THE VYDUBYTSKYI MONASTERY: A KYIV LANDMARK WORTHY OF ATTENTION (04/11/99)

THE VYDUBYTSKYI MONASTERY:
A KYIV LANDMARK WORTHY OF ATTENTION

by Titus D. Hewryk

"The Vydubytskyi Monastery pleads for any kind of financial or material assistance. Help us in the development and restoration of the Vydubytskyi Monastery in Kyiv."

- Ihumen Sevastian, Vydubytskyi Monastery, Vydubytska 40, Kyiv. (Published in Svoboda, February 5).

The Vydubytskyi Monastery is one of the oldest and most important monastic communities in Kyiv, second only to the Pecherska Lavra (Monastery of the Caves). Its spectacular architectural ensemble, graceful Baroque cupolas, steeples and spires soaring out of the lush greenery of the surrounding sloped terrain, rivals the Monastery of the Caves in beauty. The Vydubytskyi Monastery of St. Michael is off the familiar tourist track, but it deserves the visitor's attention and our community's support.

The hilly plateau high above the Dnipro River above the Vydubytskyi Monastery, some three kilometers to the south of the Monastery of the Caves, is known as Zvirynets or "menagerie." During the Middle Ages it was the favorite hunting ground of Kyivan rulers. Due to the hill's strategic position, Prince Vsevolod, son of Prince Yaroslav the Wise and father of Prince Volodymyr Monomakh, in 1069 built his residence, which came to be known as Krasnyi Dvir, atop the hill. Located on the site of the present-day Botanical Gardens, this castle-like royal residence defended the southern flank of Kyiv and commanded access to a fort and ferry where the road from Kyiv to the city of Pereiaslav crossed the Dnipro River.

The slope between the Zvirynets plateau and the present-day riverside highway (Nadniprianske Chaussée) is known as Vydubychi. According to the medieval chronicle, the origin of the name Vydubychi is the Ukrainian word "to emerge." Medieval chroniclers recorded that after Christianity was accepted in Kyivan-Rus', a wooden idol of the pagan god Perun, which was thrown into the Dnipro further upstream, emerged from the river and washed up on the river bank at the base of the slope.

At the foot of Krasnyi Dvir, nestled in a natural amphitheater formed by hills above the Dnipro River, Prince Vsevolod founded St. Michael's monastic community, now popularly known as the Vydubytskyi Monastery, and had a large masonry church constructed.

The monastery and the neighboring royal residence are associated with a number of historical figures. Prince Volodymyr Monomakh funded the development of a library in the Vydubytskyi Monastery and transferred the compilation work of the Kyiv Chronicles from the Monastery of the Caves to the Vydubytskyi Monastery. This is where Abbott Sylvester re-edited the renowned Kyivan Chronicle and incorporated into it Prince Volodymyr Monomakh's famous tract "Advice to My Children" (Pouchennia Ditiam).

Prince Vasylko of Terebovlia visited the monastery on the eve of his tragic blinding. After the Mongol attack on Eastern Europe, the future King Danylo of Halych and Volhyn rested in the thriving monastery on his way to meet with the Mongol khan.

From the time of the 1596 Union of Brest the Vydubytskyi Monastery was the official seat of the first three metropolitans of the Catholic Church in Ukraine - Mykhailo Rohozha, Ipatii Potii and Yosyf Rutskyi. In 1635 the monastery was returned to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. From these years of Catholic jurisdiction a bell with the inscription AKHLT was preserved in the monastery's bell tower until its destruction in the 1930s.

The monastery was under the continuous protection of Ukraine's hetmans and aristocratic families. In 1695 Hetman Ivan Mazepa forbade the Vydubytskyi Monastery's neighbors to "do injustice to the monastery" and placed it under the protection of Starodub Regiment Col. Mykhailo Myklashevskyi, who constructed the monastery's Baroque-style Church of St. George and new masonry Transfiguration Refectory. Hetman Danylo Apostol funded construction of the monastery's masonry bell tower. In the middle of the 18th century, thanks to Hetman Kyrylo Rozumovskyi's intervention, the Vydubytskyi Monastery received numerous properties.

