On October 14, 1994, the ceremony of laying the foundation of a church with a bell tower in honor of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary took place – a church similar to the one that was located in the Zaporozhye Sich during the liberation struggle of Hetman Bohdan-Zinovy Khmelnytsky. The Cossack Church is designed to accommodate up to 100 worshipers at a time. Construction of the church began in the fall of 2000 and was completed in the fall of 2002. Construction was carried out according to restoration drawings. The temple stands almost on the same line with the Assumption Cathedral Kievo-Pecherskaya Lavra. This is the first Cossack church in Ukraine built in the new millennium. It is a copy of the temples of Cossack architecture, which existed in large numbers in the 17th century in the Middle Dnieper region. Since 2009, the church has been located on the territory of Mamaeva Sloboda.
This temple is a pearl of Ukrainian church architecture, a striking landmark of the artistic heritage of past centuries, a unique example of a wooden three-frame and three-tiered Cossack church. At the western wall of the narthex there are choirs, and in the narthex there is a ceiling beam on which there is a chandelier with 33 candles – as a symbol of the years of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the western wall of the narthex, at the level of the existing choirs, there are window sills of a doorway, through which there is access to a balcony above the porch. In those days, this small space of the church could accommodate only selected Cossacks and elders, therefore, from such balconies, church hierarchs could preach to the entire Zaporozhye army. To the west of the church there is a wooden three-tier bell tower, square in plan, topped with a dome, above which rises the cross “Sun of Truth” – as a symbol of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was built, like the church, in the period 2000-2002. The first, second and third tier are chopped – made of beams. The third tier has rectangular openings for bells, of which there are thirteen together with the main bell “Blagovest”.
The magnificent Baroque iconostasis and interior for the new temple were made by carvers from Kyiv, decorating it with Mother of God motifs (lilies, as well as carvings of grapevines and acanthus leaves). The main image of the temple is the icon “The Mother of God of Sloboda Queen of the Cossacks”. According to the testimony of Mikhail Grushevsky, even before 1897, a similar icon was in the ancestral St. Michael’s Church of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky, in the village of Subotov. The church was built in the new millennium, but the idea has already been established among Kyiv families: in order for a boy to grow up to be a real Cossack and a courageous man, he must be baptized in this Cossack church, and girls must light a candle in it and pray to the icon of the “Virgin of the Sloboda Cossack Queen” so that she would send them a good groom.
Where is the stauropegial Cossack Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary?
Mikhail Donts Street, 2
093–615-67–79; 098–519-81–79; 050–142-42–05
services: morning 08:00, evening 16:00