Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery
Novgorod-Seversky Monastery
Ukraine, Novhorod-Siverskyi
There are places on the map of Ukraine where, having visited once, you forever leave a part of your heart, where you want to return again and again. One of the most beautiful and historically famous monasteries of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Novgorod-Seversky Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery of the Chernihiv Diocese, looks like a precious stone in the frame of our Fatherland.
“If on the heights of the mountains the human soul with reverent feeling approaches the boundless Creator and Provider of the Universe, then the place occupied by the Novgorod-Seversky Monastery is quite capable of producing such feelings…,” wrote Archbishop Filaret (Gumilevsky), a prominent educator of the 19th century, impressed by the monastery.
The Transfiguration Convent was founded in 1033 by Prince Mstislav Tmutarakansky and belongs to the most ancient missionary centers of Kievan Rus. It was here that the princes of the specific Novgorod-Seversky principality, which in ancient times included Bryansk, Kursk, and other large cities, and whose territory extended almost to Moscow itself, received blessings for their deeds. In the XII century. The first stone Cathedral of the Savior was erected in the courtyard of the monastery. Tradition says that it was he who was the starting point of the famous campaign "to the Polovtsian land for the Russian land" of Novgorod-Seversky Prince Igor - the main character of "The Tale of Igor's Campaign". At the same time, a unique economic system of the monastery began to take shape.
After the Mongol-Tatar invasion and the decline of cities, only in the 16th century. Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery appears on the chronicle pages. In difficult times of foreign oppression, the monastery did not stop its existence, retained the lands donated by the princes and even increased them due to the patronage of the Orthodox Lithuanian rulers of the Severshchina.
In the first half of the XVII century. The Poles captured the region and tried to set up a center for the Catholicization of the population in the Spassky Monastery, but the liberation movement of Bogdan Khmelnitsky in 1648 predetermined the end of the plans of the Polish Kingdom. With the support of the local population, the Cossacks liberated the region from foreigners.
The real flourishing of monastic life begins in the second half of the 17th century, when in 1657 Archbishop Lazar (Baranovich) came to pastoral service in the Chernihiv-Seversky lands. Novgorod-Seversky monastery becomes a cathedral, and until his last days, Bishop Lazar remembers it as his best and dearest residence. During the years of his management, the first printing house in the Left-Bank Ukraine was opened here, the Slavic-Greek-Latin school began to operate, which became the basis of the famous Chernihiv Collegium.
In the 70s, the Cossack community demanded that Lazar Baranovich move to Chernigov, and the Novgorod-Seversky Monastery remained in the care of Archimandrite Mikhail (Lezhaisky), an authoritative religious and cultural figure, one of the four candidates for the Kiev Metropolis at the end of the 17th century. It is he who completes the large-scale construction launched by Lazar Baranovich in the monastery - stone walls and towers, the refectory of the Peter and Paul Church, the body of cells, etc.
The next abbot of the monastery (1699-1702) was St. Demetrius Tuptalo, a preacher and spiritual writer glorified by the Lord, who finished writing the third volume of the Lives of the Saints here and began work on the Martyrology. From here the great saint was called for hierarchal service to the Rostov cathedra.
Two monks of the monastery also went down in history - Macarius and Sylvester, who committed in 1704-1705. foot trip to Jerusalem and the most interesting travel notes left to historical science.
Since 1785, the monastery became the department of a separate Novgorod-Seversk and Glukhov diocese, created by decree of Catherine II. The monastery occupies a leading position in the historically formed Seversk region. During this period, the Ilyinsky Church and the majestic Spaso-Preobrazhensky Cathedral were erected in the monastery on the site of the lost Church of the Transfiguration of the 11th century. The cathedral was built according to the design of the famous architect Giacomo Quarenghi (he also designed the Academy of Sciences, the Hermitage Theater, the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg, the Arc de Triomphe in Novgorod-Seversk) and consecrated in 1795. In connection with the opening of the diocese, Novgorod-Severskaya also began to operate theological Seminary.
Unfortunately, the flourishing in the life of the monastery ended with the death of Catherine II. By decree of Paul I, most of the administrative reforms and transformations of the late empress were abolished, including the newly formed Novgorod-Seversk diocese.
