Hermitage

Hermitage (Ukrainian: skyt). A number of cells inhabited by monks who lived in seclusion and practiced a more exacting regime than ordinary monks. Such habitations were located at some distance from the monasteries to which they were subordinate. Eventually the distinction in regime became blurred and hermitages became merely small monasteries attached to a larger one. In Ukraine a number of monasteries had hermitages, some of them more than one hermitage. The Pochaiv Monastery, for example, had the Kozachi Mohyly and Rudnia-Pochaivska skyty, and the Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery had the Teofaniia skyt. A few hermitages, such as the Maniava Hermitage, were entirely independent.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 2 (1989).]