Monaster św. Ducha w Bujniczach w latach 1633-1787

Abstract

On August 1, 1633, Bohdan and Helena Stetkiewicz created a fund for the building of the Orthodox Church of the Holy Ghost and a men's monastery in Buynitchy. The benefactors subjected the newly founded monastery to the ihumen of the monastery in Kuteina. The fund stated that the ihumen was responsible for: keeping the Christian faith, living according to community rules together with the brothers of the monastery and making efforts to increase God's glory for the strengthening of the Orthodox Church. It is worth noting that from 1933 to 1935 there was a printing-house in the monastery. The famous Spiridon Sobol was the printer there. On April 12, 1652, Michał Stetkiewicz, the son and heir of Bohdan Stetkiewicz, decided that the monastery in Buynitchy was to share its property with the Resurrection of Our Lord women's monastery in Borkulabov. As a result, the monks of the monastery in Buynitchy filed a protest in the municipal court in Mogilev. The dispute was settled in 1759. In the second half of the 1640s the monastery had many disputes with the inhabitants of neighbouring villages over the borders of the monastery's land and property. The number of monks in the Buynitchy monastery decreased, especially in the eighteenth century. With the shortage of monks, a reduction in the level of spiritual life appeared. It was not until the second half of the eighteenth century that the Belarussian bishop Jerzy Konisski (1755-1785) attempted to bring order in the monastery. The monastery in Buynitchy survived as a men's monastery until 1835. In 1835 it was turned into a women's monastery.