SAINTS FOR THE WEEK.

July 24th.

SS. Boris & Gleb.

These much venerated martyrs of the East were the sons of St. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, who was responsible for bringing Christianity to what we now call the Ukraine and was, by implication, the father of ‘Russian Christianity’.  Their half-brother Svyatopolk, seized by a desire for power, was determined to dispose of them, and when Vladimir died in 1015 he took his opportunity.  Boris, aware of what was being planned, permitted no armed resistance.  In fact he sent his soldiers away and prepared for his death in prayer.  Gleb was betrayed into attending a meeting with his half-brother in Kiev, and fell into an ambush on the banks of the River Dnieper, being finally stabbed to death by his own cook.  In 1020, another of Vladimir’s sons, Yaroslav, drove out the treacherous murderer, who died on the way to Poland, and had the brothers’ bodies taken to the church of St. Basil at Vyshgorod, near Kiev, which soon became a place of pilgrimage.  There were at first doubts about their canonisation, as they were not strictly speaking martyrs for the faith.  However, they were described as ‘passion-bearers’, those who renounced violence in the spirit of the suffering Christ.  In the West, their cult was formally approved in 1724.