ST. NICHOLAS CHURCH IN HALYCH: HISTORICAL AND ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES

Abstract

The article summarizes historical data about the now non-existent St. Nicholas Church and the preceding church on the studied location in the 16th century. It provides statistical material regarding the number of parishioners at the church in the 19th century. It mentions the surnames of local clergy members (Horbachevskyi, Levytskyi, Vynnytskyi, and others). The publication also includes descriptions of supernatural phenomena that occurred in the church during the 1770s and 1780s. Based on cartographic and iconographic materials, the volumetric-planning features of the building have been studied as an interesting example of wooden sacred architecture from the 18th to 20th centuries. For the first time, a description of the building’s interior, as provided by a Russian military correspondent in 1915, has been introduced into scholarly discourse. The material on church property from the second half of the 18th century and the mid-20th century has also been processed. Additionally, a description has been made of the two church books that have survived to this day: the Gospel and the metric book. According to archival documents, lesser-known sources regarding the circumstances of the church’s closure and demolition (1950s–1960s) during the Soviet occupation are presented. Thanks to written and photographic sources, the authors have localized the location of the dismantled church on the modern St. Nicholas Street in Halych.