Boris of Rostov

Boris, known in baptism as Roman, was a son of Vladimir Sviatoslavich, grand prince of Kiev, who accepted Christianity for himself and his realm in the late tenth century. During his father's lifetime he was given the principality of Rostov in the northeast of the Rus' lands, and he is therefore often styled Boris of Rostov. Together with his brother Gleb (baptized David), he belongs to the first generation of Christian princes in Kievan Rus' and later came to be numbered among the earliest saints venerated by the Church of Rus'. Precise details of his birth, his mother, and his upbringing are not recorded in contemporary sources. Later tradition sometimes names Anna Porphyrogenita, the Byzantine princess who married Vladimir after his conversion, as the mother of Boris and Gleb, but the Primary Chronicle is not explicit, and historians treat the identification as uncertain. Hagiography of the eleventh and twelfth centuries presents Boris as a pious young prince formed by the newly established Christian culture of his father's court, without supplying a verifiable year or place of birth.

In 1015 Vladimir died, and a struggle for the Kievan throne followed among his sons. According to the Primary Chronicle and the hagiographical Tale of Boris and Gleb (Skazanie), Sviatopolk established himself in Kiev and resolved to eliminate potential rivals. Boris, who had been sent with his father's troops against the Pechenegs, was returning when news of Vladimir's death reached him. His retinue urged him to march on Kiev and take power, but he refused to raise arms against his elder brother. Dismissing his warriors, he encamped on the river Alta, in the southern Rus' lands. There, traditionally on 24 July 1015, assassins sent by Sviatopolk killed him in his tent as he prayed. His brother Gleb was murdered not long afterward. The Church of Rus' interpreted their deaths as a voluntary, Christ-like acceptance of suffering rather than as ordinary political killings, and they were commemorated as passion-bearers (strastoterptsy), a rank of sanctity that emphasizes innocent endurance of violence rather than death in defense of the faith by confession or combat.

The bodies of the brothers were eventually laid to rest at Vyshgorod, north of Kiev, first in the church of Saint Basil and later in a church dedicated to the two saints themselves. Their brother Yaroslav the Wise promoted their cult in the eleventh century. Veneration is already attested in the decades after their deaths, and the translation of their relics in 1072, in the presence of the Kievan princes and the metropolitan, marked a decisive moment in their public glorification. Churches and monasteries were dedicated to Boris and Gleb across the East Slavic lands; their names entered princely naming patterns; and they became heavenly patrons of the Rus' land and of its rulers. The Mongol sack of the Kiev region in the thirteenth century destroyed the Vyshgorod shrine, and the relics themselves do not survive in identifiable form, but the cult continued in Novgorod, Vladimir-Suzdal, Moscow, and other centers.

Veneration of Boris and Gleb spread throughout the Orthodox churches of the Eastern Slavs and remains important in the Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian traditions. Their principal feast is 24 July, the traditional date of Boris's death, with additional commemorations on 2 May (translation of the relics) and 5 September (associated with Gleb). Icons customarily depict the two young princes together, often holding crosses or martyr's palms, sometimes with military attributes that recall their princely rank. They are invoked as protectors of the Russian land and as models of non-resistance and princely humility, and they were long regarded as heavenly patrons of the Rurikid princes. Much of what is known about Boris depends on chronicle notices and on hagiographical texts composed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which blend historical memory with theological interpretation. The exact year of his birth is not attested in reliable sources, and no contemporary record documents a wife or children.