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Princes Boris and Gleb side by side in fur-trimmed caps and red cloaks, each holding a cross, Russian icon of the mid-14th century

Saints Boris and Gleb

Sons of Vladimir who would not fight the brother who sent men to kill them

Honoured as
Passion-bearers
Western calendar
24 July, in the Roman Martyrology
Orthodox calendar
24 July, also 2 May, the translation of their relics (6 August on the old calendar)

Boris and Gleb were sons of Saint Vladimir, baptised Romanus and David, and after their father's death in 1015 their eldest brother Sviatopolk sent men to kill them so that he could seize power. Boris, urged by his father's advisers to take the army and make himself ruler of Kiev, said he could never lift his hand against his own brother, and the assassins found him chanting psalms before an icon of Christ and praying that God would not count this against Sviatopolk as sin. Gleb was killed soon after, weeping for his father and brother, and the Church calls them passion-bearers because they did not resist evil with violence.

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