Holy Trinity and St. Jonah's Monastery

The Holy Trinity Ionynsky monastery of the Kyiv eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church stands in Kyiv, in the Zvirynets tract¹. The house was founded in 1866 as a skete beside a wooden church of the Holy Trinity raised in 1864, and its founder and first superior was the hieromonk Iona (Myroshnychenko), who led it until 1899; a large donation towards its building was made by Princess K. Vasylchykova, the wife of the governor-general of Kyiv, and a shelter for thirty orphans, a school and a hospital operated at the monastery¹.

The future elder was born in 1802 to Pavlo and Pelaheia Myroshnychenko, townspeople of the settlement of Kriukiv in the Kremenchuk district of the Poltava province, and in the world was called Ioann². He was a novice of Venerable Serafym of Sarov and spent eight years with him, and in 1836 the venerable sent him to the Briansk Biloberezka hermitage, where in 1843 he was tonsured with the name Iona and in 1845 ordained hierodeacon². In 1851 Metropolitan Filaret of Kyiv met Father Iona and in August of that year had him transferred to the St Nicholas monastery in Kyiv; in 1858 he became a hieromonk, and in 1860 he joined the brotherhood of the Vydubytsky monastery².

In August 1872 Father Iona was raised to the rank of hegumen, and by a decree of 17 January 1886 he was appointed superior of the Kyiv-Mezhyhirsky Transfiguration monastery with elevation to archimandrite². By a resolution of Metropolitan Ioanykii of Kyiv of 9 December 1899 he was released, on grounds of age and illness, from the administration of the Holy Trinity monastery while remaining its superior². Every year about five hundred thousand pilgrims came to the house, which people called "Father Iona's monastery"³. The elder reposed in the night of 8-9 January 1902 - 22 January by the new style - having lived more than a hundred years; in the schema he bore the name Petro^{2, 3}.

The great stone church with two altars first had a cross-domed form with a right-hand chapel in honour of the icon of the Mother of God "of the Three Hands"⁶. The masonry Holy Trinity church was built in 1871 and consecrated in 1872, and in 1897 a northern All Saints altar was arranged beside it to a design by the architect V. Nikolaiev, consecrated in 1900^{1, 6}.

North-east of the church stands a small tower with a turret clock made in Paris in 1858 and still keeping time; when the old turret grew decrepit, a copy of it was raised in the 1990s, and a tea room for parishioners was fitted out in its first tier⁸. In 1880 and 1896 benefactors gave the monastery two great bells - of 350 and of 1,150 pudy - which were placed on a temporary wooden belfry⁸. Venerable Iona conceived a great stone bell tower, and in 1899 the design by the architect Volodymyr Nikolaiev was approved: a total height of 110 metres, of which 75 metres of masonry, a base 30 metres across, walls 9 metres thick in the first of its four tiers, and a spiral roadway 370 metres long planned inside the thickness of those walls⁸. Because the monastery stood hard against the Zvirynets fortification, all its masonry had to be agreed with the military department, and when the eparchial authorities learned of the bell tower the building was postponed; the foundation was laid only in 1903⁸.

In 1918 the monastery buildings were damaged by a fire from the explosion of the artillery cellars of the Kyiv fortress¹: part of the first and second tiers of the unfinished bell tower was brought down, and its restoration was no longer in question⁴. By 1917 only a tier and a half had been raised, and in the 1920s the structure was taken apart for brick; the present belfry was built at the beginning of the twenty-first century, in memory of the elder's design and of the bells given to him⁸.

In 1927 the house was closed, and in 1928 its superior, Archimandrite Yuvenalii, was arrested; after that the skete at the Zvirynets caves was closed by a special resolution of the Kyiv city council and its superior, Archimandrite Filaret, was exiled to a labour camp^{1, 4}. A children's colony, a factory dormitory, warehouses and workshops occupied the monastery grounds in turn¹. To preserve the community it was re-registered as a church labour artil - the house's own chronicle calls it "Trud" and the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine calls it "Pratsia" - and 214 residents signed its charter, with Archimandrite Iov elected its head^{1, 4}. In 1934 the church was closed for good, and Archimandrite Iov, with several dozen monks who would not leave the house, was arrested and exiled to Kazakhstan^{1, 4}.

From 1942 to 1944 monastic life briefly resumed under the care of Archimandrite Ihnatii^{1, 4}, and in 1949 the brotherhood was transferred to the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra and the grounds given to the Botanical Garden of the Academy of Sciences¹. Hieromonk Dymytrian, unwilling to leave the house, took work as a groundsman at the botanical garden, settled in the old clock tower and secretly served the liturgy there until his death in 1970⁴. In 1966 the crypt holding the incorrupt relics of Elder Iona was opened and the relics were moved to the Zvirynets cemetery^{1, 4}.

In 1991 the house began to be restored: the church stood locked, services were held on the porch, and entering the cathedral the small brotherhood found a complete ruin - no iconostasis, no ceiling⁵. On 4 October 1993 the incorrupt relics of Venerable Iona were brought back from the Zvirynets cemetery to the cathedral church, and on 22 November 1995 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church numbered the elder among the saints⁵.

A publishing department works at the monastery, issuing the Ionynsky Listok since 1998 and the youth magazine Otrok.ua since 2000, as does the Brotherhood of Venerable Iona of Kyiv, founded in 2005 to help sick children and orphans¹. At the village of Neshcheriv in the Kyiv region stands the Transfiguration men's monastery: the Holy Synod blessed its opening in 2005¹¹ and in 2008 confirmed the superior of the Ionynsky house as its superior, held concurrently¹².

Since 2004 a community of believers with hearing and speech impairments has gathered at the monastery: every Sunday a Divine Liturgy with sign-language interpretation is served here, and deaf and hard-of-hearing people come to it from across the Kyiv region⁹. In 2015 the house was among the organisers of the first All-Ukrainian forum of Orthodox deaf youth, whose participants came from Odesa, Chernivtsi, Lviv, Uzhhorod, Bila Tserkva and other cities, and who made their confession at the monastery on the forum's Sunday¹⁰.

The monastery holds the relics of its founder, the 1852 icon of the Mother of God "of the Three Hands" that belonged to Venerable Iona^{1, 7}, a great crucifix containing a particle of the wood of the Life-Giving Cross, a fragment of an icon of the Most Holy Mother of God and a surviving lamp fixing from the iconostasis of the demolished Dormition cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, and a reliquary with particles of the relics of the venerable fathers of the Kyiv Caves⁷.