Gleb of Rostov

Holy Right-⁠Believing Gleb of Rostov and Belozersk was a prince of the Rurikid line, son of Prince Vasilko Konstantinovich of Rostov. He was born in 1237. The next year his father was killed by the Mongol-⁠Tatars. According to a chronicle report, Gleb "sat at Beloozero", but this means only that Beloozero was assigned to him as an appanage; being young, he lived by his mother, Princess Maria Mikhailovna, in Rostov.

At the age of seven, in 1244, he accompanied his brother to the Horde so that Khan Batu would confirm their inheritances, and Beloozero was confirmed to Gleb. In 1249 he went to Sartak, Batu's son, who let him go with honour. The same year he escorted to Yaroslavl the body of Prince Vasily Vsevolodovich. In 1251 he went to his appanage at Beloozero for the first time and settled there, without breaking his ties with Rostov. In 1253 he was in Rostov at the consecration of the church of Saints Boris and Gleb. In 1257 he went to the Horde with his brother Boris and married a Tatar princess, baptised Theodora. In 1259 he received Alexander Nevsky at Rostov together with his brother and mother. In 1261, with Nevsky and his brother, he appointed, with the metropolitan's blessing, Archimandrite Ignatius of the Theophany monastery as helper to Bishop Cyril of Rostov.

In 1268 he went again to the Horde and returned ill. In 1271, while he was there, his mother died; on 20 December 1273 his wife also died, and was buried in the church of the Mother of God in Rostov. In 1277 he took part, with other Russian princes, in Khan Mengu-⁠Timur's expedition against the Yasy of the Caucasus. After the death of his brother Boris, the same year, he took the principality of Rostov, uniting under his rule Rostov and Beloozero. In 1278 he married his son Michael to the daughter of Prince Feodor Rostislavich of Yaroslavl.

The chronicles praise him as a God-⁠fearing prince, gentle and generous, who honoured monastic life, was not proud and was zealous for the beauty of churches. They say that from his youth he served the Tatars and delivered many Christians from their oppression, comforted the sorrowful, gave food and drink to those who asked, and built and adorned many churches with icons and books. Monasteries of the Beloozero region are linked with his name: in 1251 the Trinity monastery at Ust-⁠Shekhona, in thanks for the healing of his son Michael from blindness, and, around 1260, the Spaso-⁠Kamenny monastery, on a small island in Lake Kubenskoe, after a miraculous rescue from a storm on the lake. According to the Rostov chronicles he was the first in Russia to think of artificial waterways: sailing down the Sukhona, he dug a canal across a bend of the river, afterwards called the Prince Gleb's Cut, and made a similar one on the Vologda River.

On 13 December 1278, after a seven-⁠day illness, he passed quietly and meekly from this life in Rostov. He was buried in the cathedral by Bishop Ignatius, beside his wife and brother, but after nine weeks Ignatius, no one knows why, ordered him thrown out of the church at midnight in disgrace and buried in the ground at the Saviour monastery in Knyaginin. For this the bishop was suspended from service by Metropolitan Cyril, then forgiven at the request of Prince Dmitry Borisovich. Of his sons only Demyan, Michael and, in part, Vasily are known with certainty.

He is commemorated on 11 July (new style, a movable day), in the Synaxis of the Saints of Vologda.