In the period of its highest prosperity, the collegium became a major educational and intellectual center and gained fame in Russia as “Chernigov Athens”.

The collegium is located in the center of Chernihiv, on the edge of the rampart of the former fortress, next to the St. Boris and Gleb Cathedral at the Dytynets Park.

An architectural monument of national importance, according to the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR dated August 24, 1963 No.

[1] The collegium in Chernigov in 1700 was founded on the basis of the Slavic-Latin and Slavic-mathematical elementary schools of Novgorod-Seversky by the Archbishop of Chernigov and Novgorod-Seversky John Maksimovich Vasilkovsky at the expense of the hetman's office of Ivan Mazepa in accordance with the decree of Tsar Peter the Great on the "establishment of collegiums for the purpose of education.

The composition of the students was all-class: Not only the children of the clergy, but also nobles, burghers and Cossacks, as well as at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, studied at the collegium.

By the mid-1930s, poetics had not yet been singled out in a separate class at the Chernigov Collegium, but was expounded along with rhetoric, logic and dialectics by one teacher, namely the prefect.

[3] According to the academic tradition that existed back in the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, at the Chernihiv Collegium, each teacher of poetics, rhetoric and philosophy had to prepare his own course of lectures, which he dictated to students.

In 1717, the teacher of the Chernihiv Collegium, Archimandrite of the Trinity-Ilyinsky Monastery German Kononovich, published the New Testament for the first time in Chernigov.

In 1749, on the initiative of Ambrose Dubnevich, a philosophical class was opened, which, for lack of space, began to be taught in the refectory hall.

Since the second half of the 18th century, courses in German, Greek and French, arithmetic, geometry and planimetry appeared in the collegium.

The teachers of the seminary were engaged in scientific work, published in the "Chernigov Diocesan News" and the journal "Faith and Life".

Here below the List of prefects of hieromonks of the Chernihiv Collegium:[4] The building is an elongated rectangle in plan, oriented from west to east.

The facade is richly decorated with pilasters, three-quarter columns, niches, curbs, tile inserts, and a columnar arched belt.