Protection of the Mother of God Monastery

The Protection monastery of the Kharkiv eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church stands in the centre of Kharkiv, on the edge of the plateau above the river Lopan, on Universytetska Street; the services at the house are celebrated in Church Slavonic⁶. The core of its ensemble is formed by three large buildings drawn up in a chain from south to north: the church of the Ozeriana icon of the Mother of God, the Protection cathedral and the Archbishop's House³.

In 1689, in the Klochkivska sloboda that adjoined Selifontov's fortress on the north, a stone parish church of the Protection of the Mother of God was built and consecrated by Metropolitan Avraamii of Belgorod^{1, 2}. At the end of the seventeenth century the Kharkiv colonel Fedir Shydlovsky put up his own stone two-storey house beside the church, which has not survived, and in 1709 the grounds of the church and the house were taken into the enlarged fortress².

In 1726 Bishop Yepifanii (Tykhorsky) of Belgorod bought Shydlovsky's house from his nephew Lavrentii and in the same year moved here from his own cathedral city of Belgorod the episcopal Slavic-Greek-Latin school opened in 1722; it is thought that the hierarch was prompted to move the school by Prince Mykhailo Golitsyn, who commanded the troops of Sloboda Ukraine and lived in Kharkiv^{1, 2}.

In 1729 Bishop Yepifanii complained to the Synod that the collegium had no church of its own and proposed that the Protection church be used as the collegium's, and that a monastery be opened beside it whose superior would also hold the office of rector - on the model of the Mohyla Academy and the Brotherhood monastery in Kyiv; the Synod approved the proposal that same year². The monastery's first superior was Archimandrite Platon (Malynovsky), who in 1729 was also appointed rector of the newly opened collegium¹.

From 1734 the school was called the Kharkiv Collegium; up to five hundred children of various estates of eastern Ukraine studied there at one time¹. In 1759-1760 and 1768-1769 the philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda taught at the collegium, and in 1797-1798 the composer Artemii Vedel²; the writer Kvitka-Osnovianenko worked here as well¹. The collegium prepared the ground for the opening of Kharkiv University in 1805, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century it was transformed by stages into a theological seminary².

In 1752 St Ioasaf of Belgorod came to Kharkiv: he served in the collegium's Protection church and ordained there as hierodeacon a resident of the monastery, his nephew the monk Narkiss Kvitka, and whenever he visited the city he often served here¹. In 1753 St Ioasaf appointed Venerable Rafail (Mokrensky), numbered among the saints in 2008, rector of the collegium and superior of the monastery¹.

After the closure in 1788 of the Old Kharkiv Transfiguration monastery at Kuriazh, Archimandrite Narkiss Kvitka was retired to the Protection house, but no fitting cells were found for him there apart from those behind the belfry with two closets; he lived in them for two years, mourning the desolation of the Kuriazh he loved, and died on 23 April 1792, on the day of the patronal feast at Kuriazh¹. For all his noble birth, of clothing and utensils there remained after him only what was needed for his burial: the rest he had given away in his lifetime¹.

In 1799 the Sloboda-Ukrainian Kharkiv eparchy was founded, and the monastery became the residence of the ruling bishops, while the Protection church served as the cathedral, which it was held to be until 1846^{1, 2}. In 1820-1826 the large Archbishop's House was built at the monastery in the classicist style^{2, 3}. Among the Kharkiv hierarchs who lived at the monastery were Saints Melety (Leontovych), Innokentii (Borysov), Filaret (Humylevsky) and Makarii (Bulhakov)²; St Melety, who governed the eparchy from 1835 and reposed in 1840, was buried in the monastery crypt¹. St Filaret considerably enlarged the main Cross-Protection church, put up two buildings with outhouses and a wooden building for an almshouse, and his Historical and Statistical Description of the Kharkiv Eparchy remains a source for the eparchy's history to this day¹.

