1. On the nomenclature Russian land see Nasonov, Arsenii N., “Russkaia zemlia” i obrazovanie territorii drevnerusskogo gosudarstva (Moscow: Akademiia Nauk, SSSR 1951)Google Scholar and Omeljan Pritsak, “The Origin of Rus',” Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Occasional Papers, Cambridge, 1975, xxi.

2. In his study on “princely saints and saintly princes” Michael Cherniavsky posed some preliminary hypotheses concerning the ideological significance of the cult of Boris and Gleb. “The princely brothers were offered as a blood sacrifice, the pledge of Russian Christianization…. They did not die for Christ and their faith, but in Christ, imitating Christ and his passion… . The princely saints were passion-sufferers because they died for what they were, as Christ had to die for what he was, in order to provide salvation.” Cherniavsky, Michael, Tsar and People: Studies in Russian Myths (New York: Random House, 1969), 7, 9, 10 Google Scholar. See also Maczko, Stephen, “Boris and Gleb: Saintly Princes or Princely Saints?” Russian History 2, 1 (1975): 68–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. “Prolog-Narrative,” in Dmitrii S. Abramovich, Zhitie sviatykh Borisa i Gleba i sluzhby im, Vyp. 2 of Pamiatniki drevnerusskoi literatury (Petrograd: izd. Otdeleniya russkogo yazyka i slovesnosti Imp. akademii nauk, 1916) (photo reprint in Müller, Ludolf, Die altrussischen hagiographischen Erzählungen und liturgischen Dichtungen über die heiligen Boris und Gleb, slavische Propyläen, 14 [Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1967]), 95 Google Scholar.

4. The text of Chtenie in Abramovich, Zhitie in Müller, Slavische Propyläen, 1–26; also that of Skazanie in ibid., 27–66. References are in the text in parentheses as Chtenie and Skazanie followed by the page number in this edition.

The dating of Skazanie, Chtenie and an account in Povest’ vremmenykh let (inserted under the year 1015) and their textual interrelationships have been long disputed. After significant work by Aleksei A. Shakhmatov, Sergei A. Bugoslavskii, Nikolai N. Voronin, Nikolai N. Il'in, Andrzej Poppe, Ludolf Müller, and others, no consensus on a definitive sequence for the texts has emerged. Skazanie is known in more than 150 extant manuscripts, dating from the twelfth century through the seventeenth; Chtenie in only 18 manu scripts. For a discussion of the theories and bibliography, see Franklin Sciacca, “The History of the Cult of Boris and Gleb” (Ph.D. diss. Columbia University, 1985), 373–375.

5. George-Fedotov, , The Russian Religious Mind. Kievan Christianity: The 10th to the 13th Centuries (New York: Harper and Row, 1960), 104 Google Scholar. See also the traditional theological expositions by Spidlik, Thomas, “Les ‘Strastoterptsi’ dans la spiritualité slave ou la valeur chrétienne de la souffrance,” Revue a “ascétiqve et de mystique 43, 4 (1967): 453–461 Google Scholar; and Kologrivof, Ivan, Essai sur la sainteté en Russie (Bruges: Beyaert. 1953), 19–41 Google Scholar.

6. Hurwitz, Ellen, “Metropolitan Hilarion's Sermon on Law and Grace: Historical Consciousness in Kievan Rus',” Russian History 7, pt. 3 (1980): 324, 329Google Scholar. See also Müller, Ludolf, Des Metropolitan llarions, Lobrede auf Vladimir den Heiligen und Glaubensbekenntnis (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1962 Google Scholar.

7. Müller, Des Metropolitan llarions, 88.

8. Hurwitz, “Metropolitan Hilarion's Sermon on Law and Grace.” 327.

9. Müller, Des Metropolitan llarions, 99, 100–102; Hurwitz, “Metropolitan Hilarion's Sermon on Law and Grace, 329.

10. Gaster, Theodor H., Myth, Legend, and Customs in the Old Testament: A Comparative Study with Chapters from Sir James G. Frazer's Folklore in the Old Testament (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 141, 140Google Scholar. For an exposition of theories on the development of the custom of sacrifice in ratifying covenants, see 143–146.

11. The text refers to Jeremiah's discussion of the “old” and “new” covenants: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel… . not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt; which my covenant they broke” (Jer. 31: 31—33).

12. Manuscript titulature often alludes to this notion. In a sixteenth century text of Skazanie, for example, the 24 July heading proclaims the feast “of the holy great Martyrs Boris and Gleb, assassinated for the sake of Christ.” IRLI, Pushkinskii dom MSS, Sbornik P.IV, op. 24, N. 26, fol. 441.

13. The motif of cook as assassin has literary parallels. See, for example, the Orkney saga, “Haakon ordered his cook Lifolf to kill [St. Magnus]” in Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney, trans. Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards (London: Hogarth, 1978), 87.

14. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1951) 8: 366. See also Prokhorov, V., “Grecheskie litsevye Chetii Minei imperatora Vasiliia Makedonianina Xv.,” Khristianskie drevnosti i arkheologiia 12 (1863): 108–109 Google Scholar. The Protevangelium is a noncanonical, pseudepigraphical work written in the second century.

15. Gleb's protests and pleadings with his murderers before his submission to them are used in Skazanie as a literary device to heighten the pathos of the moment. The young Gleb's final acceptance of the passion is made all the more poignant by his emotional outburst. Nestor, as befits his more sober style, omits most of Gleb's protestations.

Mursillo argues that in all the early acta martyrum “there is a tense dramatic movement, sharpened by the brooding air of inevitability.” This technique can be discerned in Gleb's lament. See Mursillo, Herbert, ed., The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), liiiGoogle Scholar. Gleb is not killed in the midst of his pleading, but only afterwards, when he has submitted willingly.