Collegiate church of St. Michael

Included in the monastery complex is the Mykhailivskyi Sobor or the Collegiate Church of St. Michael. The church was constructed in phases. In 1070-1073, the church proper was constructed and in 1080-1088 the narthex and the choir above it were added. The building's Byzantine three-nave basilican plan is comparable to the one in the existing Church of the Savior in Chernihiv. St. Michael's architectural composition was embellished with three apses and one dome, and its architectural details reflected the considerable Romanesque influences of the period.

In medieval times, the site of the Church of St. Michael, a high terrace above the Dnipro River, was slowly sliding into the river. Therefore, sometime in 1199 or 1200, under the patronage of Prince Riuryk Rostyslavych, whom a medieval chronicler described as one who "doted on construction," the Kyiv architect Petro Mylonih constructed an ingenious system of huge retaining walls that protected the church from the waters of the river. The high and wide retaining walls, from which opened a wide panorama of the river and the eastern bank, were widely admired by contemporaries and lauded by the medieval chronicler.

Three centuries later, however, the retaining walls gave in and part of the medieval church fell into the river. Traces of its ruins may still be seen. Of the original church, almost half was preserved. After the landslide a much smaller wooden replacement of the lost portion of the building was constructed. In subsequent years the river bed moved and is now at some distance from the Church of St. Michael.

In the 17th century Metropolitan Petro Mohyla built a new masonry apse on the eastern end of the surviving portion of the medieval structure. The resulting Baroque church was about half the size of the original medieval structure. In 1767-1769 a new Baroque cupola was constructed on the remaining portion of the medieval church building. The present-day visitor can easily discern the original medieval portion of the building with its exposed brick and rubble stone walls, while the later brick addition is covered by white painted stucco. The interior's preserved fragment of the 11th-12th century fresco, "The Last Judgment," conveys an idea of the building's original decor.

Church of St. George

The magnificent Church of St. George (1696-1701) is the focal point of the existing monastery's architectural ensemble. The portrait of its patron, Col. Mykhailo Myklashevskyi of the Starodub Regiment, that once hung on the interior wall of the church, is now exhibited in the Museum of Ukrainian Art on Hrushevskyi Street. The name of the designer of the Church of St. George is unknown, but he probably designed two similar buildings - Hetman Ivan Mazepa's Church of All Saints located in the Percherska Lavra complex (1696-1698) and the Church of St. Catherine in Chernihiv (1715). Of these three similar structures, the Church of St. George is the most elegant - one of the finest examples of Ukrainian Baroque of the end of the 17th century.

Inspired by the Ukrainian vernacular wooden architecture, the Church of St. George has an equilateral cruciform plan surmounted by five tower-like Baroque cupolas. A student of architecture will be interested to note that the size and proportions of the Church of St. George in the Vydubytskyi Monastery are similar to those of the renowned Petro Kalnyshevskyi's wooden Church of the Intercession in the town of Romny, which was destroyed by Soviet artillery fire during the second world war.

The composition of the Church of St. George underlines the vertical character of its design, the harmony of its forms and details. Relatively sparse and elegant exterior decor incorporates on four sides of the building the founder's coat of arms. The spectacularly high and well illuminated interior once contained a five-tier carved and gilded wooden iconostasis built under the patronage of Hetman Danylo Apostol's wife. This work of art, remarkable for its workmanship, height and composition, reflected centuries of Ukraine's wood-carving traditions. Of all the altar screens of the Baroque period, St. George's iconostasis stood out as a masterpiece.

The magnificient iconostasis covered the entire width of the church and admirably complemented the building's lofty interior space. Its rhythm of gilded wooden columns, fields of rich ornamentation and icons dominated the interior. Five tiers of icons whimsically bent and rose to the vertical axis of the central dome of the church. The unique altar screen was destroyed by the Soviets in the 1930s.

Transfiguration Refectory

The monumentality of the Church of St. George building is underscored by the small scale of the neighboring Preobrazhenska Trapezna or Transfiguration Refectory, which has the appearance of a 17th century Ukrainian aristocratic residence. At the time it was built it accommodated a chapel, dining hall, pantry and kitchen. The main ornamental motif of the refectory's portal and the facade's frieze is the periwinkle flower.

The refectory's construction (1696-1701) was funded by Col. Myklashevskyi. Above the entrance to the refectory the visitor may still see Myklashevskyi's once colorful coat of arms - a bow and two arrows. In 1888 an awkward addition to the refectory building was constructed by the diocesan architect Volodymyr Nikolaiev.

