Description of the attraction
The Holy Dormition Zhirovichi stauropegic monastery is the most important holy abode of modern Belarus. The monastery in its present form was built in the 17th-18th centuries. The village of Zhirovichi grew up near the monastery.
An ancient legend is associated with the emergence of the monastery, dating back to the end of the 15th century. The shepherds who were grazing sheep were looking for a lost sheep in the forest thicket, when they suddenly noticed an icon of the Mother of God on a wild pear growing under a hill near a stream. They removed the icon from the tree and took it to their master Alexander Soltan. The owner did not believe the story told by the shepherds, but for the time being he decided to lock the icon from the chest. The next morning the icon was not in the chest. Then the landowner summoned the shepherds to him and ordered them to go into the forest to the place where the icon was found. She was found on the same pear. And then the devout gentleman believed in a miracle and decided to build a church on the spot where the icon was found.
In 1520 the monastery was burnt down by a strong fire. It was thought that the miraculous icon also burned down, but it was acquired through a miracle. Children playing in the forest saw the Mother of God sitting on a stone, in whose hands was the Zhirovichi miraculous icon. The children were frightened and ran away, but when they returned with the priest, they saw the feet and palms of the Mother of God imprinted on the stone.
In 1613, the wooden Assumption Church was transferred to the Basilian monks, who built a monastery and a temple of stone, which have survived to this day with minor changes. In 1839, with the highest permission of Emperor Nicholas I, the entire monastery, headed by Bishop Joseph Semashko, converted to Orthodoxy.
In Soviet times, the monastery was not only not closed, but for some time a theological seminary worked in it, preparing priests.
Nowadays, in the active Holy Dormition Monastery, the Zhirovichi icon of the Mother of God is kept - the smallest miraculous icon, a stone with the traces of the Virgin, a handwritten Zhirovichi Gospel. Many pilgrims flock here to worship the icon and the miraculous stone that brings healing.
