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Tales and legends

Přemysl Otakar II, the king of iron and gold, built a great monastery as thanks for his victory over the Hungarians at the battle of Kressenbrunn. The monastery was given the name Saint or Thorny Crown, as king Přemysl endowed the monastery with a holy object - a thorn from the thorn of crowns which Christ wore during crucifixion. The relic was inlayed into gold, so the name didn't take hold. Soon the monastery began to be known as Golden Crown, and this name remained.

The abbot of Zlatá Koruna monastery found out that lord Wilhelm von Rosenberg, to whom the monastery on the dominion of his dynasty had been a thorn in his side, had convinced the Emperor that the monastery was almost desolate, and thus without use. An empirical clerk was already on the way to examine the situation. Before his arrival, the abbot called together every monk in the area, plus his own subjects from the surrounding villages and family, and dressed them in monk's robes. He sat them in front of enormous Latin books and ordered that none may speak, lest they betray their own ignorance. The royal clerk thus saw groups of monks everywhere, deep in the study of Latin books, but didn't dare ask any of them anything, lest he should display his own lack of knowledge. The news that he carried back to the Emperor was evidently positive, for the monastery of Zlatá Koruna was spared and the efforts of the conquer-hungry Rosenberg hung fruitless.