White church and black hats
Mykyta Pysar
“The wise man, as the proverb says, is late for a fray, but not for a feast.” “To war and battle, as they say, long preparations, Socrates!”
I hope that those few readers who continue to read these notes dedicated to my motorcycle trip from Kyiv to Grossglockner still remember where this trip began. More precisely, it still begins because I am sitting in the McDonald’s on the ring road, thinking about various things that are irrelevant to the trip. But who knows Watson, who knows?
For now, it’s time to get down to practical and concrete things like riding a motorcycle from point A to point B. The time for empty chatter is over! Forward! (I hope someone else remembers this word “Forward” as a password from the novel “Three Musketeers”).
Well, I am on my way to a town that was founded a thousand years ago (the date of foundation is 1032 AD). The founder of the town was the medieval father-in-law of all Europe – Prince Yaroslav the Wise.
First of all, Yaroslav the Wise (the Grand Prince of Kyiv) had as his wife the daughter of the Swedish king – Ingegerd. Not bad at all!
Furthermore. Yaroslav the Wise had 3 daughters. All of them were married off to foreigners and became queens of various European states.
Yaroslav’s daughter Anastasia became Queen of Hungary (1047). In gratitude for the help provided to her, Anastasia presented the Bavarian Duke Otto of Northeim with the Hungarian royal relic “Attila’s sword”.
The second daughter of Yaroslav the Wise – Elizabeth became the queen of Norway (1047).
The third daughter of Yaroslav the Wise – Anna in 1051 married the French king and gave birth to the king’s heir, the future King of France Philip I.
Thus, the Kyiv prince Yaroslav the Wise was a really wise person. He not only successfully married his daughters, but also supervised the creation of the code of laws of medieval Kyivan Rus’ which did not contain a word about the death penalty – Ruska Pravda.
Stop! Like Greek mercenaries from Anabasis, I loop through my notes. It’s time to get back to the journey at last!
Look at the title of this part of the notes – “White church and black hats”.
White Church is the name of the town where I am going now. But what do the black caps mean? About black hats will be told in the next note.
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