Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery

About

The St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery is a monastery in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel. It is located on an elevated hill above the bank of the Dnipro river, to the northeast of the Saint Sophia Cathedral. The site is in the historical administrative neighbourhood of Upper Town and overlooks Podil, the city's historical commercial and merchant quarter. The monastery has been the headquarters of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine since December 2018. Originally built in the Middle Ages by the Kievan Rus' ruler Sviatopolk II Iziaslavych, the modern monastery comprises the cathedral church, the Refectory Church of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, constructed in 1713, the Economic Gate, constructed in 1760, and the bell tower, which was added in the 1710s. The exterior of the structure was remodelled in the Ukrainian Baroque style during the 18th century; the interior retained its original Byzantine architecture. Much of the monastery, including the cathedral church, was demolished by Soviet authorities in the 1930s. The complex was rebuilt following Ukrainian independence in 1991; the cathedral reopened in 1999.

There were once many medieval churches in Kyiv, but nearly all of them were timber-built; none of these have survived. During the 1050s, when Kyiv was a part of the Kievan Rus' state Grand Prince Iziaslav I built a monastery dedicated to Saint Demetrius of Thessaloniki, close to the St Sophia Cathedral. The heads of the monastery were the hegumens of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.

According to an 1108 annal from the Laurentian Codex, Iziaslav's son Sviatopolk II of Kyiv founded a stone church in Kyiv, and it is thought that the monastery of St. Michael was founded at the same time. Contemporary chronicles give no account of a foundation, and it is likely that Sviatopolk built the cathedral for the new monastery within the precincts of the monastery of St. Demetrius. There are no historical references to St. Michael's before the end of the 14th century. The church, which was dedicated to Saint Michael the Archangel, Iziaslav's patron saint, may have been built to commemorate Sviatopolk's victory over the Polovtsians, as Michael is the patron saint of war victories.

The exact date of the completion of St. Michael's is unknown. It is considered to have been built between 1108 and 1113, the latter year being when Sviatopolk was buried in the cathedral. By tradition, the relics of Saint Barbara were transferred there during his rule. He was a vassal prince of the kings of Poland, who allowed him the freedom to choose the monastery's hegumens. The cathedral's dome was probably the first in Kievan Rus' to be gilded, and the monastery was likely called "the Golden-Domed" for this reason.

During the Middle Ages, the cathedral became the burial place of members of the ruling Izyaslavych family. The monastery probably came under the control of the Pechersk Lavra c. 1128. St. Michael's sustained damage and was looted during the Mongol invasion in 1240, when Kyiv was occupied. It survived the invasion and subsequent political violence, but afterwards ceased to function as an institution. It was mentioned again in documents only in 1398, and a 1523 charter of Sigismund I the Old described the monastery as being deserted in 1470. It sustained further damage in 1482, during the raid on Kyiv by the Crimean Khan Meñli I Giray, after which it was abandoned. It had re-emerged by 1496, shortly before the epithet "the Golden-Domed" started to be used.

During the 16th century, St. Michael's became one of the most popular and wealthiest monasteries in what is now Ukraine. From 1523, it was granted freedoms by Sigismund I, who encouraged restoration work to be undertaken.

The Austrian soldier and diplomat Erich Lassota von Steblau visited Kyiv in 1594. He wrote a diary of his travels, later published that year as Tagebuch des Erich Lassota von Steblau, and described the monastery thus:

It is a fine building. In the centre it has a round cupola with a golden roof. The choirs are turned inwards and are also decorated with mosaics. The floor is laid out with small, coloured stones. As one enters the church through the gates which are directly opposite the high altar, one sees on the left a wooden casket which holds the body of a saintly virgin, Barbara, a king's daughter: she was a young girl, about 12 years old, as can be judged by her size. Her remains, covered down to her feet with a piece of fine linen, have not decomposed yet as I myself could observe by touching her feet which were still hard and not deteriorated. On her head there is a gilded crown made of wood.

