Nyzkynychi Holy Dormition Monastery

The Nyzkynychi Holy Dormition Monastery stands in the village of Nyzkynychi in Volyn. The village has been known since the fifteenth century as a holding of the Kysil magnates, who built a wooden castle here and surrounded it with earthen ramparts. On 16 September 1643 Adam Kysil founded at Nyzkynychi a monastery of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos and made over to it the castle with the lands around it; the heart of the house became a stone church dated to the first half or the middle of the seventeenth century¹.

The founder of the monastery belonged to the highest elite of the Polish state and yet remained Orthodox; he was a generous benefactor of the Church and firmly defended its rights before the Polish authorities¹. In 1653 Adam Kysil died and was buried in the monastery church, in the side chapel of the Great Martyr George the Victorious¹.

The house flourished until 1690 and then suffered oppression from the Dohyll-Tsyryn nobles, who had taken part of Nyzkynychi, and was converted to the Union. By the end of the eighteenth century the monastery had grown poor: in 1796 the main church became an Orthodox parish, and the monastery itself worked on until its abolition in 1837¹.

In 1961 the main church was closed, and in 1962 God-fighters broke into it: they desecrated the altar, opened Kysil's sarcophagus, scattered his remains and pushed his memorial statue to the floor, which broke it. When this became known in Moscow, a special commission was sent to investigate¹. In 1969 the church opened again for services, and restorers from Lviv revived the antiquities here¹. In 1987-1994 the rector of the church was the priest Pavlo (Lebid)¹. On 28 October 1997 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed the revival of a monastic community at the church¹.

The monastery is still surrounded by the remains of the ramparts of the Kysil castle - they form a square outline with projections at the corners, and within it lies the square precinct of the house, enclosed by a stone wall. In the southern stretch of that wall, by the western corner, stands a two-tier wooden bell tower with gates in its lower tier, dated to the second half of the seventeenth century. At the centre stands a cross-shaped, five-domed church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, formerly of the Intercession, recognised as an outstanding monument of Ukrainian architecture. Inside, at the south-western corner, is the tombstone of Adam Kysil: a half-length statue set in a vaulted niche framed with ornament carrying military symbolism, and in the crypt beneath the church rests an ancient tin coffin with his remains².

The northern side of the precinct is formed by the brotherhood building, put up by 2003; in its eastern part, in that same year, a church of the Great Martyr George the Victorious was consecrated². A copy of the ancient Kholm icon of the Mother of God was painted specially for the house and brought here on 21 September 2003³. In 2010 a typical historical Ukrainian cottage was built on the lake shore near the monastery, and in 2011 the monastery Museum of Antiquity and Folk Life was opened in it; many of the exhibits may be handled, and the loom in it is set up and shown at work⁴.