The King Danylo Halytskyj, the ruler of the huge state of Halych-Volyn (at that time, the center of the Rus - actually Ukrainian - lands, todays Northern, Central, and Western Ukraine plus a large part of Belarus and a part of what is now Lithuania). The first Eastern Slavic ruler who, remaining a devout Orthodox, was crowned as King by a Popes Legate. King Danylo (1202-1264) was a Rurikide, a descendant of the Scandinavian warriors who migrated to Eastern Slavic lands in the 8th century A.D. He was a direct descendant (9th generation) of the Great Duke St. Volodymyr Equal to the Apostles - the ruler who had baptized Rus (present day Ukraine and Belarus). The reason Danylo (then merely a Prince of Volyn and Halych) got in touch with the Pope was that he did not see any future for his people, Rusychy (todays Belarussians and Ukrainians) in the state of Mongols, the Golden Horde, where the faith of the local peoples (and the servants of this faith who had to pay tributes to the Mongols) was not attacked, but the people were deprived of any rights and could be bought and sold like cattle. This was a total opposite of Danylos contemporary, the prince of Novgorod, Aleksander (later called St. Aleksander Nevsky, although he did not take any part in the battle with the Swedes near the Neva river, being at that time only about 12 years old). Prince Aleksander lived all of his life as an obedient servant of the Mongols. Still as a boy, he went to the Golden Horde and became the Anda (milk brother) of Khan Sartak, a son of the Mongol Khan Batu. Throughout his life, he remained a faithful watchdog of the Mongols, sending troops to whatever tribe or village in Rus was suspected in not paing its dues to the Mongols in full, and killing everything that breatherd there and then setting the settlement on fire. And now, due to a fairy-tail that has no historical confirmation that the saint prince Alexander stopped the advance of the Catholic knights on the ice of the lake Peipus (the chronicles of the time have no records of any of such event), he is esteemed as a saint and of the steady faith in the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchy). Choose between King Danylo and Saint Alexander Nevsky? I would pick King Danylo any day!
Posted on: Mon, 14 Apr 2014 02:54:29 +0000
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