16. Gaster has suggested that the interpolation of a known prayer in a text was a device to keep a listening audience interested, since it would be expected to chant along. The periodic insistence on active participation kept the audience alert.

17. Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind, 94; see also 95–96, 105.

18. Meyer, Karl, Altkirchenslavisch-griechisches Wörterbuch des Codex Suprasliensis (Glückstadt: Augustin, 1935), 235 Google Scholar.

19. Calder, W. M., “Studies in Early Christian Epigraphy: Two Episcopal Epitaphs from Laodicea Combusta,” Journal of Roman Studies 9 (1919): 47, 49, 52Google Scholar. For the use of muchenik to translate athlophoros, see Meyer, Altkirchenslavisch-griechisches Wörterbuch, 127. For further discussion, see “Studies in Early Christian Epigraphy,” 53.

20. Fedotov, Russian Religious Mind, 110, 130: “Russian kenoticism [is] the most original creation of the Russian religious spirit” (368).

The saints who are called strastoterptsy in the Codex Suprasliensis were martyred during the persecution under the king of Persia, Sapor, in the 320s. Two monks, Jonas and Barachisius, exhorted a group of Christians sentenced to death to hold to their faith. Nine were eventually considered martyrs, the “passionbearers” of the Codex—Zanithas, Lazaros, Maruthas, Nersis, Ilias, Maris, Avivos, Savos, and Simveithis (Bibliotheca Sanctorum [Rome: John XXIII Institute, 1965] 6: 503–504). Jonas and Barachisius were hideously tortured—hot lead was poured in their nostrils, red-hot plates were placed under their arms, they were hung by one foot until faint, their hands and feet were severed, their tongues torn out, finally Jonas was pressed to death in a grape crusher, and splinters of reed were poked into Baruchisius's flesh, then he was rolled on the ground to drive them in (Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, 15 vols. [Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914] 3: 491). They too were designated “passionbearers” in the Codex. If the nomenclature demanded the severity of torture to death, these two were aptly awarded the title. For our own discussion we may note that the vita of Jonas has him exclaim in the midst of his torments, “I was wonderfully refreshed by the memory of the sufferings of Christ” ( Thurston, Herbert and Attwater, Donald, eds., Butler's Lives of the Saints [New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1956] 1: 697 Google Scholar).

21. Bouyer, Louis, The Spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers (New York: Desclee, 1960), 193, 196, 199Google Scholar: “We honor the martyrs as Christ's disciples and imitators” [“Martyrdom of Polycarp “]. “In suffering with Christ in martyrdom, not only do we rise with him, but we become in some way the Risen One” (199–202).

22. Ingham, Norman W., “The Litany of the Saints in Molitva Sv. Troice ,” in Studies Presented to Professor Jakobson by his Students, ed., Gribble, Charles (Cambridge, Mass.: Slavica, 1968), 125, 131–132Google Scholar.

For a more detailed discussion of western ruler-martyrs, see Norman Ingham, “The Sovereign as Martyr, East and West,” Slavic and East European Journal 17 (Spring 1973): 3–8. He established a universal type of saint in Christianity, the martyred sovereign. See also Cherniavsky, Tsar and People, 5–43.

The typos of the martyred sovereign outlived the Middle Ages. In a curious recent revival of the tradition, the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad canonized Tsar Nicholas II and the entire royal family as martyrs. See “New St. Nicholas for Russians,” Time, 16 November 1981, 63; D. K. Mano, “Russian Martyrs,” National Review, 25 December 1981, 1560–1561.

On old Russian royal vitae (kniazheskie zhitiia) see Ingham, Norman, “The Limits of Secular Biogra phy in Medieval Slavic Literature, Particularly Old Russian,” American Contributions to the Sixth International Congress of Slavists, ed., Harkins, William E. (The Hague: Mouton, 1968, 181–196 Google Scholar; Webster, Alexander F. C., “Varieties of Christian Military Saints: From Martyrs under Caesar to Warrior Princes,” St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 24, 1 (1980): 3–35.Google Scholar

23. Abramovich, Zhitie in Müller, Slavische Propylden, 141.

24. See II'in for examples of biblical clichés employed in the sluzhba, N. N. Il'in, Letopisnaia stat'ia 6523 goda i ee istochnik (Moscow: Akademia Nauk SSSR, 1957), 166–167. The lives of Boris and Gleb so successfully introduced and established the Byzantine hagiographic topoi in Russian literature that these texts, in turn, became the prototypes for many of the later lives of Russian saints. Bugoslavskii has catalogued many zhitiia, primarily from the northeast, that used the formulae of Skazanie. These include the lives of the princes Andrei Bogoliubskii, his son Gleb, lurii of Vladimir, Fedor Rostislavich, Konstantin of Murom, Boris Aleksandrovich of Tver', Ol'ga, Mikhail of Chernigov, Nikita of Pereiaslav', and Isaii of Rostov. See S. Bugoslavskii, “Literaturnaia traditsiia v severovostochnoi russkoi agiografii,” Sbornik Otdeleniia russkogo iazyka i slovesnosti 101, no. 3 (1928): 334–335. “The princely martyrdom became a purely literary convention in the Russian chronicles, where with less justification the deaths of princes from Iaropolk Iziaslavich (d. 1086) to the Tsarevich Dmitrii Ivanovich (d. 1591) were described in the commonplaces of Boris’ and Gleb's passion” (Ingham, “Sovereign as Martyr,” 19).

25. For an analysis of the political significance of the dynastic cult of Boris and Gleb in the pre-Mongol period, see Sciacca, “History of the Cult of Boris and Gleb,” 409–547.