Neporotove St. Nicholas's Monastery

The St Nicholas cave monastery of Neporotove, "Halytsia", stands near the village of Neporotove, Sokyriany district, in the Chernivtsi region¹. At its northern end the hamlet of Halytsia comes out onto a horseshoe-shaped hollow on the high southern bank of the Dniester reservoir; among woods, on the cape between the eastern slope of the hollow and the river valley, about 120 metres above the water, stands the house of St Nicholas of Myra².

In distant times the action of the natural elements formed a multitude of grottoes in the local limestone¹. In one of them, about 1000 years before the Nativity of Christ, there was a pagan altar - its traces were found in 1999 by the brethren of the monastery and studied by archaeologists¹. Later Christian monks finished the natural grottoes and cut further artificial chambers in the rock: today the house counts more than 20 cavities of natural, man-made and "mixed" origin¹.

The exact time of the monastery's founding has not been established; at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century it stood empty¹.

The archive of the Chernivtsi and Bukovyna eparchy holds a translation from Romanian of a "Short History of the Skete of Halytsia", whose original has not been found and is tentatively dated to the 1930s¹. The manuscript relates that on the night of 9 May 1820 - the eve of the feast of the translation of the relics of St Nicholas to Bari, old style - three fishermen sailing on the Dniester saw a fiery cross in the sky above the house and in the morning told the priest of Neporotove, who in his turn told his flock what had happened¹. After this a cross procession was made to the cave church, once consecrated in honour of the holy great martyr George the Victorious, and it became an annual custom¹.

According to the researcher B. Ridush, in 1904-1905 the premises of the monastery were reconstructed, but no monks settled in them¹. In the 1930s the house was renewed and opened a second time with funds from the Romanian royal house, but in 1940 it was closed because Northern Bukovyna was taken into the USSR¹. During the war years it revived, and in 1948 it stood empty again¹. In the 1950s a rockfall damaged the monastery buildings¹.

In 1999 the revival of the house began, with the participation of monks from the Kreshchatyk monastery¹.

Over a number of years some of the caves were adapted as cells and a refectory¹. In 2002 a dome was set over the cave church of St Nicholas, and by the end of that same year a small building above ground was put up¹. In 2003 the cave church of St Anthony the Great was consecrated, and in 2010 a dwelling house was built¹.

The house has a metochion in the city of Chernivtsi, where in 2009 the site was consecrated for the building of a chapel of the holy great martyr Panteleimon⁴.

The memory of St Nicholas of Myra is kept in the house on 9 (22) May and 6 (19) December, and the memory of St Anthony the Great (of Egypt) on 17 (30) January³.