Yurii Soroka - 100 Key Ukrainian Personalities

P. Clodt. The Departure of Princess Anna Yaroslavna to France to marry King Henry I

In 1053 Anna gave birth to Philip. Over the following two years Anna also had Robert and Hugh – all legal heirs of King Henry. In addition, at that time the king and queen also had a daughter named Emma.

The marriage between Anna and Henry did not last long – the king died in 1060. According to the will, Anna Yaroslavna was appointed the regent to Philip, the heir to the throne. However, remaining the queen, she was not granted the official title of a regent: the regent could only be a man. Nevertheless, Anna, together with Philip I, signed state documents, which have been preserved up to nowadays. For instance, on the grant charter of the Soissons abbey there is her handwritten signature in Cyrillic Anna the Queen .

Jacob de Bi. Queen Anna of Kyiv, circa 1640

The final mentioning of Anna Yaroslavna was dated in documents by 1075. Her further destiny is still unclear. According to some sources, she came back to Kyiv, where she lived her later years. According to some other reports, she died in France and was buried at the church of the Villiers Abbey near the city of Etampes.

It happened so that little is known about the life of Nestor Chornoryasnik (Black Cassock), or the Chronicler. The man who devoted all his life to writing books and to taking down some other people’s biographies, mentioned very little about himself. However, some pieces of information about the author of imperishable The Tale of Bygone Years have reached us through the scores of centuries.

It is known that Nestor took monastic vows in 1074 or 1075. It is believed that it happened after the death of Theodosius, hegumen of the Kyiv Pechersk Monastery. In 1081, Stefan, the successor of Theodosius, gave the deacon’s rank to Nestor. In 1091, Nestor and two other monks were among the group that found the relics of St. Theodosius in the caves.

All Nestor’s later life was devoted to books. As he reminisced in his books-

“Studying books can bring a lot of use. Books punish us and teach the way to repentance, because we get wiser and more reserved after the words of the books… He who reads books communicates with God or saint men”.

V. Vasnetsov. Nestor the Chronicler. Kyiv Volodymyr Cathedral

The most prominent among Nestor the Chronicler’s books is famous The Tale of Bygone Years . We should note that the author compiled the book based on the events of the time as well as earlier chronicles, tales and folklore. It is known that wanting to write about the events in the most credible way, in 1077 Nestor went to Volyn. There, he looked for the original sources in Zymnensk and Sviatohirsk monasteries. As a result, Volyn Chronicle was nearly totally included into The Tale of Bygone Years. The Lives of Borys and Hlib is considered the first work of Nestor Chornoryasnyk. The book was released, most probably, in 1072, before Nestor himself took monastic vows and short time after the first saints of Rus’ were canonized. The second book, as Nestor recollected, was The Life of Theodosius . It is interesting to know that till nowadays some scholars have some doubts as to Nestor’s authorship. The argument of the version is that Nestor’s name is absent in all copies of The Tale but in the well-known Khlebnikovsky Copy . However, still in the XIII century chroniclers unanimously agreed that the author of The Tale was Nestor. A prominent work in the Ukrainian book making, Kyiv-Pechersk Lives of the Fathers , hints at that. On its pages, there is some information that Nestor was a great authority at the monastery and among the scholars and clergy of Kyiv.

The Tale of Bygone Years in the Radziwiłł Chronicle

It should be added that Nestor completed The Tale of Bygone Years around 1113 so its writing took him about 20 years. Thanks to the great work of the ascetic, the descendants can see glorious pages of the past, while historians now have an invaluable source of information.

The Order of Venerable Nestor the Chronicler of the Kyiv Caves, established by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

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