The village of Isai, located in the southwest of Lviv region, can boldly claim the title of «the village with the most beautiful coat of arms». Imagine a shield, which depicts green mountains and blue sky, in the foreground there is a golden-colored palace or temple. The shield is framed by an exquisite frame and crowned with a crown. Do not forget that we are talking about a settlement of the Turkovsky district, the population of which does not exceed a thousand people.
Where did the village, located in the upper reaches of the Stryi, got such a coat of arms, and what is this golden temple-palace, we will try to find out. The thing is that this village is not a simple one. It appeared in 1459. At that time the territory between the Dnieper and Dniester became the arena of the fight for the power of Hetman Teteri with Ivan Bryukhovetsky. Wounded Cossacks and ordinary Cossacks who suffered in the «battle of the titans» were nursed by the local witch doctor Isai Dudzinsky. Not all those who were cured wanted to leave the Carpathians, which were kind to them. It was these people who founded the settlement of Isai. And what is a Ukrainian village without a church? Therefore, in 1663 in the geographical center of the village on the money collected by the community, the construction of a church was started.
The temple was wooden. It was built by the master Ilya Panteleimon. The name of the temple was given in honor of Archangel Michael, so in the register of state «monuments of Ukraine» it passes as the Church of St. Michael or St. Michael’s Church. It really looks like a royal palace from Pushkin’s fairy tales. It is a small quadrangular structure with clearly marked cleros — places for the choir. The church is crowned by octagonal towers covered with bow towers. Crosses are installed on them. The uniqueness of the temple lies in three tiers of roofs, giving it a remote resemblance to Chinese pagodas. The widest roof is the lower one. It rests on carved pillars. This was done so that heavy precipitation, for which the Carpathians are famous, could not soak and spoil the log cabin of the temple.
In 1722 a bell tower appeared next to St. Michael’s Church. It is quadrangular and four-storied, in the style of Italian campaniles. The scheme of Isaev’s campanile is quite simple: the first floor is a log cabin, further — a blind structure with an open arched gallery on the last floor. The whole bell tower is covered with shingles — wooden plates. The structure itself serves as a kind of watchtower in front of the entrance to the churchyard.
In 1801 St. Michael’s Church itself and its faithful campanile underwent reconstruction. The style of the church and bell tower did not change one iota, just rotten and rotten trees, floors and shingles were replaced. The hardest test for the «House» of Archangel Michael was the Soviet times. The church was turned into a warehouse, the most banal vegetable warehouse. Where the singers stood — onions were dried, where the Isaians used to pray — mountains of potatoes, carrots and cabbage lay. In 1990, the community took back the church, washed, cleaned. Today St. Michael’s Church does what it was built to do — glorify God and heal the souls of the parishioners.
Like many turka attractions, St. Michael’s Church has been revitalized since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and has even gotten better looking. A trip to Isaia, hiking in the Skolivskie Beskidy or tasting the local mineral water will make vacation in the Carpathians the most pleasant, useful and inexpensive option of your vacation, so well-deserved and long-awaited.