Yeletskiy Holy Dormition Convent

The Yelets Dormition monastery in Chernihiv is among the oldest and most fully preserved houses of the Chernihiv-Siversk region³. By a tradition written down in the monastic synodikon in the 17th century by bishop Zosyma (Prokopovych), the house was founded in 1060 by the Chernihiv prince Sviatoslav Yaroslavych on the spot where an image of the Mother of God appeared on a fir tree^{1, 2, 3}. St Antonii of the Caves is thought to have taken part in the setting up of the house in 1069². The sources date the building of the masonry Dormition cathedral differently - from the end of the 11th and the beginning of the 12th century² to the 1160s³.

In 1239, during the Tatar attack, the monastery was burned together with the city; it was restored in the middle of the 15th century through the efforts of the princes of Mozhaisk², and in 1445, under prince Ivan Andriiovych of Mozhaisk, the cathedral was repaired³. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries the house had wooden cells, a well, large bells on two posts and small ones on the belfry, and the monastic yard was enclosed with a palisade¹.

The beginning of the 17th century brought destruction: in 1610, during the war between the Muscovite principality and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the monastery was destroyed by a detachment under S. Hornostai, the chamberlain of Kyiv², and in 1618, during the storming of Chernihiv by the Polish army, fire destroyed the vaults and the domes of the cathedral³. After the Orthodox monks left the house, it was subordinated to the Uniates until 1648¹, while Jesuits and Dominicans lived in the ruins². It was in those years, in 1646, that the archimandrite Kyrylo Trankvilion-Stavrovetskyi published here "Perlo mnohotsinnoie", the first book printed in Chernihiv^{1, 2}.

Between 1648 and 1669 the monastery did not function¹. Its restoration is bound up with Lazar Baranovych, archbishop of Chernihiv, who governed the house in 1657-1669², and with the archimandrite Ioanykii Galiatovskyi: under him, in the 1670s, the Dormition cathedral was repaired and cells, the superior's building and the refectory church of Saints Peter and Paul were built¹. At the end of the 17th century the monastery was headed by men later glorified as saints - Feodosii of Uhlych, Ioann of Tobolsk (Maksymovych) and Dymytrii of Rostov (Tuptalo)^{1, 2}. In 1676 the house received gifts from the Muscovite tsars, and in 1687 hetman Ivan Mazepa granted it new estates³; in 1698 a warm church of the apostle James was added to the cathedral from the south³. Between the cathedral and the bell tower there survives to this day a wooden single-storey house of 1688 in which the archimandrite Feodosii of Uhlych lived³.

In 1786 the monastic property was secularised: the house lost its holdings - 2425 serfs, nine mills, seven bakeries, four ferries, a brickworks and a distillery - and was assigned to the first class with an establishment of 33 monks^{1, 2}. In 1862 the Chernihiv consistory was moved into the monastery². At the beginning of the 1890s an icon-painting school was opened at the house, and in the 1900s a parish school¹. As of 1907 thirteen monks and four novices lived here².

In 1920 a decree was issued transferring the monastery to the provincial extraordinary commission for the setting up of a concentration camp¹. After the closure of the house in 1921 the iconostasis of 1668-1670 and the library were burned², and the following year church valuables were taken from the monastery¹. In 1924 the Dormition cathedral was handed over to the Chernihiv state museum, and in 1927 it was recognised as a monument of history and culture of all-Ukrainian importance². The premises of the house were used as military stores and workshops¹; in the post-war years the church of Saints Peter and Paul was fitted out as a theatre, then served as a philharmonic hall, a civil registry office, a sports club, the regional archive and a library reading room¹. The ensemble suffered heavy damage during the Second World War³; in the course of the 1950s-1980s most of the buildings were restored^{1, 3}, and in 1961-1962 the Dormition cathedral itself, which until then had held a store, was restored too².

At the beginning of the 1990s the buildings were handed over to a women's monastic community^{1, 2, 3}; much effort towards the restoration of the house was made by the abbess Amvrosiia (Ivanenko)². The sources name as the monastery's chief holy thing the wonderworking Yelets icon of the Mother of God - a copy of the icon presented in 1676 by the townsman Kostiantyn Mezapet - and also parts of the relics of St Feodosii of Uhlych, St Dymytrii of Rostov and St Lavrentii of Chernihiv². The architectural ensemble of the house forms part of the National architectural and historical reserve "Ancient Chernihiv"³. Its dominant is the Dormition cathedral, its vertical accent the gate belfry, and the territory is surrounded by a brick wall about a kilometre in perimeter^{1, 3}.