St. Basil's Convent

St. Basil's Convent stands in the town of Ovruch in the Zhytomyr region, beside the ancient church of St. Basil. The Ovruch eparchy calls this church one of the oldest stone churches in Ukraine and an architectural monument of the twelfth century of national significance³, while the «Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine» calls it a complex monument of architecture and monumental art of the second half of the twelfth century⁵.

The history of the house begins with the church, and the house itself presents that beginning as a tradition: it is supposed that in 997 the holy prince Volodymyr, equal to the apostles, whose baptismal name was Vasyl, raised here a wooden church of St. Basil the Great, his heavenly patron¹. The eparchy's essay adds that the church arose on a spot where a pagan sanctuary had stood before³.

About two hundred years later a stone church of the same dedication was built by Prince Rurik Rostyslavych, who also bore the baptismal name of Vasyl¹. The «Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine» names Rurik Rostyslavych of the Smolensk dynasty as the patron of the building and places it in the second half of the twelfth century⁵; the eparchy's essay dates the construction to 1190³. Both church sources hold the probable author of the design to have been Rurik's court architect Petro Milonih^{1, 3}.

In plan it is a four-piered, cross-domed, three-apsed church; two round towers adjoin the western facade, the facades are articulated by profiled pilasters, and fragments of the ancient fresco painting with gilding survive in the interior⁵. The towers held spiral stairs up to the choir gallery, and the house notes that for the twelfth century only one similar example is so far known¹.

In the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries the shrine fell into desolation and turned into ruins¹. The eparchy places the partial devastations in 1240 and 1299, when Tatars plundered the church, and the almost complete destruction in 1321, during the siege of the town by the forces of the Lithuanian prince Gediminas³. A description of 1519 speaks of the church as once gold-domed and by then burned by enemies and shattered¹.

On the ruins, according to the traditions both church sources report, people heard the singing of angels and sensed a fragrance, and some told of seeing the Most Holy Theotokos and St. Nicholas here^{1, 3}. Three wooden churches succeeded one another on the site of the ancient church: the first burned down soon after it was built, the second was taken over by the Uniates in 1596 and later destroyed by Cossacks, and the third was dismantled in 1784 because the ancient stone vaults threatened to fall¹.

The vaults fell later, in 1842; after that three altar apses, two arches of the vaults of the eastern wall and part of the northern wall survived¹. From 1860 funds were collected to strengthen the ruins^{1, 3}, and in 1864 Emperor Alexander II approved a project for the restoration of the monument, though no restoration followed then³. In 1876-1877 a stone chapel of St. Basil the Great was raised by the northern wall, and the ruins themselves were covered with a wooden canopy¹.

At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the collection of funds for the restoration of the ancient church was initiated by the archbishops of Volhynia Modest (Strelbytsky) and Antonii (Khrapovytsky)¹; the eparchy's essay places the idea of the restoration in 1904 and connects it with Archbishop Antonii³. In 1906, to care for the shrine then being restored, a women's monastic community was established at the church, and the sisters helped in the rebuilding^{1, 3}.

The reconstruction to the design of Oleksii Shchusev began in 1907¹. In 1907-1908 the architect Petro Pokryshkin surveyed the remains of the ancient church, and Shchusev corrected his drawings from that survey^{3, 5}. The sound parts of the ruins were incorporated into the new building unchanged, and where the masonry had to be relaid each brick was numbered and marked on the drawing so that it could be returned to its previous place^{1, 3}.

Brick close to the ancient pattern was made at a works built by the nuns themselves¹. The reconstruction also recreated the battle galleries - passages in the thickness of the side walls running from the altar end to the choir gallery at the same level as it; the galleries are pierced through by window openings ready to become embrasures in the event of an attack¹.

On 18 September 1908 a cross was set on the dome of the church¹. In 1910 the women's community obtained the status of a monastery, and in the same year the artist Oleksandr Blaznov began to paint the church after the model of the Novgorod church of the Saviour on Nereditsa¹. The «Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine» dates the painting to 1910-1911 and adds that one of the compositions was executed by D. Stelletsky⁵, while the eparchy's essay names among the authors of the paintings whose fragments survive in the interior also K. Petrov-Vodkin and F. Volkov³.

