06 — Relics and Shrines
The material and devotional center of the Boris and Gleb cult: the princely town of Vyshgorod, just north of Kiev, where the two brothers were buried and where the relics were translated into ever more honorable churches across the eleventh and early twelfth centuries — the great translations of 1072 and 1115 — and the distinctive iconography and church dedications by which the brothers’ veneration spread across the Rus’ lands. These files set out what the Primary Chronicle and the Skazanie report of the shrine, its successive churches, the reported incorruption of the relics, and their uncertain fate after the Mongol sack of Kiev, alongside the art- and architectural-historical record of the brothers’ cult.
Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Passion-Bearers; first canonized Rus saints)
The relics of Boris and Gleb gave the young Rus’ Church its first native shrine — a place where the bones of saints of the ruling house lay on Rus’ soil and worked the wonders the hagiography records. That shrine was at Vyshgorod, a fortified princely settlement a short way up the Dnieper from Kiev, where the church of St. Basil held the first burial and where a succession of grander churches rose over the relics as the cult grew. The translations of the relics into those churches — solemn, prince-attended ceremonies in 1072 and 1115 — are the chief datable events in the cult’s institutional life, and the Primary Chronicle and the Skazanie‘s miracle collection narrate them. Out from Vyshgorod the veneration radiated in two visible forms: an iconographic type, the two young princes standing together with their martyrs’ crosses, that became among the earliest and most popular native subjects of Rus’ art; and a spread of church dedications and place-names across Kiev, Chernigov, Novgorod, Rostov, and the wider land. This section treats the shrine and its translations, then the iconography and the dedications.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Vyshgorod | The shrine at Vyshgorod: the burial of the brothers at the church of St. Basil, the recovery of Gleb’s body from near Smolensk, the reported incorruption of the relics, the successive wooden and stone churches, and the translations of 1072 (under the sons of Yaroslav) and 1115 (under Vladimir Monomakh) — with the uncertain fate of the relics after the Mongol sack of 1240. |
| Iconography and Churches | The standard iconographic type of the two brothers as young princes with martyrs’ crosses; their patronage of princes and warriors; and the church dedications and Borisoglebsk place-names across the Rus’ lands. |
See Also
- The Formation of the Cult — the gathering of the relics at Vyshgorod and the growth of the cult that the shrine served
- The Primary Chronicle — the source for the translation of relics of 1072
- The Healing Miracles — the wonders the hagiography reports at the tomb and at the translations
- Feast and the First Rus’ Saints — the feast and the brothers’ enduring place as protomartyrs of the Rus’ land
- The Russian Orthodox Tradition — the tradition in which the cult and its shrine took root
References
- Cross, Samuel H., and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, trans. The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1953.
- Hollingsworth, Paul, trans. The Hagiography of Kievan Rus’. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.
- Lenhoff, Gail. The Martyred Princes Boris and Gleb: A Socio-Cultural Study of the Cult and the Texts. Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1989.
- Fedotov, George P. The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946.
- Franklin, Simon, and Jonathan Shepard. The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200. London: Longman, 1996.