...first for an invalid home for decrepit and sick officers, and then for a hospital." Be that as it may, the monks were asked to get out of there, and the monastery churches, from which everything valuable had been taken out, were transferred to the management of a neighboring priest. At the same time, scenes of destruction and devastation were repeated, which always happen when a house is left without a master. "Those same former monastery peasants," reported Archimandrite Amphilochius as early as July 25, 1786, "have already begun to oppress the monastery, arbitrarily occupying the land right up to the monastery itself without any respect, extremely devastating the monastery forest and orchards." The churches themselves did not survive either. "On the 23rd day of April," Metropolitan Samuel reported to the Holy Synod on April 24, 1787, "the priest appointed to supervise the former Mezhyhiria monastery presented me with a report that on the occasion of the fire that occurred in that former monastery, the wooden churches of God, namely 1) the Descent of the Holy Spirit, 2) the Annunciation of the Most Holy Mother of God, and 3) the refectory church of St. Nicholas burned down with all the utensils that were in them, with the exception of the holy antimensions and vessels that he managed to carry out; and in the main stone church, the porch under the iron roof was completely burned, so much so that the heat touched the church itself, which is why everything was taken out of it." Whether the cells and other monastery buildings transferred to the jurisdiction of the Board of Public Welfare burned down is not clear from the file. Popular rumor attributed the cause of the fire to arson by people irritated by the closure of the monastery.
What happened to the abbot and the brethren? Archimandrite Amfilochy Leontovich personally did not lose anything. He was soon appointed abbot of the first-class Kyiv-Nicholas desert monastery and subsequently (from June 24, 1795 until his death on July 1, 1799) was the bishop of Pereyaslavl.
The fate of the rest of the brethren is less known. During the era of monastic abolition, all monastics, except for the abbot, were 49; Among them were, according to Amphilochius, “elderly, decrepit, very weak in health, incapable of obedience and extremely unreliable for resettlement.”8 If the resettlement had taken place and a first-class monastery had been founded in Taurida with 33 monks required by the state, then even in this case 17 Mezhigorsk residents would have been left in surplus.If you believe Ratshin (About monasteries p. 535),
[fragment illegible in the scan of the first edition]
the brethren of the Mezhigorsk monastery were resettled to Spaso-Nivolaevsky monastery. at the mouth of the river Ingula. This is not visible in the synodal archives. And the only thing visible in the archive is that in 1786, 17 full-time monks of the abolished inter-city monastery arrived at the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra (7 hieromonks, 2 hieromonks, 8 monks, including two subdeacons). According to the Lavra statement for the 2nd half of 1788, only ten Mezhigorsk residents began to live in the Lavra: hieromonks: Karp 60 years old, Dorimedont 50 years old, hierodeacons: Gury 50 years old, Arkady 40 years old. monks: Elisha 35 years old, Herman 35 years old, Euthymius 72 years old, Thaddeus 70 years old, Theodulus 45 years old, Gleb 38 years old. All of them are certified as follows: “Since the time of their appointment to the Lavra, no bad deeds have been noticed against them.”
It remains to say a few words about the colonies of the Mezhigorsky monastery - about the monasteries and farmsteads assigned to it. There were four of these colonies: 1) the Samara monastery in the Ekaterinoslav governorate, in the Novomoskovsk district, 2) in *Kievo-Podol, a monastic compound with the church of St. velivomuch. Panteleimon, 3) near the Polish border on an island called Demidovsky, a new church in the name of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, 4) near the city of Pereyaslavl, the monastic village of Demyantsy with a monastery courtyard and an old church in the name of St. Boris n Gleb.
Samara Hermitage-Nicholas Monastery, because of which the Mezhigorsk people ten years ago so passionately fought with the arch. Evgeniy, did not escape his fate of being included in the department of his eparchy. But the monastery remained with the state, and its vast possessions probably passed into the secular department. Perhaps some of the Mezhigorsk residents moved to the Samara monastery, for when the Mezhigorsk monastery was abolished in Samara - according to the report of Archim. Amphilochia - there were 12 monks, and according to the statement on January 1. 1789, we see that there are already 24 of them listed (7 priests, 4 priests, 13 monks: 2 of them, priests, served in the Black Sea Fleet).