“In the spring of 1048, having covered 3,000 kilometers, the envoys of French King Henry I arrived in Kyiv. Yaroslav welcomed the delegation and gave his permission for the marriage. The wedding and coronation of Anne of Kyiv and Henry I of France took place in the spring of 1049 in the Notre Dame Reims Cathedral. Henry I had been crowned in Reims Cathedral in 1027 and since then, the cathedral became the location of the coronation of French monarchs. During the wedding ceremony, Anne made her oaths on the Gospel she had brought with her from Kyiv. That Gospel became the coronation one and all the French kings up till Louis XIV took their oaths on it. This manuscript, nowadays known as Reims Gospel is a part of the Reims Cathedral treasury.
Unlike her husband King Henry I, Anne could read and write, and, what is interesting to learn, in her letters to her father she described Paris as a gloomy place that could not be even closely compared to Kyiv.
Anne gave birth to her first son in 1053 who was a long-awaited heir to the French throne since his father Henry I was already 45 years old.
Queen Anne of Kyiv was the first to use the name Philip [Philip I] in the history of French Kings’ names. The name translates from Greek as a lover of horses, and there is a theory why Anne gave it to her son.
As some historians believe, Yaroslav the Wise named her, his younger daughter, after her famous predecessor Anna Porphyrogenita, wife of Yaroslav’s father Vladimir the Great. Anna Porphyrogenita was a representative of the Macedonian dynasty and a Byzantine Princess. If it was so, and Anne of Kyiv related herself to Anna Porphyrogenita, she may have named her firstborn child after Philip II of Macedon, the legendary king and the father of Alexander the Great. Anne’s youngest son Hugh was called the Great and is known for taking part in the First Crusade.
When in 1060 Henry I died, Queen Anne became the first regent to solely rule France until her son Philip reached maturity.
The authority of Anne in French society was so great, that she was given the right to sign the State documents which was a unique privilege for a woman in the royal court of 11th-century France.
Anne of Kyiv founded the Abbey of St. Vincent at Senlis and resided in it until 1074. A full-figure sculpture of Anne in Senlis in the church of Saint Vincent’s Monastery.”
Excerpt is taken from the “Gardariki, Ukraine” e-book.
