Petro Konashevych Sahaidachnyi

In Ukrainian history, Petro Konashevych Sahaidachnyi is well-known as a skillful military commander, a victorious Cossack leader, and a patron of the Kyiv Orthodox Metropolitanate and education. He was born circa 1582 in the family of the Orthodox nobleman Konon from Sambir. He received his education from 1592 to 1598 at the Ostroh school.

In the early 1600s, the nobleman Petro Kononovych chose the path of chivalry and joined the Zaporozhian Host. In June 1616, he was elected as the Hetman, and with short breaks, he remained in this position until the end of his life (April 20, 1622).

According to one version, the portrait was created by the renowned copyist Hryhoriy Vasko (1820-1866) upon the order of the authoritative Ukrainian patron Vasyl Tarnovsky.  

However, his most notable accomplishment was the participation of the Cossack army in the defense of the Chotyn fortress in August-September of 1621, which resulted in the retreat of the more than one-hundred-thousand-strong army of Sultan Osman II from the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.  In exchange, the Hetman hoped for the King's support of Cossack's demands, particularly an increase in pay and the registry.

Unlike the European one, the Cossack musket is a rifle with a flint-percussion lock, adapted for long trips, with less weight and length. The flight range of a bullet from such a musket reached 250 meters, and such a bullet was capable of piercing the strongest armor.

Ukraine was a part of this state, and the Ukrainian nobility eventually matured the idea of the Commonwealth as a republic of three, rather than two nations, with a third partner - the Ruthenian Principality (attempts to implement this idea were made by Cossack politicians with the conclusion of the Treaty of Hadiach in 1658).

The Treasury of the NMHU keeps a mug with a lid from Königsberg, the work of the famous master Peter Schönermark (1665-1703), with an image of the battle against the Ottomans on the body. This subject eloquently demonstrates European ideas about the other world, which is opposed to the Christian one.

In the autumn of 1620, following the insistence of the Hetman, the Jerusalem Patriarch Theophanes dared to appoint Yov Boretskyi as the Metropolitan of Kyiv, along with several bishops.  The Polish king did not recognize Yov Boretskyi. But thanks to Sahaidachnyi's intercession, the bishop could not be afraid of arrest. His residence was St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, which actually became the center of the Orthodox Metropolis until the death of Yov Boretskyi in 1631.

Descended from a minor noble family, Yov Boretskyi is known as a teacher of Latin and Greek at the Ostroh Academy. In 1615–1618 he was the first head of the Kyiv fraternal school as a predecessor of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. The Metropolitanship of Yov Boretskyi (1620–1631) was spent in attempts to achieve recognition of the Orthodox hierarchy and was also marked by the first attempts to find a compromise with the Uniate Church.

The contemporaries were grateful to Sahaidachnyi for his educational foundations. 
Upon becoming a hetman, he joined the ranks of the Kyiv Brotherhood and School - heralds of the famous Kyiv-Mohyla Academy - with the entire Zaporozhian Host in 1616.
Therefore, it is not by chance that the hetman was buried on the territory of the Kyiv Brotherhood Monastery.