In 1520, the Cossack leadership of Kyiv appealed to the Polish government for permission to restore the Mezhyhirskyi Monastery. On March 12, 1523, King Sigismund I, at the request of Konstantyn Ostrozhskiy, granted a privilege for the restoration of the Mezhyhirskyi Monastery to the abbot Mykhailo Shcherbyna. In the 16th century, due to the monastery’s precarious financial situation, no significant churches were built, and it was only at the beginning of the 17th century, with the appointment of a new abbot, Athanasius, who had been educated under Prince Konstantyn-Vasyl Ostrozhskiy, that three churches were constructed: the Nadbramna St. Peter and Paul Church (1604), the Refectory St. Nicholas Church (1609), and the main cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Lord (1609–1611). In 1615, the new abbot Gideon (originating from Halych) established a courtyard of the Mezhyhirskyi Monastery in Kyiv on Podil, featuring a single-domed church dedicated to St. Panteleimon.
Significant events in the history of Ukrainian Orthodoxy occurred in 1620, when a convoy led by Hetman Sahaidachny brought the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophanes, to Kyiv. In the Church of the Epiphany of the Kyiv-Brotherhood Monastery, he consecrated five hierarchs for the Kyiv Metropolis, which had been left without a metropolitan or episcopate following the Union of Brest in 1596. Among the hierarchs consecrated by Patriarch Theophanes was the abbot of the Mezhyhirskyi Monastery, Isaiah Kopyns’kyi, who took up the position of Bishop of Peremyshl and Sambir. During the same ceremony, the Kyiv-Mezhyhirskyi Men’s Monastery was granted a charter of stavropegia by Patriarch Theophanes. In 1683, the Zaporizhian Host concluded an agreement with Mezhyhirya, stipulating that the monastery would become a military institution and that the monks would serve as clergy for all of Zaporizhzhia. In return, the Cossacks committed to being the parishioners and benefactors of the monastery.
On February 28, 1687, the Moscow Patriarch Ioakim issued a charter confirming the stavropegial status of the Mezhyhirskyi Monastery. In 1786, the monastery was stripped of the lands and holdings it had owned since ancient times due to a law on secularization. In 1787, a devastating fire destroyed all the monastery’s buildings, leaving only the Spaso-Transfiguration Cathedral and the Nadbramna Church dedicated to Peter and Paul unharmed.
In 1798, the remnants of the monastery were transferred to the city of Kyiv, which eventually established a faience factory on the premises. By 1801, divine services had resumed in the surviving churches. Until 1860, they were conducted by Mezhyhirskyi priests, after which they were performed by Pechersk hieromonks. On August 19, 1868—the feast day of the church—the last service took place, after which the Kyiv magistrate decided to auction off the monastery. However, on the eve of the 900th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus, the Kyiv clergy could not allow such sacrilege against this ancient shrine. On January 17, 1886, Father Ion was appointed as the archimandrite of the Mezhyhirskyi Monastery, and he began the restoration of the monastery, though not very effectively. Consequently, by decree of the Holy Synod on April 8, 1894, the Mezhyhirskyi Monastery came under the jurisdiction of the Pokrovskyi Women’s Monastery. Thus, the ancient Mezhyhirskyi Spas transformed from a male monastery into a female one and continued to function until 1919. From the early 1920s, divine services were held within the walls of the ancient temples, but under pressure from the leadership of the institutions located within the monastery’s territory, the Kyiv City Council decided on January 24, 1931, to remove the churches from the use of believers. In April 1935, the unique baroque architectural ensemble of the Kyiv-Mezhyhirskyi Monastery was condemned, and soon it was demolished with all the proletarian hatred.
DMYTRIY PIRKL