With the blessing by His Beatitude Vladimir Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine, Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

CHOIR OF THE CHURCH OF ST. PROPHET ELIJAH OF KIEV CITY.

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The history of the Church of St. Prophet Elijah


The St. Elijah was the first Orthodox parish in the Kievan Rus (Russia). The earliest records of the Church date back Russia's pre-Christian period. The Story of the Past Years by St. Nestor the Chronicler evidenced that when Kiev envoys arrived home together with a Greek delegation following execution of the treaty with Byzantine Emperor Romanus in 945 AD, a Liturgy was celebrated "at the Church of Saint Elijah, the one that is there, by the flow... And it had numerous clergy, for many of Varangians were Christians".

According to a historical record, the construction of the Church was initiated by Princes of Kiev Askold and Dir. Originally pagans, they once undertook a campaign against Constantinople aiming to seize the city. The defenders inspired by the Emperor and the Patriarch offered up prayers to God and dipped the Honourable Robe of the Mother-of-God into the sea. As further recounted by a chronicler, a sudden storm drowned the fleet of the Russ. In view of this miracle, Princes Askold and Dir assumed baptism and, back in Kiev, ordered the foundation of the St. Elijah.

Numerous opinions name the vicinity of the St. Elijah Church, located by the rivers Dnieper and Pochaina, as the place where Baptism was administered to Kievites in 988 AD. The hypothesis is all the more likely since under the Orthodox canons all of the newly-baptised were to undergo a ceremony of the presentation in the Church, was the place of worship of St. Princess Olga.

The Church's two-level bell-lower and Ukrainian Baroque gates by prominent Ukrainian architect I. H. Hryhorovych-Barsky belong to the early 18-th century.

Presently, the Church is a piece of public architectural legacy and is within the jurisdiction of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under primacy of His Beatitude Vladimir, Metropolitan of Kiev and all Ukraine.





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