“And our Sovereign who reposed in God, Emperor Paul Petrovich, so loved the holy Church, so worshipped its holy rules, and did so much for its benefit, that not many Russian Tsars served God’s Church as he did…”

For many years the name of Emperor Paul I was utterly blackened through the efforts of Freemasons and the godless, and it is only fairly recently that the truth about him has become known. Before us appears the image of a deeply religious and wise monarch, who dedicated his life to the good of the Orthodox Church and Russia.

Emperor Paul I was born on September 20, 1754 (according to the old calendar) in St. Petersburg. His royal parents were Emperor Peter III and Empress Catherine II (the Great). From the first moments of his birth, Crown Prince Paul was cared for by his grandmother, Empress Elizabeth, who was known for her love for the Church. He spent his childhood in the company of nannies, who were the first to instill in him faith and love for the Church. Paul’s educator, S.A. Poroshin, was also a deeply-religious man who awakened in him a love for all things Russian. The Prince’s religious studies were conducted by Hieromonk Platon (later – Metropolitan of Moscow). Hieromonk Platon visited his student quite frequently and was able to develop in him a life-long religiousness. Metropolitan Platon wrote: “Fortunately, my high-born student always had a leaning towards godliness, and also enjoyed discussions and conversations about God and the faith.”

The pious pastor’s lesson bore fruit. Deep faith in God helped Emperor Paul endure the numerous trials that filled his life: the early death of his father, deposed from the throne and subsequently murdered; the alienation of his mother, who did not trust her son and who kept him away from state affairs; the many years of living almost as a recluse in his Gatchina palace; and the death in childbirth of his beloved first wife, Grand Duchess Natalia. It is known that Crown Prince Paul was offered a palace revolt in his favor, with Empress Catherine’s life being spared. The noble Paul refused, and a day later, out of fear that he would reveal the plot to his mother, he was horribly poisoned. Although the physicians were able to save the Prince’s life, the effects of the poisoning remained with him throughout his entire life. He began suffering from painful bouts of asphyxia and nervousness of character.

St. John of Shanghai writes: “Crown Prince Paul, who spent his childhood at the court of Empress Elizabeth, in many ways differed in character and convictions from Empress Catherine. For this reason Catherine II proposed to bar her son from the succession and have her eldest grandson Alexander succeed her… The decision on this issue was constantly delayed… At the end of 1976 Catherine II made a final decision to appoint Alexander her successor, bypassing Paul, but she died suddenly and unexpectedly. Her successor – Crown Prince Paul – stepped onto the throne…”

The Crown Prince was well-aware of the danger that threatened Europe from revolutionary France. In this regard he showed great foresight and clarity of mind. The first task that Paul set himself was to save Russia and even Europe from being infected with the virus of revolution. For him the battle against revolution was a religious affair; he engaged in this battle to save the Christian faith and the godly institution of monarchy.

In firm keeping with God’s commandments, Emperor Paul showed universal concern for his subjects. Even on the day of his coronation he already proclaimed a manifest concerning the serfs, which laid the foundation for the restriction of serfdom. For the first time in the history of Russia, the peasants had to take an oath of fealty. A special peasant administration was created, state peasants were allotted plots of arable land, and all peasants were granted the right of court appeal.

For its time this was truly the royal “golden charter” of which the people had dreamed for a long time. In essence, half of the peasant liberation reforms of 1861 were laid down by Emperor Paul. Were he to remain alive, could he not have become the Tsar-Liberator?

There was a well-known case in which the Tsar stood up in defense of peasants whom their landlord was trying to sell off separately, without their families or plots of land, in order to appropriate the peasants’ property. The peasants refused to obey the landlord’s order, and he reported the rebellion to the governor. However, the governor turned out to be a man of high principles and quickly understood what was going on. After he reported the case to the Tsar, Emperor Paul declared the sale null and void, ordered the peasants to be left in their places, and subjected the landlord to a severe reprimand. The landlord was then overcome with guilt, called all his peasants together and asked their forgiveness, and then went off to St. Petersburg to an audience with the Tsar. “Well, my good man, have you made up with your peasants? What did they say?” – the Emperor asked the guilty landlord. “Your Highness, they said to me: may God forgive you…” “Well, if God and they forgave you, I forgive you as well. Only remember for the future, that they are not your slaves, but as much my citizens as you are. You have only been entrusted with their care, and you are responsible for them to me, just as I am responsible to God for Russia…” – concluded the Emperor.

