Iconography and Churches

The cult of Boris and Gleb left two visible marks across the Rus’ lands: a distinctive iconographic type — the two brothers standing together as young princes, in fur-trimmed cloaks and caps, each holding a martyr’s cross and often a sword, Boris the elder bearded and Gleb the younger beardless — and a spread of church dedications and place-names from Vyshgorod to Kiev, Chernigov, Novgorod, and Rostov. This file sets out the standard iconography as the earliest scholarship on Rus’ art describes it, the brothers’ role as patrons of princes and of warriors, and the diffusion of their dedications, pinning the artistic and architectural claims to the scholarly literature and cross-linking the later princely patronage handled in section 07.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Passion-Bearers; first canonized Rus saints)

The Standard Iconographic Type

Among the saints of the Rus’, Boris and Gleb are among the most readily recognized in icons, because their type is so distinctive and so consistent. The standard image shows the two brothers together — they are almost always paired, the joint cult expressing itself in a joint image — standing frontally, side by side, dressed not as monks or bishops but as princes: in long cloaks, frequently fur-trimmed, and wearing the rounded, fur-edged princely caps of the Rus’ nobility (Lenhoff 1989, on the iconographic type of the martyred princes; and the general art-historical literature on early Rus’ icon-painting). The princely dress is itself a statement: it marks the saints as members of the ruling house, holy precisely as princes who died an innocent death, and not as ascetics or hierarchs.

Each brother holds, as the chief attribute of the type, a small martyr’s cross — the cross carried by martyrs in Byzantine and Rus’ iconography as the sign of a death suffered for Christ — held upright in the hand before the breast (Lenhoff 1989; the general literature on martyr iconography). Very often the brothers also hold or wear a sword, the sign of their princely and military rank, sheathed or held at rest: the combination of cross and sword captures the paradox at the heart of the passion-bearer ideal — armed princes who did not use their arms, who held the sword and yet submitted to death rather than raise it against a brother (Fedotov 1946, on the meaning of the brothers’ non-resistance; see Non-Resistance and Its Meaning).

The two are distinguished by age, in keeping with the tradition’s insistence that Boris was the elder and Gleb the younger. Boris is shown as a grown man, bearded; Gleb as a youth, beardless, his face boyish — the visual echo of the Skazanie‘s portrait of the younger brother’s youth and meekness (Fedotov 1946, on the literary portrait of Gleb’s youth carried into the iconography; Lenhoff 1989). The pairing of the bearded elder and beardless younger is the surest mark by which the two are told apart within the type.

This image was among the earliest and most popular native subjects of Rus’ icon-painting. Because Boris and Gleb were the first native saints, theirs was among the first native iconographic types the Rus’ had to devise — there was no Byzantine prototype for a pair of murdered Slavic princes — and the type they devised became one of the most widely reproduced in medieval Rus’, surviving in panel icons, in monumental painting, and on applied objects (Lenhoff 1989, on the popularity and early date of the type; the general art-historical literature on the diffusion of the Boris-and-Gleb image). The honest qualification is that the earliest securely datable surviving images are later than the cult’s eleventh-century origins, so the development of the type across the medieval period is reconstructed by art historians from the surviving corpus; this file follows that scholarship and does not assign dates or attributes to individual early icons that the evidence will not bear.

The type admits some variation within its consistency. The brothers are most often shown standing frontally side by side, but they also appear mounted, as armed horsemen — the form that best expresses their role as helpers in war — and they figure in narrative or “vita” icons, where the central pair is surrounded by scenes drawn from the Skazanie: the killings, the recovery of the bodies, the burial at Vyshgorod, and the miracles at the tomb (Lenhoff 1989; the general art-historical literature on the narrative icons). In every form the joint pairing and the princely dress remain the constants, the two attributes by which the type is known. The persistence of these constants across the medieval centuries is itself evidence of how firmly the image had fixed in the devotional imagination: the Rus’ had settled, very early, on how their first native saints were to be seen, and that settlement held.

Patrons of Princes and of Warriors

The iconography is inseparable from the brothers’ function in the devotional life of the Rus’: they were, above all, patrons of the dynasty and protectors in war. As saints of the ruling house — princes who had died innocent in a dynastic struggle — Boris and Gleb were the natural heavenly patrons of the princes who came after them, and the tradition repeatedly presents them as intervening on behalf of their kinsmen and successors (Lenhoff 1989, on the brothers as dynastic patrons; Fedotov 1946; see The Martyrs as Protectors).