In the mid-1920s the refectory was converted by the Soviets into a carpenters' club. During this crude adaptation, most of its interiors, including the chapel's very fine old iconostasis, were destroyed. Later the building was used as a warehouse and more recently as offices by the Institute of Archaeology.

Bell tower

In the eastern end of the monastic compound, at the main entrance to the monastery, is a four-level bell tower. It was built in 1727-1733 under the patronage of Hetman Danylo Apostol. In comparison to the dynamic forms of the Church of St. George, this belfry is relatively small. It is one of the few bell towers of that period that has survived the Soviet campaign of destruction in the 1930s.

The original building had three levels; in 1823-1833 the architect Andriy Melenskyi added a fourth level, which is crowned by a Neoclassical style peak. On the bell tower's ground level there was once a passageway to the monastery's walled compound. The Chapel of St. Daniel - Hetman Apostol's patron saint - was originally on the second level. Later the chapel was converted into a library and archive. The Vydubytskyi Monastery's library, containing primarily publications from 17th-18th centuries, boasted two copies of the 1581 Ostrih Bible. Bell chambers, now without their original bells, are on the third and fourth levels.

Of the belfry's original 10 bells, four were antique. According to an inscription on one of them, the bell was donated "during Hetman Ivan Mazepa's rule" by Col. Hryhorii Hertsyk of Poltava and was cast by the well-known Kyiv master, Opanas Petrovych. Another bell that once belonged to the monastery was presented to it in 1699 by the legendary Zaporozhian Kozak Taras Zaliznyi Hrish.

In 1902, to accommodate the monastic library's needs, the diocesan architect Yevhen Yermakov constructed an unattractive addition to the bell tower. At that time the passage on the ground floor of the bell tower was walled up and a separate gateway next to the belfry was constructed.

Cemetery

During the 19th century, large areas of the monastic compound were transformed into a cemetery. On the territory of the picturesque cemetery members of such prominent Ukrainian aristocratic families as Kaptsevych, Kapnist, Doroshenko and Dunin-Borkovskyi were buried. The cemetery also became a popular burial ground for Kyiv's intellectual elite, cultural and historical figures such as the famous art collectors Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko, educator Konstantyn Ushytskyi and his wife, Nadia, and Kyiv University professor of anatomy Volodymyr Bets.

Of all the city's cemeteries, the Vydubytskyi Monastery's cemetery had the largest number of old monuments. Several of them were executed by renowned Chernihiv-born sculptor Ivan Martos. By the late 1920s, many of the monuments had been wantonly damaged, demolished or carted away.

Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko's grave

To the right of the entrance to the Church of St. Michael are the graves of Chernihiv-born Bohdan Khanenko (1848-1917), a descendent of Hetman Mykhailo Khanenko, and his wife, Varvara née Tereschenko (1857-1922), daughter of millionaire philanthropist Mykola Tereschenko. Khanenko was a lawyer, art collector, archaeologist and philanthropist. He was also the moving force behind the design and construction of Kyiv's first municipal museum and present-day Museum of Ukrainian Art.

For some 40 years he and his wife collected works of art that eventually were donated to the city. Khanenko's erudition and support of professional consultants enabled him to assemble a magnificent collection. In their acquisitions the Khanenkos were often in competition with the wealthy Moscow businessman and noted patron of art, Pavel Tretiakov.

In April of 1917, Bohdan Khanenko wrote a will granting all his wealth to the municipal museum and his art collection and magnificent residence on Tereschenko Street to the city of Kyiv. Khanenko's only condition was that the residence-museum building and its collection be named after Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko and that the collection be kept intact. On December 18, 1918, Varvara Khanenko conveyed the museum building and its collection to the recently established Ukrainian Academy of Sciences.

The Khanenko Museum's founders, however, did not receive the same treatment as Tretiakov, who in 1892 founded the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow. The Khanenko museum is presently known as the "Museum of Western and Eastern Art." Many of the museum's best works were lost. Some of them are now in Leningrad or Moscow, some were stolen by the Germans during the occupation of Kyiv in the second world war.

After Varvara Khanenko's death, her former servant had a wooden cross mounted over the grave of Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko. The cross disappeared a long time ago. Only after the Soviet Union fell apart was a marker, with incorrect dates, installed over the final resting place of this remarkable couple.