— Erich Lassota von Steblau (trans. Orest Subtelny ), Habsburgs and Zaporozhian Cossacks (1594)

While most of the city's Orthodox clergy and monasteries converted to the Greek Catholic Uniate Church in the 17th century, St. Michael's retained its Orthodox doctrine. In 1612, the Polish king Sigismund III Vasa gave the monastery to the Uniate Church, which never took possession of the monastery and its estates. A wooden refectory church was built in 1613. In 1618, the religious figure Antony Grekovych [ uk ] tried to extend his power over the monastery. This provoked a sharp reaction—the Zaporozhian Cossacks captured him and drowned him in a ditch opposite the Vydubychi Monastery.

In 1620, St. Michael's hegumen Job Boretsky made the monastery's cathedral the seat of the re-established Metropolis of Kyiv, Galicia and all Rus'. The monastery's bell tower and refectory were constructed during his hegumenship. Under Boretsky, a nun's convent was established close to the monastery, on the site of what is now the Kyiv Funicular 's upper station. During this period a printing house was established. On both a map of Kyiv in Teraturgy (1638), written by the Kyivan monk Athanasius Kalnofoisky [ uk ], and on a Dutch drawing of 1651, the monastery is shown with its single dome.

The work on rebuilding the medieval cathedral was mentioned by the French engineer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan in his Description d'Ukranie (1650). The Syrian traveller and writer Paul of Aleppo visited the monastery whilst in Kyiv during the summer of 1654. In describing the church, he compared it with St Sophia in Kyiv and the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, writing of St. Michael's:

- The entire building is of wood, except the magnificent, lofty, and elegant church, which is of stone and lime, and has a high cupola shining with gold. This church consists only of one nave. It is lighted all round with glazed windows. The three churches I have been describing are all of one style of architecture, and of one age.

In 1712, the nuns of St. Michael's, who lived near the monastery, were transferred to a separate institution in the Podil district of Kyiv. The refectory church was built in 1713–1715 in the Ukrainian Baroque style from the bricks of Kyiv's Simeon Church, which had been destroyed by fire in 1676.

The remains of 18th-century foundations for part of the western aisle of the cathedral have been preserved. As indicated by the foundations of the cathedral's extension in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the northern aisle was added first, followed by the southern aisle in 1709, while the western aisle was built at a later date. It could be seen that the flying buttresses had been put in place to strengthen the structure where it was placed on low-strength soil (soil that cannot support heavy weights). This had become necessary after the dismantling of the old walls of the original church when the cathedral was enlarged.

During the late 18th century, a number of the monastery's properties were sold off. All of its estates were lost in 1786, following a decree issued by Catherine the Great. As a result, the number of monks who could be supported by the monastery greatly reduced, and all new building work stopped.

In 1800, the monastery became the residence of both the bishop of Chernihiv and the vicars of the diocese of Kyiv. By the start of the 19th century, the monastery had a library, a teacher training school, and a choir school. The growth of church choirs during this period meant that musical education became a priority for the monastic authorities. The choir at St. Michael's recruited from Chernihiv before musical education began to be imparted. The most important choir in the Kyiv eparchy, St. Michael's choir was also one of the earliest to be formed in the city. In 1886, a singing school was opened, which ran until the start of the 1920s. During the 19th century there were up to 240 monks at St. Michael's.

In the 1880s, the Russian art historian Adrian Prakhov discovered some of the cathedral's 12th-century mosaics and frescoes, which he cleaned and restored. He made life-sized copies of them in oil, and photographed the restoration process. Copies of his work were exhibited in St. Petersburg in 1883 and in Odesa in 1884.

In 1888, the cathedral was equipped with a hot air heating system, and provided with new flooring. The interior decoration was left unaltered. Construction work in the monastery precinct continued up to 1902 and included the construction of a large pilgrims' hotel and a new building for the monks' cells.

The monastery in the 1900s The cathedral photographed in 1914 The refectory church was damaged by a fire in 1904. In 1906, a medieval hoard was discovered in a casket on Trekhsvyatytelska Street (now Triochsvyatitelska Street [ uk ] ), opposite the gates of St. Michael's. The hoard, which was dated to the 11th–12th centuries, was probably hidden in 1240, when Kyiv was sacked by the Mongols. Gold jewellery from the hoard is now housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; other pieces are in the British Museum.