Holy Epiphany Kutseinsky Monastery

About the Monastery

The monastery complex comprised Holy Epiphany Cathedral, Holy Spirit Church, a bell tower, as well as monastic and household buildings, all enclosed by a stone wall on three sides.

In this monastery, Belarusian enlightener and printer Spiridon Sobol founded a printing house in 1630, where the first literacy primer in Belarusian was issued in 1631. Books printed here are kept in the national libraries of Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Cambridge, Copenhagen, and Oxford, regarded as some of the rarest ancient editions. The monastery was home to remarkable masters of icon painting, wood carving, and pottery. Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, during his visit to Kuciejna in 1656, highly praised their talent.

The wooden cathedral of the 17th century burned down in 1885, and in 1889, a stone bell tower replaced the wooden one, which was destroyed in 1944.

In 1920, the last Trinity church was closed, and the abbot of the church, Igumen Ferapont (Otroshchenko), was transferred to another church in the village of Lanenka, Dubrowna district. In 1939, the monastery was listed as a monument of history and culture of the BSSR. During the Great Patriotic War (the eastern war of world War II), an internment camp for Soviet prisoners was located on the territory of the monastery. 

Since 1992, the monastery has been restored by the decision of the Synod of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, and in 1995, the Holy Trinity Church was restored. In 2017, the reconstruction of the monastery bell tower, destroyed by an aviation bomb in 1944, was completed.