Recent history

The Vydubytskyi Monastery was one of the more attractive Kyiv landmarks. In the late 19th century the monastery and the surrounding area of the present-day Botanical Gardens became a site of the popular annual April 23 St. George's Feast celebrations. In the beginning of the 20th century the picturesque area surrounding the Vydubytskyi Monastery was incorporated into the city limits.

After the Soviet victory in Ukraine, the Bolshevik regime designated most of the monastery's facilities for the use of the workers of the nearby sawmill. After the liquidation of the neighboring Monastery of the Caves some of its monks moved to the Vydubytskyi Monastery. In 1936, however, the Vydubytskyi Monastery also was closed to religious worship, the monks were expelled, and the Church of St. George and the adjoining medieval Church of St. Michael were converted into military warehouses. The monastic belfry's bells were confiscated and melted down.

The brunt of the Soviet anti-Ukrainian campaign in Kyiv took place in the mid-1930s, after Soviet Ukraine's capital was transferred from Kharkiv to Kyiv. At that time the Vydubytskyi Monastery, the neighboring Holy Trinity Monastery in Zvirynets, the Zvirynets Cemetery and the adjoining slopes above the Dnipro River were designated as territory of the new Central Republican Botanical Gardens of Soviet Ukraine's Academy of Sciences.

Though the new institution was founded in 1936, its development commenced only in 1944. The construction work on the Botanical Gardens was carried out by German POWs and many of its plants were brought in from Germany. The Botanical Garden's first director was Academician Mykola Hryshko, a talented administrator and a Botanical Gardens enthusiast.

When in 1950, a decision was made to liquidate the Vydubytskyi Cemetery, the tombstones from the destroyed cemetery were used by Academician Hryshko to construct the Botanical Gardens' cactus garden. As a result, of the hundreds of tombstones that marked the graves of the people buried in the cemetery, only 13 survived. The Botanical Gardens' opening took place only in 1964.

After World War II, the Vydubytskyi Monastery's medieval Church of St. Michael, the Baroque Church of St. George and the refectory were used as book storage facilities by the Academy of Sciences. Monks' dormitories at that time continued to serve as workers' housing. In 1968-1969, four separate suspicious fires broke out in the monastery. They destroyed Ukrainian and Hebrew book collections that had been saved from an earlier fire of similar suspicious origin at the National Library in the center of the city. The fire also destroyed all the wooden Baroque cupolas of the Church of St. George.

In 1970-1973, the cupolas of the Church of St. George were rebuilt and its exterior walls were rehabilitated. Subsequently the church was used as sculpture studios and later as a storage facility of the Institute of Archaeology.

During the final months of Soviet rule in Ukraine, the historic Monastery of the Caves was turned over to the Russian Orthodox Church and its xenophobic Moscow Patriarchate. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Vydubytskyi Monastery's medieval Collegiate Church of St. Michael was returned to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate.

The Collegiate Church of St. Michael is now open to worshipers. The monastic community also is growing. In 1997 the academy's Institute of Archeology commenced a slow and phased evacuation of the historic monastery's buildings to new quarters on the city's Left Bank.

The venerable Vydubytskyi Monastery of St. Michael, under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, is entering a slow and painfully difficult rehabilitation and restoration process. Rehabilitation of St. George's interior awaits the time when the Institute of Archeology will vacate its premises. Restoration of the monastery's architectural landmarks is only beginning. Some of the old desecrated burials were marked again by simple new tombstones. Among restored markers is the one of Gen.-Maj. Yakiv Mandziuk (1874-1918), commanding officer of the 1st Ukrainian Corps.

The monastery's physical surroundings are among the most bucolic and peaceful, a truly relaxing place in a modern urban metropolis. Visitors can see monks building beehives, piling hay into old-fashioned haystacks or tending vegetable gardens.

While in Kyiv, go and visit the monastery. The monastic brother in the book kiosk will certainly tell you about the growing monastic community or about their Russian visitors who are appalled and disgusted that the liturgy in the Collegiate Church of St. Michael is celebrated in Ukrainian. And take a look at the religious books that are being sold by the monks - published in Kyiv and Lviv.

You may choose to worship within the walls of the historic Collegiate Church of St. Michael, pray at the gravesite of Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko, watch art students draw the majestic Church of St. George, listen to a monk talk about his bee colony, or just relax and admire the picturesque landscape.

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