Pisky Icon of the Mother of God Monastery

The Pisky Icon of the Mother of God Monastery, a house of men, stands in the town of Izyum in the Kharkiv region and belongs to the Izyum eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church¹.

The house is named after an icon whose veneration in Izyum the Izyum eparchy dates to 1754 and connects with Saint Ioasaf (Horlenko), Bishop of Belgorod. According to the Account kept at the church, which the eparchy reproduces on its own site, the saint, while travelling through his eparchy, came to Izyum, saw this image in the narthex of the Ascension church in the suburb of Zamostia, and ordered that it be given a worthier place².

The eparchy describes the later fate of the image itself separately from the monastery. In 1792 the parish Ascension church was moved from Zamostia to higher ground in the suburb of Pisky, and the icon was sent there with it, while the present stone church on that site was built and consecrated in 1826^{2, 3}. The wonder-working Pisky Icon of the Mother of God is kept in the Holy Ascension Cathedral of Izyum, an institution separate from the monastery³.

The monastery's own history began almost two and a half centuries later. In July 2014, when the eparchy was marking the 260th anniversary of the finding of the icon, the hierarchs closed the celebrations by visiting the church in honour of the Pisky Icon of the Mother of God in Izyum, which was then still under construction⁴.

On 5 October 2014 the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufriy of Kyiv and All Ukraine, performed the rite of consecration of this church and then led the first Divine Liturgy in it^{5, 6}. It is this day that the Izyum eparchy gives as the date on which the monastic community was formed⁶. The Synodal Information and Education Department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, in a note appended to its report, called this church the first in Ukraine dedicated to the Pisky Icon of the Mother of God⁵.

On the same day the Primate consecrated a chapel here in the name of Saint Volodymyr, Equal to the Apostles, raised in honour of the 1025th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus, and thanked the patron for his labours in building it; he addressed separate words of thanks to the ktitor of the church⁵.

On 1 April 2015 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church considered the report of Archbishop Yelysei of Izyum and Kupiansk on the establishment of a monastery of men in honour of the Pisky Icon of the Mother of God in Izyum^{6, 1}. By Journal No. 7 the Synod blessed the establishment of this house and the adoption and registration of its Statute¹.

On 29 September 2019 Metropolitan Yelysei of Izyum and Kupiansk consecrated the lower church of the monastery, in honour of Saint Ioasaf, Bishop of Belgorod, and led the first Divine Liturgy in it; after the service a magnification was sung before the image of the saint⁷. The eparchy called this consecration a historic event for the house and for the eparchy⁷.

The photographs of the monastery published by the eparchy show a wooden iconostasis and the altar part of the house, and in the monastery yard a monument to Saint Ioasaf of Belgorod⁶.