An iconostasis in the Novgorod manner of the sixteenth century was made in Moscow to Shchusev's design, a hoop-shaped chandelier in Petersburg, and the floor slabs were cut from local red quartzite¹. The eparchy's essay reports that in 1910 old icons were presented to the rebuilt shrine from Novgorod, and that six of them, as Kyiv restorers established in the 1970s, were painted either by Andrei Rublev or by one of his closest pupils³.

On 3 September 1911 the church was consecrated¹. The house and the eparchy agree that Emperor Nicholas II came to the consecration^{1, 3}; the eparchy adds that he donated ten thousand roubles to the church and presented a chandelier of ancient style made in Weber's workshop in Petersburg³. At the end of the service Archbishop Antonii offered the Emperor an icon of St. Basil the Great, and Hegumenia Pavla a prosphora³.

For his work in Ovruch Shchusev was awarded the title of academician¹. His reconstruction was one of the first of its kind in the Russian Empire and was regarded as successful in its time; later researchers concluded that the base of the church's dome had been multi-stepped and therefore higher¹. The «Encyclopaedia of the History of Ukraine» calls the church of St. Basil one of the finest buildings of its stylistic direction⁵.

East of the altar the monastic buildings were raised in the style of the stone Pskov chambers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to the design of Volodymyr Maksymov, Shchusev's assistant and pupil^{1, 3}. They form a closed complex stretched from west to east around an inner courtyard: the southern side is a large block which, besides the cells, was fitted with the warm church of the icon of the Mother of God «Joy of All Who Sorrow», the northern side holds the utility buildings, and on the western side stands a small bell tower¹. The sisters of the house themselves helped in the building³. The bell tower was dismantled in the Soviet period and restored in the 1990s¹.

In 1914 the monastery had 75 nuns³. The sources differ on when it was closed: the eparchy's essay writes that the house operated until 1935, while the history on the house's own site places the closure in the 1920s^{1, 3}. Both agree that the monastery was closed by the Soviet authorities and that the church of St. Basil became a parish church^{1, 3}. In 1944 the house was revived, and the house's own history likewise names the 1940s as the time of the revival^{1, 3}; in 1959 the monastery was closed a second time and the church again became a parish church^{1, 3}.

In 1989, on the petition of the church's rector, Hegumen Vissarion, the building of St. Basil's cathedral was handed over to the convent, and on the eve of the millennium of the baptism of Rus the church was restored under his direction: the ancient frescoes and the whole iconostasis were renewed, and later the church was covered with copper³. In the following year, 1990, the monastic block was handed over to the convent as well - until then it had been a children's hospital and afterwards a teaching block of a vocational school³. The house's own history dates its second revival to that year¹.

For the millennium of St. Basil's church, in 1997 a memorial cross with a granite slab was set up on its grounds, carved with the words of the prayer of Prince Volodymyr proclaimed by him at the baptism of the people of Kyiv³.

The house calls its shrine an icon with a particle of the relics of the venerable martyr Makarii of Ovruch, of Kaniv and Pereiaslav, a native of Ovruch who at the beginning of the seventeenth century became a tonsured monk and then the superior of the local Dormition house². The particle of the relics was placed in a reliquary at the beginning of the twentieth century; for a time it stood in the old Transfiguration cathedral, then it was moved to St. Basil's church, and in 2002 on to the new Transfiguration cathedral². In 2008 a monument to the venerable martyr Makarii was opened near the monastery².

On 26 September 2015 a monument to the holy prince Volodymyr, equal to the apostles, was opened and consecrated in Ovruch, marking the millennium of the blessed repose of the baptiser of Kyivan Rus; after the Liturgy in the Transfiguration cathedral a procession went to the monument³. On 6 November of the same year the sisters of the house, together with student youth and parishioners, met Metropolitan Vissarion of Ovruch and Korosten at that monument, and he led the festal service in St. Basil's church in honour of the image of the Mother of God «Joy of All Who Sorrow»; a youth choir sang⁴.