Gleb Vsevolodovich of Gorodno

The right-⁠believing Prince Gleb Vsevolodovich of Gorodno (†1170?) was prince in Gorodno (today Grodno), in Belarus. He is venerated as a local saint and commemorated on 6 July (24 June by the old calendar).

He was the second son of the first prince of Gorodno, Vsevolodko (died 1141-1142), and Agafia, daughter of Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh of Kyiv. It is supposed that Vsevolodko's seat, Gorodno, is to be sought in today's Grodno, on the upper Neman. The principality of Gorodno was probably founded by Monomakh between 1113 and 1117, for the military and political consolidation of the border with Lithuania and for the attack against the Turov and Brest holdings of his nephew Yaroslav Svyatopolchich.

Gleb is first mentioned in the Hypatian Chronicle under the year 1144, when he took part, with his elder brother Boris, in the expedition of Grand Prince Vsevolod Olgovich against Halych. At that time Boris ruled at Gorodno. Gleb probably held Volkovysk. In the struggles for the throne of Kyiv in 1149-1151, Boris sided with Izyaslav Mstislavich against Yuri Dolgoruky; the chronicle does not mention Gleb. In 1166 he appears as prince of Gorodno under the authority of Grand Prince Rostislav Mstislavich of Kyiv; at his order he took part in an expedition to Kaniv, to guard the Russian merchants coming "from Greece." In the struggles for Kyiv of 1167 and 1170 he sided with Prince Mstislav Izyaslavich of Volhynia, but without taking an active part. For that reason, after the taking of Kyiv in February-⁠March 1170, Mstislav Izyaslavich made an agreement only with the younger brother, Mstislav of Gorodno. Perhaps Gleb was no longer alive then.

The special veneration of Saints Boris and Gleb in the family of the princes of Gorodno is seen not only in the names Boris and Gleb, but in the dedication to these saints of the stone cathedral at Gorodno, on Kolozha, built in the 1180s and 1190s. A small lead seal from Drogichin is attributed to him, with the image of Saint Gleb on one side and of Saint Simeon the God-⁠receiver on the other.