Zverinetsky St. Michael the Archangel's Monastery

The Archangel Michael Zvirynetsky Monastery for men of the Kyiv eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church stands in Kyiv, on the slope of Zvirynets above the Botanical Garden. It is one of three monasteries that share this district: the Ioninsky and the Vydubychi houses stand here as well².

The house grew out of caves. At the end of the nineteenth century, on the north-western break of the Zvirynets slope, entrances were found to caves holding monastic burials²; by the house's own account, the report of the discovery appeared in a Kyiv newspaper in 1888 and dated the find to 12 October⁵. Forty-eight niche-graves were found in the caves, holding ninety-six burials⁵. The studied and accessible part of the underground forms a triangle of three burial "streets" some one hundred and fifty metres long in all; the longest of them, the "Altar street", leads to a miniature church with niches for the altar and the table of oblation, and in the oblation niche a synodikon is inscribed with the names of the Zvirynets abbots³.

Scholars do not agree on the age and the nature of these caves, and the house's page on the eparchy's site sets out the disagreement openly: all of them see in the caves a monument of the Old Rus era, but Oleksandr Ertel in 1913 held them to be the necropolis of a Zvirynets monastery, Ivan Kamanin in 1915 the site of the Vydubychi monastery before its above-ground building began and its monastic necropolis, Mykola Petrov in 1916 a place of monastic solitude and a later necropolis, Tymur Bobrovsky in 1995 a cave monastery that afterwards moved to the surface, while Olena Vorontsova in 1996 allowed only a provisional reading³. The same page notes that Kamanin's hypothetical identification of the Zvirynets abbots with ascetics known from the chronicles — in particular his reading of the name "Iona" in the synodikon as "Sofroniy" — is widely taken as settled, whereas the researcher himself assessed his own conjectures more modestly³.

A new monastic life began in 1911. That autumn the Ioninsky confessor, hegumen Valentyn (Korotenko), who had carried the thought of reviving the caves for many years, met Prince Volodymyr Davydovych Zhevakhov; the prince leased the plot with the cave, brought in the archaeologist Oleksandr Ertel for the research, and gave a loan for the founding of a skete at the caves, which stood under the authority of the Lavra². Work began in August 1912; by the autumn a wooden building already stood over the cave, and in 1913 and 1914 the altars of its house church were consecrated — the main one in honour of the Nativity of the Mother of God, the side one in honour of St Ioasaf of Belgorod². The results of the excavation appeared as Ivan Kamanin's book "The Zvirynets Caves, their antiquity and holiness", printed at the press of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in 1914⁵. In 1915 part of the cave was faced with brick, and in 1917 the reposed Father Valentyn was buried in the underground².

The explosion of the artillery depots at Zvirynets on 6 June 1918 destroyed the skete church; later a church in honour of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow" was arranged in its place². In 1924 Prince Zhevakhov received the monastic tonsure there with the name Ioasaf, was afterwards consecrated bishop, and ended his earthly path as a hieromartyr: he was shot in 1937, and in 2002 he was glorified among the saints². In 1934 the skete was closed and its buildings were in time pulled down²; the last superior of the house was Archimandrite Filaret, and the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God was destroyed⁸. From 1990 to 1993 the Museum of the History of Kyiv studied the underground and reinforced it where new falls had opened².

In 1997 monks of the Kyiv Holy Trinity Ioninsky monastery began to revive the Zvirynets skete⁸; in the same year the revived Ioninsky house built a stairway to the entrance from the side of the Botanical Garden and opened the cave to visitors². Since 2007 a new monastic complex has been rising on the terrace by the cave entrance: the small church of All Saints of Zvirynets, the large church of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow" with a basement chapel of St Ioasaf of Belgorod and the Hieromartyr Ioasaf of Mohyliv, and a brotherhood building².

On 9 July 2009 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, by its journal no. 37, blessed the opening in Kyiv of the Archangel Michael Zvirynetsky Monastery for men ¹. Until that year the community was a skete of the Ioninsky monastery², and from 2009 the house has borne its present name⁸.

The house keeps its own cycle of feasts: the Nativity of the Mother of God on 21 September, the Zvirynetska icon of the Mother of God on 26 October, the icon "Joy of All Who Sorrow" on 6 November, the icon "She Who Is Quick to Hear" on 22 November, the commemoration of the Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Chonae on 19 September, the memory of St Ioasaf of Belgorod and the memory of the Hieromartyr Ioasaf of Mohyliv on 4 December, while the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of Zvirynets is kept on the fifth Sunday of Great Lent⁴. Among the shrines the encyclopaedia names the icons of the Mother of God "She Who Is Quick to Hear", the Zvirynetska and "Joy of All Who Sorrow", and the relics of the Venerable Fathers of Zvirynets⁸; the house also keeps a copy of the icon "of the Three Hands", written for it on Mount Athos⁷.

On 6 April 2025, the fifth Sunday of Great Lent and the day of the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of Zvirynets, the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church led at the monastery the Divine Liturgy and the rite of glorification among the saints of the venerable confessor Filaret (Kochubei), hegumen of Zvirynets⁶. By tradition, before the rite the last memorial litiya was served for Archimandrite Filaret; then the decision of the Holy Synod establishing the veneration of the new saint was proclaimed, his life was read, the troparion, kontakion and magnification were sung and his icon was venerated; after the service the Primate visited the caves where the venerable fathers had laboured⁶. On 25 July 2026, the day of the icon of the Mother of God "of the Three Hands", the Primate again led the Liturgy in the main church of the house, and the service ended with a rite of glorification before the Athonite copy of that image⁷.