This patronage had a strongly military cast. The brothers came to be invoked as helpers in battle, and the tradition tells of their appearing — as armed horsemen, or as a sign in the sky — to aid Rus’ princes in war, most famously in the traditions attaching to the victories of later princes (the hagiographic and chronicle tradition of the brothers’ aid in war, in Hollingsworth 1992 and the chronicle record; Lenhoff 1989). The image of the two princely saints with their swords thus answered to a real devotional role: they were the soldier-saints of the dynasty, called upon for protection and for victory. The continuation of this patronage in the cult of later princes — Alexander Nevsky and others who invoked or were associated with Boris and Gleb — is treated in its own place (see The Martyrs as Protectors); here it is enough to mark that the iconographic type, the cross-and-sword image of the two young princes, is the visual form of a patronage that was at once dynastic and martial.

Church Dedications Across the Rus’ Lands

The second visible mark of the cult is architectural: the spread of churches dedicated to Boris and Gleb across the lands of the Rus’. The multiplication of these dedications in the eleventh and twelfth centuries is one of the clearest measures of how quickly and how widely the cult took hold (Lenhoff 1989, on the diffusion of the dedications; Franklin and Shepard 1996, on the church-building in the brothers’ honor).

The center, of course, was Vyshgorod, where the relics lay and where the great shrine-churches rose (see Vyshgorod). Beyond it, the tradition and the record attest a Boris-and-Gleb church at the supposed site of Boris’s death on the river Alta, marking the very ground of the elder brother’s martyrdom (the hagiographic and chronicle tradition of building at the place of the killing; Lenhoff 1989; see The Killing of Boris). Dedications to the brothers are attested across the chief centers of the Rus’ — at Kiev, at Chernigov, at Novgorod, at Rostov (the seat Boris himself had held), and at other towns of the land — so that within a few generations the two saints had churches in widely scattered principalities, a network of dedications binding the cult to the whole dynasty rather than to one region (Lenhoff 1989; Franklin and Shepard 1996, on the spread of the dedications across the principalities). Particular foundation dates and building histories of individual churches are matters for the architectural historians and are not uniformly secure; this file follows the scholarship in affirming the pattern of wide dedication without asserting a precise foundation date for each church.

The cult left its mark on the map as well as on the church-roll. Borisoglebsk and related “Borisoglebsk” / “Boris-and-Gleb” place-names — towns, monasteries, and settlements named for the joint dedication of the two saints — are scattered across the Russian lands, the toponymic residue of churches and monasteries founded in the brothers’ honor (the general historical and toponymic literature on the Boris-and-Gleb dedications; Lenhoff 1989). The very form of the name, fusing the two brothers into a single compound, mirrors the joint character of the cult and its icon: Boris and Gleb were always venerated, depicted, and named together.

The Spread of the Cult and Its Limits of Evidence

Taken together, the iconography, the dedications, and the place-names show a cult that radiated outward from its Vyshgorod shrine to become a pan-Rus’ devotion within a few generations of the brothers’ deaths — the first native cult, and one of the most widely diffused, in the religious culture of Kievan Rus’ (Lenhoff 1989; Fedotov 1946; Franklin and Shepard 1996). The brothers’ image and their dedications carried the passion-bearer ideal into every quarter of the Rus’ world.

Two limits of evidence should be kept in view, in keeping with the repository’s methodology (METHODOLOGY.md §3.5). First, the iconographic and architectural record as we have it is largely later than the cult’s origins: the earliest surviving icons and the standing or excavated churches mostly postdate the eleventh century, so the early form of the type and the earliest dedications are reconstructed by art and architectural historians from a later corpus and from textual notices, not directly observed (the art-historical literature; Lenhoff 1989). Second, the traditions of the brothers’ appearances in war and the attributions of particular dedications and place-names to specific events are hagiographic and traditional claims, reported here as what the tradition holds and pinned to it, not certified as historical fact. With those qualifications, the broad picture is secure: Boris and Gleb gave Rus’ art one of its first and most enduring native subjects and Rus’ geography a dense network of churches and names — the visible, lasting body of a cult whose original shrine did not survive the Mongol catastrophe.

References

Lenhoff, Gail. The Martyred Princes Boris and Gleb: A Socio-Cultural Study of the Cult and the Texts. Columbus, OH: Slavica, 1989. (The iconographic type of the martyred princes; the brothers as dynastic and military patrons; the diffusion of the church dedications and place-names; the popularity and early date of the type.)
Fedotov, George P. The Russian Religious Mind, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946. (The meaning of the brothers’ non-resistance; the literary portrait of Gleb’s youth carried into the iconography.)
Hollingsworth, Paul, trans. The Hagiography of Kievan Rus’. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. (The Skazanie, the miracle collection, and Nestor’s Chtenie: the brothers’ aid in war and the traditions of their appearances.)
Franklin, Simon, and Jonathan Shepard. The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200. London: Longman, 1996. (The church-building in the brothers’ honor and the spread of the dedications across the principalities.)
The general art-historical and toponymic literature on early Rus’ icon-painting and on the Boris-and-Gleb dedications and “Borisoglebsk” place-names (cited generically for the iconographic type and the toponymy, the surviving corpus being largely later than the cult’s eleventh-century origins).