Zaporozhian monastery
The outstanding Ukrainian scholar, historian, archaeologist, and writer Dmytro Yavornytsky was born 150 years ago. In the course of his indefatigable research spanning half a century the scholar published over 200 studies mainly devoted to the history of Ukraine, for which he was persecuted both in tsarist and Soviet times. What especially attracted the historian were the Zaporozhian Cossacks, the subject of his lifelong research. Yavornytsky’s fundamental History of the Zaporozhian Cossacks is a true encyclopedia exploring nearly all aspects of Cossack times and mores. The book’s main attraction is that it is peopled by ordinary Cossacks, chancellors, officers, the Cossacks’ Christian and non-Christian neighbors, as well as monks and priests because, to quote Yavornytsky, “there is no better promoter of religious feelings in a human being than a constant war.”
In his history of the Cossacks Yavornytsky gives a detailed description of St. Michael’s Samara Monastery, one of the oldest Cossack abodes in the steppes of Left-Bank Ukraine. The author believes that this was the place where the Left-Bank Cossacks built their first church and later founded the first monastery school. The monastery was founded 430 years ago, in 1576, when the Polish-Lithuanian King Stefan Batory gifted the Cossacks lands on the banks of the Samara River. Legend has it that at this very time two wandering monks settled on a desolate but very picturesque island in the no less beautiful Samara. When the Cossacks learned about the hermit monks, they placed them under their protection and built a wooden church and a small fortress, with basements and secret passages, to ward off enemy forays. Attached to the church were a hospital for the wounded and a few houses for ailing, old, and impoverished Zaporozhians. The Zaporozhian “noble kish” also gave the newly-built church part of its own land with woods, arable lands, and meadows.
There was no real hierarchy in the monastery until 1602, when the Cossacks persuaded Kyiv’s Mizhhiria Monastery to appoint hieromonk Paisiy as their cloister’s first abbot. He was a very learned monk and expert of the Holy Writ, as well as a talented healer, who knew how to treat wounds and illnesses. Soon after the monastery even obtained stauropegion status, i.e., it was placed under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople. In practice, though, it always remained under the patronage of the Sich Kish and was considered a “military” one. The Zaporozhians took great pride in their monastery, calling it “God’s paradise on Earth, a true Palestine, and new Jerusalem.” Elderly people eagerly settled in hamlets around the monastery.
As the tempestuous times of trouble came, Samara Monastery was frequently captured, looted, and devastated by Poles, Russians, Tatars, and Turks. In 1688 the monastery was visited by the Russian Prince Vasiliy Golitsyn, a favorite of Tsarina Sofia. Making preparations for a war against the Crimea, he began to build a series of fortifications on the monastery lands. The monks resolutely opposed the infringement of their rights, and their opposition ended in tragedy: the Russian troops laid siege to the monastery, capturing many monks and subjecting them to severe torture.
The monastery went into decline: the monks dispersed, the cells became deserted, and no prayers were said in the church and the chapels. The monastery also went through hard times after Hetman Ivan Mazepa switched sides against Tsar Peter I. The Zaporozhians, who were moving to the Turkish lands, burned down part of the monastery and carried off most of the property. (Obviously, the Cossacks’ idea of righteousness was of a somewhat pragmatic nature.) Later, the monastery found itself temporarily on “Turkish territory” and provided shelter for the Tatars during their forays into Cossack lands.
The true revival of Samara Monastery began in 1720, when Danylo Apostol became the colonel of Myrhorod. The still existing Zaporozhian Kish spared neither expense nor effort to restore its cloister. Lands, forests, lakes, and villages were donated to the monastery; the brotherhood rose in number; inns were built for pilgrims; and the monastery’s history began to be recorded. In the mid-18th century the monastery became the spiritual center of the Cossack land’s entire northern fringe, receiving pilgrims from as far away as the Don River and providing shelter for ordinary Cossacks and officers in the twilight of their lives.
A great number of brilliant individuals ran Samara Monastery throughout its history, including Kyrylo Tarlovsky, nicknamed the Wild Priest. He came from a noble family, attended the Kyiv Theological Academy, and was the priest of the Kozelets church. Legend has it that it was Tarlovsky who secretly wedded Tsarina Elizabeth Petrovna and Oleksiy Rozumovsky, a handsome, sweet-voiced fellow from the hamlet of Lemeshi in Chernihiv region. Later, escaping from the possible wrath of Tsarina Catherine II, Tarlovsky hid in the Samara woods and soon became the head priest at the Zaporozhian church of the Protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the founder of Samara Monastery.
In 1781 he built a new stone church at his own expense. On the church’s feast day, Tarlovsky liked to organize “dinners for everyone:” rows of tables were set up, extending four versts and groaning under the weight of food and drink, and all passersby were invited to have a meal. People would come from all the villages of what is now Poltava oblast. After dinner everyone was given an altyn (three kopecks) and a piece of sheep’s fleece. The inhabitants of those lands remembered the Wild Priest and kept his house safe for a long time. But for some reason, time in our country mows down things of the past faster and more painstakingly than anywhere else.
The monastery again went into decline after the abolition of the Zaporozhian Sich (1775) and the expropriation of monastery lands (1794) by Empress Catherine II. By the end of the 19th century only a few old monks were living in the dilapidated cloister. Samara Monastery was finally closed under the Soviets: its premises housed a home for the disabled, and then an orphanage, etc. St. Michael’s Samara Monastery was fully revived in the late 1990s. Today it is home to 12 monks of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate).
