The text mentions the history of Mount Ochrymova in Zhytomyr and the issue of Catholic churches there. Consistory sources are given, which show that there was a church of St. Nicholas there, destroyed during the Khmelnytsky uprising, and - later - a church of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built. The newest church was to be rebuilt and furnished by Janusz Tyszkiewicz, Voivode of Kyiv. (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1863, T:8, pp. 409-410., after: Digital Library of the University of Łódź).

A modernised reading of the text

Mountain in Zhytomyr.

Turning to the Lord's churches of both confessions in Zhytomyr, it is surprising that all the churches we have today were established only at the beginning of the last century, or have only grown up during our lifetime. However, it is impossible to suppose that Zhytomyr did not have a church of the Lord by 1700 (the year of the foundation of the oldest Greek Orthodox church on the Podolia rock).

Among the oldest ecclesiastical legends is the tradition that St Jacek, on his journey to Kyiv, established a mission in Zhytomyr and founded a church, which was demolished during a Tartar attack and the monks, six in number, suffered martyrdom. I was told of an old devotional book where these martyrs are to be mentioned in the litany. There is another tradition connected with this one, namely that the orchard for the mission and the Unitarian seminary was purchased from the Dominicans, who had a monastery before, and after it was destroyed, retained the right to the place where it was built.

However, we know that in 1776 it was decided to establish a Unitarian mission and seminary, and Fr Prymovich, the Kyiv official, donated 200,000 zlotys for this purpose, as a result of which the foundations of the church were laid without delay and it was not until 1796 that the church was consecrated for a cathedral. A few years ago, the small Greek-style building was planned to be extended, but the newly erected edifice collapsed and remains in ruins to this day.

If, however, it were possible to ascertain that this orchard was purchased from the Dominicans, we would have the probable site of the martyrdom of the first missionaries of St. Jack. The official records of the Lucknow-Jytomiriev Roman Catholic consistory, in an ongoing dispute between the consistory and the town, state that there was to be a church dedicated to St. Nicolas on the Ochrymowa Hill, located on the Kamionka River. The church, which still existed in 1472 (that is, a year after the Kyiv principality was transformed into a Lithuanian province), was later demolished by Cossacks (perhaps in 1648 during the Khmelnytskyi era).

The same consistory report further states that more than a square metre of city land belonged to the said St. Nicholas Church, as did the village of Popivka and others. This account is confirmed by the fact that there are still traces of a Catholic cemetery on Mount Ochrymová, where the burial of the dead was stopped only in 1779, and the number of graves testifies to the size of the parish. Twenty years ago, the last brick monument was still blackening before it collapsed like the others.

A second confirmation of the above mention is that in 1784, at the request of the Kyiv Chapter, the Boni Ordinis Commission granted the Catholic clergy an orchard with an area of land, and below the site of the former church, a small brick chapel was erected, also dedicated to St. Nicholas. In the catacombs of this chapel, now empty, the bodies of the deceased were still buried twenty years ago, before they were moved with religious reverence to the new Catholic cemetery, established outside the town in 1799.

The skeleton of a nun, sprinkled with the ashes of the remains of her body, seen in these catacombs in a coffin with the lid removed, stands before my eyes at this moment. Only one of the hands folded in the cross shone as if wrapped in parchment, and the leather strap, solidified from the dampness of the grave, stood unmoving, as if marking in the air the volume of the vanished cibia of the bride of Christ. From these consistory sources we learn that on the site of today's cathedral there was a Catholic church dedicated to N. Virgin Mary.

We do not know again the date of its foundation or its destruction; we only read that the village of Janovice belonged to it. However, it must have stood on the site of today's cathedral, because in the garden and in the church yard, the graves with which churches used to be surrounded were frequently found. Further on, in a rather rare book entitled "Defensa biskupstwa i dyecezyi kijowskiej" by Rev. Karol Nepomucen Orłowski, published in Lviv in 1748, we find a trace taken from the Crown Metrics (without noting the date) that "the starost of Zhytomyr was obliged to give the Zhytomyr priest a shrub of falendish lined with ridges and a vat of honey".

Nevertheless, in Okolski, under the Leliwa coat of arms, we read that Janusz Tyszkiewicz, Voivode of Kyiv, starosta of Kyiv (around 1640) rebuilt and furnished the Kyiv church. However, the above-mentioned clerical compiler, Fr Orlowski, adds in his "Defens" that during a visitation, probably held a few years before the publication of the book, i.e. before 1748, the place where the church stood was completely deserted, and expresses it as follows:

"Sed tempore visitationis, locus vacans erat, ubi olim ecclesia existit.".

In fact, Fr Samuel Ożga, Bishop of Kyiv and Chernihiv, when he founded today's cathedral in 1725, clearly states that he started this foundation because the diocese lacked a main church. The main church was therefore lacking, but the parish church obviously had to be there. Noting these few ecclesiastical references because of the sketch of Ochrymowa Góra made by our talented amateur, we believe that one of the enlightened priests of our diocese will not fail to correct and supplement them, having at hand sources less accessible to me. Perhaps at the same time some pious soul will take care of the abandoned cemetery on Ochrymowa Góra.