell tower became the architectural dominants of the whole landscape, and the monastery itself is a complex of architectural and town-planning monuments of national significance⁴.

On 18 January 1619 the widowed Princess Raina signed a charter: "By my Christian duty, and remembering the will of my husband, I permit a monastery to be founded beyond Lubny, half a mile from Lubny, in the Mhar wood, on the hill, and I give this place to Father Isaiah"¹. The Chronicle of the Hustyn monastery gives the pre-history: in 1614 the founder of the Hustyn house, the hieroschemamonk Ioasaf, turned for help to Father Isaia Kopynskyi, who helped to build a refectory church and in Volhynia visited Prince Mykhailo-Korybut Vyshnevetskyi with his wife Raina (Iryna) Mohylianka and received from them a deed for lands¹. In 1624 Isaia came to Lubny: "and there he took counsel with the Christ-loving citizens, and found a fine place for a monastery, and began to dig a cave and clear the overgrowth from the site for the cells, and left brethren there"¹. The academic encyclopaedias give both dates - founded in 1619, by other accounts in 1624, by Isaia Kopynskyi and Princess Raina Vyshnevetska⁴, at whose expense, by another account, the house arose, while the building was directed by the hegumen Isaia Kopynskyi, who in 1631 became metropolitan of Kyiv⁵. In 1628 the hierarch Isaia finished the wooden church of the Transfiguration of the Lord in the monastery¹. The Church kept the 400th anniversary of the house on 15 May 2019, when the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church led the festal service in it⁹.

The stone cathedral had two wooden predecessors, of 1628 and 1654¹. In 1684, on the initiative of Hetman Ivan Samoilovych, the old wooden cathedral was dismantled and a stone one begun; after Samoilovych's fall in 1687 the building was cared for by Hetman Ivan Mazepa. The cathedral was built with interruptions through 1684-1692 to the design of the architect J.-B. Sauer, assisted by M. Tomashevskyi, and after Sauer's death in 1700 the finishing work was completed by the master A. Piriatynskyi⁴. In 1688 crosses crowned the cathedral, and in 1692 it was consecrated².

The 18th century used the church hard. In 1728 the central dome collapsed together with part of the vaults and was rebuilt in 1729; in 1736 a fire damaged the cathedral and destroyed all the wooden buildings of the monastery, and the cathedral was consecrated anew only in 1754⁴. The first cathedral iconostasis of 1689, the work of S. Mutianytsia, burned in that fire, and in 1762-1765 a new four-tier one was made: the carving by the master S. Shalmatov, the icons painted by the Kyiv Lavra icon-painter I. P. Kosachynskyi⁴.

The ensemble went on taking shape. In 1684 the old rampart was levelled and a new one raised on a wider perimeter, and in 1688 the wooden gates of the house with their gate church were replaced in stone; in 1784-1786 a stone wall was built, and at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries its lost sections were restored². A stone bell tower in the baroque style with elements of classicism was begun in 1785, stood long unfinished and decayed, and was later built anew - it is the "twin" of the bell tower of the Elevation of the Cross monastery in Poltava²; the Encyclopaedia of Modern Ukraine dates the new bell tower to 1837-1844 and adds a single-storey bishop's house of 1846⁵. In 1889-1891 a stone wall and a church in the pseudo-Russian style were raised in the skete north of the house².

The house became a place of rest for several hierarchs. In April 1654 Athanasios Patelarios, patriarch of Constantinople, fell gravely ill here on his way home from Moscow and soon died; in 1662 he was canonised, and in that same year, during the visit of Metropolitan Paisios Ligarides, the brethren found his relics incorrupt^{1, 5}. In 1677 the incorrupt body of the Kyiv metropolitan Yosyf (Neliubovych-Tukalskyi), who had died there in 1675, was brought to the house from the besieged Chyhyryn, and in the 18th century the coffin was walled into the north wall of the stone Transfiguration cathedral¹. Buried here too is Serafim (Anin, 1690-1779), patriarch of Constantinople⁴. From 1737 the hegumen, and from 1744 the first archimandrite in the history of the house, was St Ioasaf (Horlenko, 1705-1754)⁴, appointed here after the fire and travelling for alms in 1742-1744¹. In 1781 the superior was Archimandrite Melkhisedek (Znachko-Yavorskyi, died 1809), formerly hegumen of the Motronyn monastery¹. And in 1797-1800 St Afanasii (Volkhovskyi, 1741-1801), the former bishop of Mohyliv, lived here in retirement¹: on 28 May 2010, by journal no. 25, the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed his local glorification as St Afanasii of Poltava and Mhar and set his feast on 1/14 January⁸.

On 5 August 1919, on the eve of the patronal feast of the house, before the beginning of the vigil, Bolsheviks came to the monastery and ordered all the monks gathered inside the wall - supposedly for a census. When the superior, Hegumen Amvrosii, and twenty-four monks came, they were told they were under arrest. Those arrested were taken to the military commissariat, held there almost until midnight, and then driven along the Pyriatyn road; seven versts from Lubny the monks were divided into three parties of eight, and Hegumen Amvrosii, who was in the first, began to plead for the brethren - and was shot, after which a volley followed. So seventeen monks of the Mhar monastery were shot¹⁰; eight of the twenty-five arrested survived¹.

On 8 May 2008, by journal no. 36, the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed the local glorification and veneration of all seventeen - Hegumen Amvrosii, the hieromonks Arkadii, Ioannykii, Iona, Iosyf, Nykanor, Afanasii, Feofan, Serapion, Nikostrat and Iulian, and the monks Ioannykii, Herman, Nazarii, Parfenii, Potapii and Dorymedont - approved their icon, their troparion and kontakion, and set the memory of the venerable martyrs of Mhar on 24 July / 6 August⁷.

During the Soviet campaign of 1922 to seize church valuables the silver reliquary of St Athanasius was carried off from the house: tens of thousands of believers from all over the Poltava region surrounded the monastery, the civil authorities staged military exercises nearby with up to two thousand soldiers and cadets, and only when the grain ripened and the peasants had to go home was the reliquary confiscated¹. In 1923 the monastery was closed^{1, 5}, and in 1936 the relics of St Athanasius were taken to Kharkiv¹. From the early 1930s the house held a shelter for the children of the repressed, from 1937 a military unit (in 1941-1945 the cathedral was in use), and from 1986 a pioneer camp; restoration of the cathedral had been going on since the 1960s, and in 1993 the revival of the monastery began¹. The thirtieth anniversary of that revival was kept on 15 May 2023¹¹.

The feasts of the house are the Transfiguration of the Lord on 6 (19) August, the Annunciation of the Mother of God on 25 March (7 April), the memory of St Athanasius of Constantinople (Patelarios) on 2 (15) May, of St Ioasaf of Belgorod (Horlenko) on 4 (17) September and 10 (23) December, of St Afanasii (Volkhovskyi) on 1 (14) January and 27 September (10 October), and of the venerable martyrs of Mhar on 24 July (6 August)³. On 1 October 2025 the house kept the day of the Mhar image of the Mother of God: the ruling bishop of the Poltava eparchy led the Divine Liturgy in the cathedral concelebrated by two hierarchs, and after the service a procession was made around the Transfiguration cathedral¹³. The monastery has the Protection convent-skete in the village of Plishivets in the Myrhorod district¹². And the journal of the session of the Holy Synod of 14 November 2007, which separated the Kremenchuk eparchy from that of Poltava, left by a separate clause the post of superior of the Transfiguration Mhar Monastery with the ruling bishop of Poltava⁶.