A visit here is especially enjoyable in mid-summer when one can swim in the Styr River, which at this time of the year is a problem for one and all, as there is water in the cellar even on Christmas, and one has to put on rubber boots to fetch potatoes. The fishing is also good. In fact, it is perhaps only men’s pastime at the village. And the vista of the castle site known as Zamchyshche is quite impressive. It was once the castle of the Sokil owner Varvara Voronetska (even the old-timers do not remember the name; it is found in the chronicles, reading that the aristocratic family owned the place for over a century), and even the ruins have succumbed to the ravages of time. There are also old fortified walls, but they have survived and are in such an excellent condition as though history stopped at some point and remained at a standstill as centuries passed.
We arrived at the village when it was biting cold, during a blizzard, so that the women gathered by the church to receive holy water had hands swollen with the cold. And then we almost got lost among the mounds, following Father Vasyl showing us the way to an old church at the end of the village. When we were told its age we simply could not believe it.
There are plenty of proverbs about Sokil and usually people respond to the village name by saying something like, “Sokil? Sure, I know the place. Columbus hadn’t discovered America when Sokil residents were returning from that land with full bags.”
The village has been considered wealthy since olden times, probably because the people were remarkably enterprising. Still, people never knew how right they were to mention Columbus; it is a historically established fact that the great mariner was just setting foot on the new continent (America was discovered in 1492) when, at about the same time, a new church started to be built in Sokil, a small town of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The latest studies show that it was founded also in the late fifteenth century.
The site was once surrounded by dwellings. Now everything is different. We found the door of the church half buried by the snow. But as we stepped inside we did not feel cold, despite the wind whistling through the empty windows by the ceiling. The interior felt cozy and peaceful, perhaps because the temple had stood for half a millennium, with people regularly visiting and offering up their prayers. Or it was because of the sturdy walls (considering the windows, they had to be over three feet thick), Byzantine vaulted ceiling, and so-called Renaissance brickwork. The altar, however, was the most stunning discovery: fragments of frescoes remained on the stone wall, in the center and on the left side.
“It may have been the icon, The Glorifying King. What contours are left on the right suggest St. John the Baptist. And next Jesus the artist should have placed the founder of the parish, for such was the tradition,” Father Vasyl mused aloud.
While in that church, I found myself musing over things transient and the lessons of history. Think how many wars those walls had seen! And the only enemy they could stop were the militant atheists. During the ill-famed campaign of the early 1960s, when 200 churches in Volyn were closed, the one in Sokil turned out the last on the list. They are all functioning today, except this, one of the oldest.
Restoration was discussed about a decade ago. Teams of researchers arrived from Lutsk and Kyiv and there was a real sensation when, after peeling off a section of the wall at the altar, they discovered a niche with a half-rotten box insider. It fell apart even as they stared at it, yet three wax seals inside were in a good condition, especially one of them, and a length of silver chord (they are now all in a Kyiv museum). There was an image of a knight with sword and shield and a Latin inscription reading “Sigismund Augustus the Great.” Without doubt, this was an impression of the famous Chase seal of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. It was affixed to the most important documents. And there was evidence that the box had contained the so-called fundushova scroll, a document with which the Grand Duke traditionally authorized the magnate to possess the church and its lands. Sigismund Augustus became Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1529, but the small churches in Sokil must have started being built much earlier. But what is half a century for history and for such a sturdy well- planned structure? In 1565, Sokil received the Magdeburg Law from Sigismund Augustus, meaning that in the mid-sixteenth century it was a sizable town.
Another historically established fact is that St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the principal shrine of the Catholic world, was built in 1506-90. Considering that Volyn was under Lithuania until 1565, the small temple in Sokil is older than the symbol of Rome’s ecumenical power.
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Father Vasyl (Dudar) has been with the Sokil parish for just a year. He is quite young not in terms of age but his service record. He was forty when ordained and before that had spent a year serving at the Church of the Protective Veil in Lutsk. He has a post-secondary secular education (graduate of the Physical Culture Department), so he plays soccer almost professionally and has been invited to join quite prestigious teams. Now he studies by correspondence at a theological seminary.
When asked, quite logically, about such a sharp bend in his life path and whether it was hard to study the Scriptures, also at the professional level, he replied, “Nothing is difficult if the Lord guides your hand. Did you see the icon with Jesus knocking on the closed door? The door has a handle, but only on the other side, so it is up to the man inside to open it and his soul to Him.”
From what we learned, he was good at his sermons, despite lack of experience as a shepherd. Perhaps because he had enough life experience. He conducted service at the large parish church in the center of Sokil and every Sunday, by tradition, at the chapel in Kobche, a neighboring village with some sixty homes. People wanted to pray. Another religious community had been registered at the village of Dukhche. To have a house of God of their own, they decided to restore Sokil’s Church of the Dormition; there is actually no boundary line between the two villages.
It is hard to overestimate the selfless enthusiasm and dedication with which the newly formed religious community and its shepherd set about restoring the church, especially after one sees the damage it sustained during the decades of vandalism raised to the level of atheistic law. Practical villagers had relieved the structure of all they could get hold of and carry home: tin roofing, woodwork from the narthex. For some reason the local collective farm had dismantled the belfry. They would have done the same to the walls, but for their being built to stand for centuries.
The church itself, of the so- called confessional Orthodox style, is actually a chapel built as a sign of delivery from ills, death on the battlefield, etc. Today, on the back wall of the temple, where the restores removed several layers of plaster, one can read the figures 1704 and the Latin inscriptions Kuropatva (a town in Belarus, the site of a major battle, according to legend) and Sanjuscko (the name of a distinguished aristocratic family in Volyn).
Are there are any other temples as old as this one in Volyn? Hennady Hulko, head of regional administration’s ethnic, migration, and religious department, believes that Sokil’s chapel is oldest to retain its original appearance. The oldest one, named for [Prince] Iziaslav, dates from the eleventh or twelfth centuries. It was practically destroyed. As was the church in Liuboml (1290) and the younger one of the Protective Veil in Lutsk, built in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century.
“Unbelievable! The wooden iconostasis is still in one piece,” Father Vasyl continued to think aloud, casting a proprietary eye over the building, empty and ravaged by thieves and restorers. “Perhaps it could be returned to its original beauty if these decorations were washed and freed from the dust of centuries. You aren’t likely to find anything like that even in a museum.”
“Oh, Lord, You have delivered me from peril!” these words in Old Polish was found under layers of plaster on the external wall of the church and translated by the restorers.
Everyone can read these words now, and they are as meaningful today for the human soul tortured by unbelief and despair.
P.S.: Not so long ago, the Chase seal found in the Sokil Church in such an excellent condition was transferred to the Volyn local studies museum. Restoration teams are hard at work at the church, so, hopefully, its doors will open for the faithful already this Easter.
