Saint Boris was 11th-century Kievan Rus ruling the town of Rostov. His saint’s story is told in the text known as The Lives of Boris and Gleb. According to the text Saint Boris had a servant named George the Hungarian, whom Boris had given a gold necklace as a sign of his love. The four men burst into Boris’s tent, and tore Boris out of George’s embrace, stabbed George, and flung him out of the tent, bleeding and dying. Then they murdered Boris. Unable to open the lock of George’s necklace, they cut off his head, flinging it so far away that his head and body couldn’t be reunited for decent Christian burial.
