The Ascension Cathedral in Konotop is a cross-in-square, single-domed church in the late classicist style with four-column porticos on its facades. It stands on the site where fallen Cossacks were buried after the Battle of Konotop in 1659, and locals still traditionally call it the Church of the Forty Martyrs.
Church on a Mass Grave
In the summer of 1659 near Konotop, the army of Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky, together with the Crimean Tatars, utterly defeated the Muscovite army. The fallen Cossacks from both sides were buried in a single mass grave, and a church was erected over it in honor of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. As early as 1667, Hetman Ivan Brukhovetsky wrote to Moscow that he intended to build a temple here and had prepared thousands of logs for it.
The church stood in the suburb of Dryzhchovka, connected by a dam to Zahrebellya on the right bank of the Yezuch River. In the 18th century, at the expense of Konotop starshyna Danylo Kandyba, a new wooden Church of the Forty Martyrs was built on its place; Metropolitan Tymofiy of Kyiv wrote to Kandyba about its consecration on December 27, 1751.
The Drahomyrovs' Church
In 1824–1846, instead of the wooden Kandyba church, Ivan Drahomyrov, the father of the famous general Mykhailo Drahomyrov, built a brick Ascension Church with a side altar of the Forty Martyrs and a bell tower. People called it the Drahomyrov Church, and the Drahomyrov family crypt was located next to it.
Destruction and Restoration
In the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet authorities closed the church, looted its relics, and publicly burned icons in the marsh near the Yezuch. The Drahomyrov crypt was destroyed, and in 1940 the dismantling of the temple itself began: the dome and the tambour were removed, and the bell tower was taken apart for bricks. The cathedral was not completely destroyed—the war started, and during the German occupation, a temporary wooden tent roof was installed instead of the dome. General Drahomyrov's tombstone was returned to the church in the 1970s. In 1992, the cathedral was restored: the tambour and the dome were rebuilt, returning the temple to its historical appearance.
How to Get There
The cathedral is in the center of Konotop. Nearby are the museum-estate of General Drahomyrov and the Lazarevsky Konotop Local Lore Museum. The site of the battle itself is near the village of Shapovalivka, where the 350th anniversary of the victory was celebrated in 2009.
Advice
The church is active, so please behave quietly during services. Before traveling to Sumy Oblast, check the security situation and the restrictions of the Sumy RMA.