His love of justice and concern for the common people were expressed by the Emperor in making himself easily accessible to his subjects by installing the famous mailbox at the Winter Palace, the key to which was held by him personally and into which both the highest official and the lowest commoner could throw their letters with requests for royal protection or bounty. The Tsar himself took the requests out of the mailbox and read them daily, and not a single one of them remained unanswered.

But for us it is much more important to see the inner world of this most honorable sovereign, honorable not only in title, but also in life.

One of the Tsar’s contemporaries, N.A. Sablukov, who by virtue of his service at the court was fortunate to know the Emperor personally, remembered Paul as “a deeply religious man, full of true piety and fear of God.” “This was a man… who was magnanimous, ready to forgive insults and ask forgiveness for his own errors, – Sablukov writes in his memoirs. – He had the highest regard for truth, hated falsehood and deceit, was concerned with justice, and prosecuted without mercy all manner of abuse, particularly extortion and bribery.” Sablukov also testifies that “when he was still the Crown Prince, Paul often spent entire nights in prayer. The small rug on which he prayed and which was kept at Gatchina was completely worn out by his knees.”

Historical records for those years have preserved the description of the following event: “A strange and wondrous vision was granted to the guard standing at the Summer Palace…Shining with heavenly glory, the Archangel Michael suddenly appeared to this guard, and the vision made the guard tremble in awe… The Archangel commanded that a cathedral be erected on this place in his honor, and that this be reported to Tsar Paul without fail. The special event was reported to the commander, and the latter informed Tsar Paul of it. Tsar Paul replied: ‘I already know.’ It appears that he had prior knowledge of everything, and that the guard’s vision only served as confirmation…” From this description we can conclude that Emperor Paul was granted revelations from the celestial world.

The memory of Tsar-martyr Paul was assiduously dishonored by Freemasons and diverse liberals, while the heinous murder of Paul I was prepared and implemented with the active participation of Freemasons, both Russian and English. The participation of Freemasons in regicides is entirely understandable and testifies to the fact that Freemasons hate the divinely-established monarchy and yearn to destroy legal monarchs. It would even have been surprising if Freemasons did not take part in the plot against Paul I. St. John of Shanghai thus explains the nature of the Freemasons’ regicidal obsession: “Before the Antichrist appears in the world, his coming is already being prepared. The mystery of iniquity is already in action, and the forces preparing the Antichrist’s appearance are primarily battling against legal monarchic rule.” The Antichrist’s cohorts are engaging in a struggle against kings, but behind this lurks a struggle against God. “Such is the nature of the struggle against the Tsar and Russia, against the principles of its life and historical development. Such is the meaning and the aim of this struggle… – asserts St. John of Shanghai. – Everything that is most base, most unclean and most sinful in the human soul was summoned forth against the Tsar and Russia. All of this was deliberately stirred up in battle against the royal crown topped with a cross, because royal service is equal to the bearing of a cross.”

The 18th century was a time when freethinkers and the godless had already raised their heads high in Europe and were pushing nations into the bloody abyss of revolution. The main impediment in their path was autocratic Orthodox Russia, at the helm of which stood genuinely religious monarchs.

The French Revolution, which gave freedom to godlessness and all manner of licentiousness, infected the minds of many members of high society in Russia. Tsar Paul was profoundly aware of the danger of revolutionary ideas for the faithful of the Orthodox Church and ruthlessly destroyed all sprouts of freethinking. Local Freemasons were forced to give written promises not to open lodges, which greatly impeded the success of Freemasonry in Russia.

Emperor Paul loved his people and wished Russia to follow its own path. He began instituting reforms to abolish the privileges obtained by the nobility in the previous reign, and he primarily showed concern for the good of the peasantry and the common people. The highest circles of government saw their privileges being threatened and began conspiring to eliminate the sovereign. These traitors had major financial ties to England, whose interests were more important to them than those of Russia.

