Exaltation of Cross Monastery

The Exaltation of the Cross Monastery of the Volyn eparchy stands in the village of Staryi Chartoryisk, on a hill above the river Styr, surrounded on every side by forest². The chronicles mention Chartoryisk as a town under the year 1100, and in the age of Lithuania and Poland the place was a titular holding of the princes Chartoryisky¹. It is with them that the first written mention of an Orthodox monastery on this site is connected: in his will of 1582 Prince Mykhailo Oleksandrovych Chartoryisky asked to be buried in the house of the Holy Trinity here¹. In time the Chartoryisky princes became Catholics¹, and of that Trinity monastery not even a trace remains³.

In 1601 the town was bought by Prince Pats, and later it passed to the Leszczynski family. After the death of his wife Hanna, daughter of Prince Samuil Koretsky, the voivode Andrii Leszczynski, himself a Protestant, built a Dominican church here in 1639 and ordered the princess to be buried in it by the Catholic rite². An inventory of 1720 lists among the monastery buildings the church, a pillar-chapel, two two-storey residential blocks, a school, a hospital, a water mill at Kozlynychi on the Styr and a folwark²; in 1741 the church was replaced by a new one¹.

In 1795 Chartoryisk passed to the Russian Empire, and in 1831 its owner Count Fedir Patsei took part in the Polish uprising and lost his rights to the town; the monastery was then closed and the church was turned into the Orthodox church of the Dormition of the Mother of God¹. In the first half of the nineteenth century the Dominican house ceased to exist, and the church served as a parish one². When in 1921 Staryi Chartoryisk became part of restored Poland, the building was returned to the Catholics; the local priest then bought a wooden Dormition church from the owner of the village of Osnytsia, and in a single night it was floated down the Styr and set up beside it^{1, 2}. After 1939 the wooden church was closed and the stone one handed back to the Orthodox, but in 1951 the faithful were forced back into the wooden church and the cathedral was turned into a grain store¹. From 1975 it served no purpose at all and fell into a ruinous state^{1, 2}.

The present house was opened by the decision of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of 11 June 1997, journal no. 29, on the report of Archbishop Nifont - at two churches, the stone Exaltation cathedral and the wooden Dormition church^{1, 2}. As a religious organisation the monastery was registered by the state on 26 August 1997⁴. In December of the same year the Volyn regional state administration handed the monastic community the Exaltation cathedral - an architectural monument of the eighteenth century - in a ruinous, half-collapsed state, without domes or roof². The first Divine Liturgy in the half-ruined church was served on 22 October 1997, and from that day the house counts the revival of its monastic life⁵.

In 2001 the cathedral was roofed and crosses were raised on its domes, visible from far off on the main road^{1, 2}. In 2005 a stone wall was built, and from 2006 the gate church of the Holy Trinity was under construction¹ and was afterwards finished². For the tenth anniversary of the house the superior and brethren of the Holy Dormition Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra gave the monastery a reliquary with one hundred and twenty particles of the relics of the saints of the Kyiv Caves; from 24 to 28 June 2007 it was carried on foot in procession from the church of the Protection of the Mother of God in Lutsk to Staryi Chartoryisk². On 25 September 2007 the restored cathedral was consecrated by the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and All Ukraine². In 2012 the refectory church and a chapel of the icon of the Mother of God "the Life-Giving Spring" over a spring near the monastery were consecrated¹. The second altar of the cathedral, in honour of St Sergius of Radonezh, was consecrated on 17 June 2017 by Metropolitan Serhiy of Ternopil and Kremenets⁶; the third, in honour of St Onuphrius the Great, on 10 August of the same year by Bishop Nathanael of Volyn and Lutsk⁷.

Today the architectural ensemble of the monastery consists of the Exaltation cathedral, the stone pillar-chapel of the eighteenth century before its central entrance, the Dormition parish church, the Holy Trinity gate church and two church houses². Daily services are held in the Dormition church^{2, 9}; the language of the services is Church Slavonic⁸. As of 1 January 2020 seventeen brethren lived in the house: two archimandrites, two hegumens, three hieromonks, three hierodeacons, three monks and four novices². The house receives pilgrims - in March 2019 nineteen pilgrims of the regional branch of the Ukrainian Society of the Blind came here¹⁰. In September 2017 the ruling bishop served an all-night vigil here on the eve of the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, to which the main church of the house is dedicated¹². The brethren of the monastery in holy orders also take part in the services of the eparchy - in November 2024, for instance, at the consecration of the church of St Elijah in the neighbouring village of Chartoryisk¹¹.