Lavriv Saint Onuphrius's Monastery

Lavriv Saint Onuphrius's Monastery (Lavrivskyi Manastyr sv. Onufriia). A monastery in Lavriv, Lviv oblast. According to legend, the monastery was built in 1278 over the burial site of Prince Lev Danylovych. It became a notable monastic center in the Peremyshl eparchy and later an important educational center of the Basilian monastic order. The (contemporary) Lavriv church, erected in the 15th century in a Byzantine-Mount Athos style, was rebuilt in the 17th century and greatly altered in the 19th century. It contains valuable polychromatic 15th– and 16th–century frescoes. The monastery buildings now standing were built after major fires in 1767 and 1909. A center for monastic training since at least the 1740s, the Lavriv Monastery also housed the main school for the district from 1789 to 1911 (and for many years the only school in Galicia with Ukrainian-language instruction). After 1911 the school was turned into a gymnasium. A valuable library and archives were located on the site. The monastery was liquidated by the Soviet authorities in 1945–6 and replaced by a school and residence for deaf-mutes. The church soon fell into disrepair, and the iconostasis was destroyed. The monastery was declared an architectural monument in 1963 and studied by archeologists in the 1980s. In 1990 the Saint Onuphrius’s Church was reopened, and in 1993–4 the monastery was reinstated. A book about the Lavriv and nearby Transfiguration monasteries, by M. Shved, appeared in 2000.