Tsar Paul was distinguished by a truly knightly character and a genuinely Christian soul. He dreamed of instituting peace in Europe and restoring the altars and thrones destroyed by the revolution. But he stood alone against his secret enemies, and he was surrounded by betrayal and deceit… The forces of dark feared the influence of God’s anointed king on the fate of nations. A conspiracy arose, at the head of which stood several high officials and embittered officers who dreamed of liberties. The Emperor’s orders began to be distorted to the point of becoming unrecognizable. The conspirators very cunningly influenced the society of the capital city against the monarch. The headquarters for the conspiracy became the salon of Zherebtsova, sister of the three Zubov brothers who would be the future murderers, while at her back stood her “friend,” English Ambassador Sir Charles Whitworth. Lopukhin testifies that the participants in the murder received two million pounds in English gold through Zherebtsova. The Tsar’s treaty with Napoleon for a march on India, which would have undermined British colonial power, was his death sentence. The conspirators openly declared that the interests of England were dearer to them than the interests of Russia.

By March 1801 the conspirators’ exacerbation reached a high point, and they decided to commit regicide. Tsar Paul I was brutally murdered in the night of 11th to 12th March 1801. Napoleon commented on the event thus: “Without the death of Tsar Paul, England would have been lost.”

The prophecy of the clairvoyant monk Abel, which he personally told to Emperor Paul, fully came to pass: “Your reign will be brief, and I, a sinner, can see your violent end. On St. Sophronius of Jerusalem you shall receive a martyric death from unfaithful servants, and you shall be suffocated in your bedroom by villains whom your are warming at your royal bosom… On Passion Saturday you shall be buried… They, these villains, trying to justify their great sin of regicide, will proclaim you mad and will tarnish your good memory.” Count Palen, the primary conspirator and murderer of the Tsar, imprisoned monk Abel in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, supposedly for having disturbed the sovereign’s peace. The Tsar never knew about it.

The murderers’ end was horrible. Practically all of them suffered great physical and emotional torment before their deaths. One of them died from over-indulging in oysters, while the three main ones, who had spread rumors of the Tsar’s madness, went mad themselves. The Emperor’s primary murderer Palen lost his sanity and ended up eating his own wastes. In such a manner the Lord punished these cohorts of Antichrist, who had dared shed the blood of God’s anointed one.

The venerable Abel’s prophecy ended with the following words: “But the Russian people, with their sensitive soul, will understand and appreciate you, and will carry their sorrows to your tomb, asking for your intercession and for the mollification of cruel and unjust hearts.” This part of Abel’s prophecy also came to pass. St. John of Shanghai writes: “When Paul I was murdered, the people knew nothing about it, but after they found out, for many years they brought commiseration and prayers to his tomb.”

After Paul I’s death the people really did not forget their Tsar-benefactor: candles burned constantly at his tomb, fresh flowers lay on it, while the common people brought their entreaties, asking for his heavenly intercession. In the Mikhaylov palace a church was built on the site of the bedroom in which he was martyred, and a holy altar placed on the very spot of the murder.

Parenthetically, monk Abel also foretold to Emperor Paul the future fate of Russia and its last emperor. At Emperor Paul’s request monk Abel wrote down his prophecy, while the Tsar sealed the letter and wrote on the envelope right under the seal: “To be opened by our descendant on the 100th anniversary of my death.”

In fulfillment of this testament, on 11 March 1901 Tsar Nicholas II opened the envelope after a liturgy served in the Gatchina palace and read the prophecy concerning his fate and the fate of Russia. He never said anything to anyone about this letter, but afterwards he began to fear the year 1918 and always said that that year would be fatal for him and for the entire dynasty.

Prince Zhevakhov wrote in his memoirs: “The Church’s attitude towards Emperor Paul was such, that only the revolution of 1917 interfered with the process of his canonization; however, in the minds of the Russian people, Emperor Paul I has long been numbered among the saints. Wondrous signs of God’s benevolence towards the righteous Tsar, manifested by the Lord’s providence at the Tsar’s tomb, not only attracted crowds of the faithful to the Peter-and-Paul Cathedral before the revolution, but prompted the clergy of the Cathedral to publish an entire tome describing the great miracles pouring out upon the faithful through prayers to the righteous Emperor Paul I.”

In our times, when there are very few people possessed of independence of mind and sobriety of thought, it would be useful to write an unbiased sketch of the personality and the life’s work of the prematurely perished monarch. The life and the deeds of Emperor Paul should be worthily evaluated by the Church in acknowledging his sanctity and finalizing the process of his canonization among the martyrs of the Russian Church, which was interrupted by the godless revolution. As one writer said, in the brief period of his reign Tsar Paul “taught the whole of Russia the fear of God.” And nowadays the radiant image of God’s anointed one should disperse the darkness that has enveloped the Russian people.

May the Lord have mercy upon us through the prayers of this royal passion-bearer!