Sts. Constantine and Helen's Monastery

Sts. Constantine and Helen's Monastery, a men's house of the Odesa Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, stands in the town of Izmayil in the Odesa region. The first documentary mention of it, as a bishop's court, is dated 1864, when Izmayil lay within the Lower Danube bishopric of the Chisinau eparchy of the Romanian Orthodox Church^{7, 3}.

From 1864 to 1878 the Lower Danube bishopric, with its seat in Izmayil, was headed by Bishop Melchisedec. The monastery's website recalls his petitions for funds to maintain the historical monuments of Izmayil and the churches inside the former fortress, his part in turning the Izmayil church school into a state seminary and his personal care for the seminarians, and it names him the author of numerous historical, theological and archaeological works. His memory survives in the name of the street on which the house stands: at first it was called the street of Bishop Melchisedec, and later Arkhiereiska, the Bishop's Street³.

By a tradition of the townspeople, reported on the monastery's own website, a wooden church of the holy prince Volodymyr, equal to the apostles, once stood on the site of the present church and later burnt down³. The monastery's network site places the building of that church in the mid-1860s and adds that in 1910, under the ruling bishop of the Chisinau eparchy, to which Izmayil then belonged, the post of vicar bishop of Izmayil was established, and his residence, with a small number of monastics, was placed at the church of St Volodymyr⁵.

From 1918 the Romanian bishopric resumed its work in the Izmayil, Cahul and Akkerman districts, and in 1923 it was reorganised as the bishopric of Cetatea Alba and Izmayil. At that time the Izmayil district counted three deaneries and thirty-nine parishes, the eparchial administration sat in Izmayil, and the seat of the bishop's court was Sts. Constantine and Helen's Monastery on Arkhiereiska Street³.

In 1930 the decision was taken to build a stone church; in 1935 the building was completed, and in 1936 the church was consecrated in honour of the holy emperors Constantine and Helen, equal to the apostles. The monastery's website names the architect Ulynych as the author of the design, the style Romanian and the plan triconch, and notes that the architecture was shaped by the town's belonging from 1918 to 1940 to the Kingdom of Romania³. The Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine states that the church was built on the site of a burnt wooden one⁷.

The building commission was headed by Bishop Dionysius of Izmayil, who, in the words of the monastery's website, made a significant contribution to raising the new brick church on the site of the old wooden one. The funds for the building were allotted by the bishopric and donated by the population, and when they ran out a loan was taken from a Romanian bank. Unofficially the new church was called the Bishop's church³.

The history of Orthodoxy in this region, like the history of the house itself, has, by its own website's admission, many blank spaces: as they left Izmayil the Romanian troops took every document with them, hoping to return, and the surviving information about the monastery is extremely sparse³.

In 1944-1955 Izmayil was the centre of a separate eparchy, and the residence of its ruling bishop also stood at the church of Sts. Constantine and Helen⁵. In 1962 the monastery was closed, the icons and church furnishings were distributed among various churches, and a museum of atheism was opened in the church itself^{3, 7}. The venerated church icon of the Mother of God "Blahoukhannyi tsvit" was then given for safekeeping to the Transfiguration Cathedral of Bolhrad³.

By the testimony of Archpriest Mykhail, reported on the monastery's website, in the 1950s Archimandrite Serhii (Khimich), who came to monastic life during the Second World War, served at the church; soon he was transferred to the Intercession Cathedral of Izmayil, and the church, left without a priest, was designated for a museum. Only thirty years later, on 9 February 1992, the church was opened again, and the single surviving bell rang, preserved only because it had been impossible to take it down³.

In 2001, with the blessing of Metropolitan Agafangel of Odesa and Izmayil, the men's monastery was revived; the first liturgy took place on 27 September, the day of the celebration of the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross³. On 21 December 2001 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, sitting at the Holy Dormition Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra under the presidency of His Beatitude Volodymyr, Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine, by Journal No. 25 blessed the opening of the men's monastery in the town of Izmayil in the Odesa region¹.

The first superior of the house was Archimandrite Vissarion (Butok), who headed it from September 2001 to May 2002 and was then transferred to another house. He died suddenly on 20 March 2011, in his 46th year. On 23 March, at the St Nicholas episcopal metochion in Myropillya in the Sumy region, the rite of monastic burial was led by Bishop Yevlohii of Sumy and Okhtyrka, concelebrating with the clergy of seven eparchies, while Bishop Petro of Ungheni and Nisporeni of the Orthodox Church of Moldova came to take his leave of the departed; Archimandrite Vissarion was buried on the grounds of the metochion⁴.

In 2004 the icon of the Mother of God "Blahoukhannyi tsvit" was returned to the house from Bolhrad^{3, 7}, and in 2006 the church was restored^{3, 7}. In 2010 an akathist was written for the Izmayil icon³.

On 16 September 2014 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having considered the report of Metropolitan Agafangel of Odesa and Izmayil, by Journal No. 54 blessed the establishment, within the Odesa Diocese, of a local celebration in honour of the icon of the Mother of God "Blahoukhannyi tsvit"².

In October 2011 a Eucharistic set on which the Divine Liturgy had been served before the church was closed in 1962 was returned to the house; it had been preserved by Archpriest Vsevolod Strashevskyi, who served at the Intercession Cathedral of Izmayil in 1961-1966³.

In 2012 the Feodosiya iconographer Mykhailo Adler painted eight new icons for the icon cases of the church, and in 2014 the Izmayil artist and iconographer Ivan Shyshman completed the painting of the refectory, among whose images are the patron saints of the brotherhood³.

The monastery church also holds the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow": an inscription at its foot states that the image was painted with the funds of the citizens of Izmayil in 1891³. The Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine mentions in the monastery two further reliquaries with particles of the relics of forty-eight saints⁷.

Since 2002 a cross procession has gone out each year on 27 March from the house to the Intercession Cathedral of Izmayil and into the Izmayil fortress, in memory of the setting up, on the same day in 2002, beside the church of St Nicholas on the fortress grounds, of a six-metre cross made and consecrated in 2001 on the Solovetsky Islands^{5, 6}. Since 2003 the procession has been made with a copy of the Feodorovskaya icon of the Mother of God, painted especially for that celebration and kept at the house^{5, 6}.

Since 2007 the monastery newsletter "Holos obiteli" has appeared monthly^{3, 7}, and since 2008 an annual wall calendar. A library and a church shop work at the monastery³.

Among the residents of the house was the monk Vasyl, in the world Oleksandr Mykhailovych Nevhomonnyi, born on 31 March 1947 in the town of Boryslav in the Lviv region. He came to the monastery as a labourer practically from the day of its opening in 2001, in April 2002 became a novice, on 25 December 2002 was tonsured as a rassophore monk with the name Dometian, and on 4 March 2003 into the little schema with the name Vasyl. For many years he kept the obedience of the candle desk, and it was with him that a visit to the house began for those who came. He died on 8 September 2018, in his 72nd year⁸.

In 2020 a room was opened at the house for lessons with children who have cerebral palsy⁹. A year earlier, within the eparchial Easter charitable campaign "Bright deeds on a bright day", the brotherhood of the house visited the tuberculosis ward of the Izmayil infectious diseases hospital¹⁰.

The house has in its charge the chapel of the holy prince Dimitry Donskoy on the town cemetery⁵.