Korets Monastery
Holy Trinity Koretsky stauropegial convent, Koretsky Holy Trinity maiden monastery
Ukraine, Korets
The Koretsky convent is located among the picturesque nature of Volhynia over the Korchik River in the small regional Ukrainian city of Korets, Rivne region. The first abbot of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery Varlaam, making a second pilgrimage to holy places in 1064, founded a convent on the northern peninsula of the Koretsky trigorye, which was dedicated to the Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos. This monastery became known as the Koretsky Annunciation maiden monastery.
The history of the Koretsky monastery is typical for the history of churches and monasteries of the Western Russian lands, which for a long time found themselves under the rule of Catholic Poland. In 1242, during the devastating Batu invasion, it, like all the ancient monasteries of Kievan Rus, was destroyed.
With the cessation of the Mongol-Tatar raids, the Korets Monastery began to be restored from a small chapel, around which a powerful defensive wall was built. Upon completion of construction, the monastery took the form of an impregnable fortress. But in 1496, the Koretsky monastery was destroyed by the Crimean Khan Mengli Giray after a two-week siege. However, the sisters of the monastery and the warriors of Prince Vasily Koretsky, who defended the monastery, left it, using the underground passages. The Koretsky monastery ceased to exist for three quarters of a century. The beginning of its new restoration on the ruins of the ancient monastery was laid in 1571 by the son of Prince Theodore Koretsky Bogush. In 1620, the construction of a new, larger monastery began. However, in 1622, the Koret prince Jan-Karl, who converted to Catholicism, handed over the new church and cell buildings to the Franciscan nuns.
In the second half of the XIX century. the Franciscan church is being rebuilt - the western facade of the former church is built on with a wooden tower with a high tent, and in the eastern part a quadrangle with five domes is erected over the middle nave, disproportionately small compared to the solid volume of the church. In 1863, the entire monastery was transferred to the Holy Trinity Monastery. At the beginning of the twentieth century. the warm John the Baptist Church and the gate bell tower appear, built in the Russian “terem” style.
The main dominant building is the Trinity Cathedral in honor of the Assumption of the Mother of God and St. Job of Pochaev. Cells with a refectory and a church in honor of John the Baptist were attached to the cathedral. There is also a remarkable tombstone on the territory of the monastery. “Anna Alekseevna Andro, nee Olenina. Genus. August 11, 1808 December 15, 1888 Peace be upon your ashes. This is the same Olenina, whom Pushkin himself offered his hand and heart. After the categorical refusal of the parents, Anna Alekseevna's album - and then the whole world - saw the lines “I loved you ...” written by the hand of a genius. Not becoming the wife of the future classic of world literature, Anna, after his death, married Count Fyodor Alekseevich Andro de Lanzheron, who had been Vice-President of Warsaw for 14 years. After her husband's death in 1885, Olenina-Andro moved to her son's estate in the Rivne region; she was the patroness of the Korets monastery, where she was buried.
The three-tier monastery bell tower was erected in 1905 to commemorate the beginning of the 20th century. During the Soviet period, the Korets monastery was one of 9 monasteries in Ukraine that were not closed by the authorities. But the land and several monastic buildings were taken away from the nuns, and in 1939 the Resurrection Skete was closed, turning it into a grain harvesting base.
The main shrine of the monastery, to which numerous streams of pilgrims constantly pour, is the miraculous Koretskaya icon of the Mother of God "Companion of Sinners". The icon got its name from the inscription on the oklad: "I am the Associate of sinners to My Son ..." By the XVII century. it was an ancestral icon of the Koretsky princes and was called "Blessed".
Now the monastery is experiencing its new heyday. In 1998, on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the Baptism of Russia, the authorities returned to the monastery a two-story building, which housed the museum of the monastery, a library, a first-aid post and a hotel for pilgrims. In 1990, the premises of the monastery school were transferred to the monastery, where the Sunday school now operates. Since the mid 90s. There is a choir director's school at the monastery, which prepares future directors of parish choirs.
