Halshka Hulevychivna

бл. 1575–1642

Founder of the Kyiv Brotherhood School

A Volhynian noblewoman who in 1615 gave her estate on Podil to the Kyiv Brotherhood for a monastery and school — the date from which Kyiv-Mohyla Academy counts its history.

Biography

Halshka (Elizaveta) Hulevych came from an influential Orthodox noble family of Volhynia. With her second husband, Stefan Lozka, marshal of Mozyr, she lived on the family estate on Podil, Kyiv’s historic merchant quarter, close to the town hall and today’s Kontraktova Square.

On 14 October 1615 she signed a deed of gift, entered in the Kyiv court registers the next day, handing over her estate and land to found a monastery, a hospice and a school for children of all social estates. Here arose the Kyiv Brotherhood Monastery of the Epiphany and its school, which after Metropolitan Petro Mohyla’s reforms became the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium and later Academy. The original deed is lost; only an 18th-century copy survives.

She spent her last years in Lutsk, supporting its Holy Cross Brotherhood, and was buried there in 1642. The National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy celebrates 15 October as Academy Day. A bas-relief of her was placed on the Old Academic Building in 1992, a mini-sculpture appeared at the corner of Illinska and Bratska streets in 2021, and in 2022 a Kyiv lane was named after her.

Kyiv in their life

2 Hryhoriya Skovorody Street — the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy campus on Podil, site of her estate; some researchers identify her stone house with the old Brotherhood Monastery kitchen building (a disputed attribution).
Old Academic Building — her bas-relief (1992).
8 Illinska Street / Bratska Street — a mini-sculpture of her (2021).