Qualla: Zhyrovichy Monastery

Zhyrovichy Monastery: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrija12345678, CC BY-SA 4.0. Around 1500 - the storytellers are not certain of the year - some herders near the village of Zhyrovichy noticed a wild pear tree giving off light. They climbed up to find the source. In the branches was an oval of jasper, about the size of a child's hand, carved with the image of a mother and child cheek to cheek. Around the carving ran an inscription in Slavonic: More honorable than the cherubim, And more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim, In virginity you bore God the Word; True Mother of God, we magnify you. It is the refrain of the Magnificat. A church went up where the tree stood. It burned. The icon was lost. Years later, the herders' descendants found it again, with what they took to be the imprint of the Virgin's palm and foot pressed into the stone. The monastery is what grew up to keep it.

Read more: Zhyrovichy Monastery on Qualla

Image: Andrija12345678 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Zhyrovichy Monastery: An Eleousa in Stone

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Futureal, CC BY-SA 3.0. The image is what Greek iconographers call an Eleousa, a Tenderness icon - the child pressing his cheek against his mother's. The carving in jasper is unusual; most Eleousa icons are painted on wood. A copy made its way to Rome in the late 17th century and was installed in the Ch...

Read more: Zhyrovichy Monastery on Qualla

Image: Futureal | CC BY-SA 3.0

Zhyrovichy Monastery: Orthodox, Uniate, Orthodox Again

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Futureal, CC BY-SA 3.0. The monastery was founded in the 16th century as Orthodox. In 1609, after the Union of Brest brought many Belarusian and Ukrainian Orthodox into communion with Rome, Zhyrovichy passed to the Uniate Basilian order. A major fire in 1655 destroyed most of the wooden buildings. The r...

Read more: Zhyrovichy Monastery on Qualla

Image: Futureal | CC BY-SA 3.0

Zhyrovichy Monastery: A Smuggled Saint

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Adam Wisłocki, Public domain. When the German army advanced on the western reaches of the Russian Empire in 1915, the icon was evacuated east. It ended up in the crypt of St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow. After the Soviet Union was formed and the Polish-Soviet border was redrawn, Zhyrovichy fell ...

Read more: Zhyrovichy Monastery on Qualla

Image: Adam Wisłocki | Public domain

Zhyrovichy Monastery: The Belfry That Almost Is a Church

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Napoleon Orda, Public domain. In front of the cathedral stands a bell tower built in 1828 - and it does not look like a bell tower. It is built more like a third church, on a scale that competes with the cathedral itself. Visitors to Belarus often comment that this is one of the more architecturally peculiar ...

Read more: Zhyrovichy Monastery on Qualla

Image: Napoleon Orda | Public domain

Zhyrovichy Monastery: The Seminary That Outlasted the Soviets

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Argon by, CC BY-SA 3.0. Most monasteries in the Soviet Union were closed. Zhyrovichy was an exception - the Saint Ascension monastery here continued to operate throughout the Soviet period, the only monastic community in the Belarusian SSR allowed to function. In 1989, two years before Belarus declared ...

Read more: Zhyrovichy Monastery on Qualla

Image: Argon by | CC BY-SA 3.0