Throughout the 19th century in the monastery there was a theological school, opened on the basis of the disbanded seminary. In the 90s of the XIX century. here the brotherhood of St. Demetrius of Rostov was created, the main task of which was educational activities: extra-liturgical sermons, lectures, conversations, distribution of spiritual literature. At the same time, a charitable fraternal school for orphans begins to operate.
For many centuries of its existence, the monastery played a prominent role in the spiritual and administrative life of the Severshchina and adjacent regions. If we take the annalistic period of the history of the monastery of the 16th - 19th centuries, then one cannot help but notice the constant attention to it, reflected in the texts of many letters of commendation, both of Moscow monarchs (Vasily III, Ivan the Terrible, Alexei Mikhailovich, etc.), and almost each of the hetmans Left-bank Ukraine. One of them, Demyan Mnohohrishny, received his mace for hetmanship in this monastery.
The names of many significant personalities are associated with the history of the Spaso-Preobrazhensky Monastery. An interesting fact is that at the end of the 16th century, False Dmitry I, the impostor Grigory Otrepyev, who pretended to be the son of Ivan the Terrible, found his last refuge here before leaving for Lithuania. Leaving the monastery, he even left a note to Archimandrite Zacharias: “I am Tsarevich Dimitry, son of John, and I will not forget your kindness when I descend to the throne of my father…”.
Statistical report of the beginning of the 20th century. noted that the archimandrite is still at the head of the monastery, there are 13 monks, 25 novices. The revolutionary events of 1917 barbarously crossed out the centuries-old traditions of the monastery.
The literature of the Soviet period, indicating the date of the closure of the monastery, calls 1918, but in fact, even before the middle of 1923, the lamp of fraternal life was lit. After the liquidation, the local authorities for a long time could not decide to whom to transfer the destroyed monastery. The activities of the new "owners", or rather their mismanagement, led to the rapid destruction of the once majestic ensemble of architectural monuments, the destruction of the monastery cemetery, on which many political and cultural figures of our Fatherland rested, starting from Novgorod-Seversky Prince Oleg Svyatoslavich (d. ).
The destruction of the shrine took place before the eyes of the whole city, and the local intelligentsia, enlisting the support of the provincial museum in 1929, in order to preserve the unique architectural complex, achieved the formation of one of the first state historical and architectural reserves in Ukraine on the territory of the monastery.
The events of the Great Patriotic War affected the history of the monastery with special disasters. In the very first days of the occupation, the Nazis set up a concentration camp for Soviet prisoners of war in the holy place. In 1943, when a liberation wave approached Novgorod-Seversky, enemy forces turned the monastery mountain into one of the main outposts of defense. In different eras, the fortress walls of the monastery saw the troops of Lithuanians, Poles, and Swedes, but the German troops brought the greatest misfortune to the monastery. During the assault on the city, almost all the buildings of the monastery were damaged during the hostilities.
After the war, the special boarding school and various economic organizations became the territorial owners of the monastery, and since 1985, a branch of the Chernihiv architectural reserve.
In 1990, the museum of the book “The Tale of Igor's Campaign” was created and located here, exposition dedicated to the world-famous monument of ancient Russian literature and the events described in it.
During the 1950s and 1990s, attempts were repeatedly made to restore the complex, but the matter was never brought to an end.
In 1997 and 1998, thanks to the support of the President of Ukraine L.D. Kuchma, the walls and towers of the monastery were restored, the former appearance of the Transfiguration Cathedral was revived, and the territory was landscaped.
1999 became crucial in the life of the monastery. After a long break in its ancient walls, a lively prayer for the Seversky region, Ukraine and the entire Orthodox world again sounded. The ancient monastery was transferred to the Church. According to the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, hegumen Gabriel (Rybalchenko) was appointed its rector.
Summer 2003 on the eve of the celebration of the 970th anniversary of the monastic monastery and the 330th anniversary of the first Novgorod-Seversk printing house in Left-Bank Ukraine, under the patronage of Leonid Kuchma, a full restoration of the all-Ukrainian and pan-Orthodox shrine began here, dynamically continuing today.
