Today you will learn about the history of the Church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the village of Dubrovytsia, built in 1902.
It is a stone church, well-made and carefully maintained by the community. You immediately realise how reverently the local people treat their spiritual heritage, the heritage of their ancestors.
The history of church life in the village dates back to at least the 16th century. This is evidenced by the icon of the Intercession of the Virgin Mary, which was discovered in July 1908 in the village of Dubrovytsia by the director of the Lviv Museum, Hilarion Sventsitsky, during a regular expedition. The icon is kept in the Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv with the inscription: “Master Dmytro. Intercession of the Virgin Mary. 1560s. Dubrovytsia village, Lviv region. Linden board, tempera, silvering, relief”.
The old wooden church in Dubrovytsia was built in 1670. The three-storey, single-roofed building consisted of a wider square nave, a narrower rectangular and equally wide narthex, and a rectangular altar. A tall log of the nave with a single slope covered a pyramidal tent roof topped with a dome.
The lower log cabins of the narthex and the altar were covered with three-pitched roofs, the ridges of which reached the lower edge of the gap above the nave. The building was encircled by a dormer supported by profiled crowns of the log cabins.
In 1902, the old church was dismantled, and a new brick church of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built a little higher up, designed by architect Vasyl Nahirnyi. For such a beautiful shrine in the village, the laity are grateful to Fr Ilya Lagola, because it was thanks to his initiative and perseverance that the church was built. There is an inscription to this effect on the inner wall of the building. The church is cruciform in plan, with shortened side frames, and is crowned with a large helmet-shaped dome on the light octagon of the nave.
On the feast of the Intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1902, the church was blessed by the dean, Father Mykhailo Yatsyshyn, and since then, services have been held in the church.
The day in 1908, when the church was consecrated by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, is also memorable.
The gilded wooden iconostasis in the Rococo style, valuable for its carvings, was installed in 1908.
The work was done by the famous Lviv carver Yevstakhiy Shchuplakevych.
In 1903, Lviv hosted an exhibition of church items, to which Shchuplakevych took the royal gate and the columna (filial), where he received excellent reviews of their performance.
The pallium images of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin were made in Munich (from the Chronicle of Dubrovytsia by Fr Ilya Lagola).
In 1902, a brick bell tower with three bells and a signature was erected in the churchyard. Locals say that the bells had a melodious sound that majestically resounded throughout the neighbourhood. But during the Second World War, two of the bells were taken by the Germans, and the invaders could not remove the one named Elijah, so it has remained until now.
The church is also valuable for its restored altar image of the Mother of God, which remained from the old church. As well as the Gospel (Vilno, 1644).
At one time, the Dubrovytsia church received the patronal icons of the Archangel Michael, which were handed over for safekeeping by the residents of the village of Vyshenka Velyka. In the postwar period, the communist-Moscow invaders forcibly evicted the indigenous population from this village to create a military training ground, and the church was used as a target for training exercises.
In 2010, the Dubrovytsia church was re-roofed and restored from the outside, and in 2012, the iconostasis was restored.
In 2022, on the 120th anniversary of the church, a new altar was installed by the community under Fr Volodymyr Pidhirnyi (craftsman Kopka Fedir Stepanovych) and consecrated by His Grace Bishop Volodymyr Hrutsa.
Source: Volodymyr Datsko. Prayer books of our ancestors. Monuments of Architecture and Spirituality of the Yavoriv Region – Lviv: Logos, 2018. 714 p., illus.