The Eucharistic Subtext of the Martyrdom of Princes Boris and Gleb

Abstract

The chroniclers of medieval Rus were monks, who celebrated the divine services of the Byzantine church throughout every day. This study analyses how these liturgical rituals shaped the creation of the historiographical image of Princes Boris and Gleb in the Rus Primary Chronicle. During the eleventh century, chroniclers in Kiev learned about the conversion of the Roman Empire by celebrating a series of distinctively Byzantine liturgical feasts. When the services concluded, and the clerics sought to compose a native history for their own people, they instinctively drew on the sacred stories that they sang at church. In this article, my hypothesis is that the chroniclers depicted the martyrdom of Boris in the same way that a priest prepared for the Eucharistic sacrifice during the rite of Proskomedia. I also suggest that the chroniclers depicted the martyrdom of Gleb as a sacrifice to God, using the same language that the priest used to consecrate the Eucharist during the anaphora. Looking at the narrative as a whole, therefore, we see that the fundamental structure of the chronicle story is Eucharistic. Boris is the priest who prepared the offering, and Gleb is the lamb that is mystically sacrificed. Finally, in the conclusion of the article, I hypothesize that there is an important connection between the depiction of Vladimir in 996 and the martyrdom of his sons in 1015: a connection that is based on the liturgical rite for consecrating a new church.