The Protection cathedral joined two traditions of the Sloboda country: three eight-sided towers crowned with cupolas, drawn into a single body at the level of the lower tiers and narrowing upward by stepped "zalomy" - a form characteristic of masonry churches of the Ukrainian baroque and borrowed from wooden architecture - while the division into a lower winter church of the Three Hierarchs and an upper summer Protection church belongs to another tradition; at the junction of the two the cathedral is girdled by an external covered gallery³. The inner walls of the upper church were painted by the Ukrainian artist Bunakov, the teacher of Illia Repin, and after the renewal of the iconostasis in 1846 the church was consecrated in honour of the Exaltation of the Cross¹.

The fate of the Ozeriana icon of the Mother of God, venerated across the region, is closely bound up with the monastery². The Historical and Statistical Description of the Kharkiv Eparchy of 1857 testifies that the icon was painted on canvas by the brush of an ancient artist and that folds are still visible in the canvas - traces of its being carried on the road; by other accounts the image was found by a peasant of the village of Ozeriana who, mowing grass and not seeing the holy thing, cut it in two, and in the morning saw the icon whole at the place of the mowing and gave it to the founders of the Ozeriana hermitage². The Kharkiv historian Yehor Redin dated the icon no earlier than the seventeenth century². After the hermitage was closed in 1787 the image was moved to the Kuriazh monastery, from there in 1788 to the Protection monastery, and in 1797 to the revived Kuriazh; from 1843, by the blessing of St Innokentii, the icon was brought each year to the Protection monastery for the period from 30 September to 26 April². In 1893-1896 the church of the Ozeriana icon was raised at the monastery, and on 30 September 1896 the carrying of the image into Kharkiv was filmed by the local photographer Alfred Fedetsky². After 1917 the icon was lost, and copies of it are venerated in the Sloboda country².

In 1919 Archimandrite Rafail left the monastery and hieromonk Palladii became its superior; in 1922 he tonsured Pavlo Kratyrov, and on 19 February of that year, in the monastery's church of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow", which has not survived, Kratyrov was consecrated bishop of Starobilsk, vicar of the Kharkiv eparchy¹. On 30 September 1922 the authorities closed the monastery and drove the brotherhood out to provincial monasteries; the buildings were handed to various secular institutions^{1, 2}. In the 1940s the relics of St Melety were moved from the monastery crypt to the Annunciation cathedral².

The present revival of the house began on 8 April 1990 with a service in the Protection cathedral²; in the same year the church was returned to the Church, Archimandrite Vitalii (Zhukov) became the first superior after the reopening, and on 30 September 1990 the first monastic tonsure was performed at the house¹. On 27-28 May 1992 the Kharkiv Council of Bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was held at the monastery, as a memorial plaque on the facade records^{2, 3}. In 1996 the hundred-year-old church of the Ozeriana icon was consecrated again for services, and the Kharkiv theological seminary was revived on the basis of the school opened in 1993 - new premises were fitted out for it at the house in 2000-2001^{2, 3}. In 1997-1998 the Archbishop's House was returned to the Church, and since 1999 it has again housed the bishop's residence, with a church of the Apostle John the Theologian consecrated in it².

In 2002 the main restoration work at the monastery was completed, and in 2004 the Museum of the History of the Kharkiv Eparchy was opened - in a building of 1871 rebuilt in 1879 and 1912; the museum continues the history of the church archaeological museum opened at the eparchy in 1913^{2, 3}. On the monastery square stand memorials to the 200th anniversary of the Kharkiv eparchy and to the 2000th anniversary of the Nativity of Christ, and on the site of the collegium building, dismantled in 1896, a granite stele bearing an image of Hryhorii Skovoroda³.

The patronal feasts kept here are the Protection of the Mother of God, the feast of the Ozeriana icon of the Mother of God, the memory of the Great Martyr Demetrios of Thessaloniki and the common memory of Saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom⁴. Among the holy things of the house are the Ozeriana icon of the Mother of God, the icon of the Mother of God "Queen of All", a case with holy relics from the Holy Land, the relics of St Ioasaf of Belgorod and the Yelets-Kharkiv icon of the Mother of God⁵.