THE CLAIRVOYANT MONK
A soft light was diffused throughout the hall. In the rays of the
setting sun, it seemed that the biblical motifs upon the Gobelin
tapestries embroidered with gold and silver were springing to
life. The the lines on the splendid Guarengi parquet floor
gleamed in their elegance. Quietude and solemnity reigned all
about.
The fixed gaze of Emperor Paul Petrovich was met by the meek eyes of
Monk Avel, who stood before him. Reflected in them, as though in
a mirror, were love, peace and joy.
The Emperor developed an immediate liking for this mysterious monk,
veiled in humility, fasting and prayer. Word of his clairvoyance
was already long-since widespread. Both simple folk and renowned
grandees would go to his kellia at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, and none
would depart without consolation and prophetic advice. Also known
to Emperor Paul Petrovich was the fact that Avel had correctly foretold
the day of the repose of his Most-August Mother, the Sovereign-Lady
Empress Catherine Alexeyevna, now reposed in God. And of
yesterday, when talk touched upon Avel the Seer, and His Majesty had
deigned to command resolutely that on the morrow he be brought to the
Gatchina Palace, in which the Court was present.
Smiling tenderly, Emperor Paul Petrovich turned kindly toward Avel the
monk with a question about how long ago he had been shorn and in what
monasteries he had been.
“Honourable father!” the Emperor exclaimed. “They say concerning
thee, and I myself can see it, that the grace of God abides upon thee
in visible form. What shalt thou say concerning my reign and my
destiny? What dost thou see with thine clairvoyant eyes
concerning my Lineage in the obscurity of the ages and about the
Russian Realm? Name off my successors on the Russian Throne;
foretell their fate, as well.”
“Ho, Batiushka-Tsar!” Avel shook his head. “Why dost thou force
me to foretell sadness for thineself? Brief will be thy reign,
and I, a sinner, see thy vicious end. Upon the Feastday of
Sofrony of Jerusalem shalt thou be martyred by thy faithless servants;
in thy bedchamber shalt thou be suffocated by the evil-doers, whom thou
dost warm upon thy royal breast. On Passion Saturday shall they
bury thee… They, these evil-doers, attempting to justify their
great sin of regicide, will proclaim thee to have been mad, they will
defame thy goodly memory… But the Russian nation will understand
and value thee with its righteous soul and will bear its sorrows to thy
tomb, beseeching thine intercession and the softening of unrighteous
and cruel hearts. The number of thine years is likened to the
count of the letters of the utterance upon the pediment of thy palace,
in which truly is also to be found the covenant concerning thy Royal
House: “It behooveth this house to be like unto the stronghold of the
Lord for length of days”…
“Concerning that, thou art right,” Emperor Paul Petrovich
exclaimed. “I received this motto in an unique revelation, along
with the command to erect a Cathedral dedicated to the Holy
Archistrategos Michael, where the Mikhailovskii palace is currently
built. And I dedicated both the palace and the church to the
leader of the heavenly Host”…
I see in it thy premature tomb, O Right-believing Gosudar
[Sovereign]. And it shall not be the residence of thy
descendants, as thou thinkest. Concerning the fate of the Russian
Realm, three fierce yokes were revealed to me in prayer: that of the
Tatars, that of the Poles -- and one yet to come, that of the Jews”.
[NOTE:
Folk poetry did not exclude the actions of
these forces even during the period of the Time of Troubles at the
beginning of the XVII-th century. Addressing the men Nizhnii
Novgorod, Kuz’ma Minin had said:
“Let
us liberate Mother Moscow from the iniquitous Jews,
From the iniquitous Jews and the evil
Poles!” ]
“What? Holy Rus’ under a Jewish yoke? May it never be so!”
Paul Petrovich frowned angrily. “Thou art expounding nonsense, O
black-robed monk”…
“But where are the Tatars, Your Imperial Majesty? Where are the
Poles? And the same will befall the Jewish yoke. Do not
grieve thineself over it, Batiushka-Tsar: the Christ-killers will get
theirs”…
“What awaits my successor, Tsesarevich Alexander?”
“During his reign the Frenchman will burn Moscow, and he will take
Paris away from him and will be called Blessed. But the royal
crown will seem heavy for him, and for the podvig of royal service, he
will substitute the podvig of fasting and prayer, and he will be
accounted righteous in the sight of God”…
“And who will succeed Emperor Alexander?”
“Thy son, Nicholas”…
“What? Alexander shall have no son. Then, Tsesarevich
Constantine”…
“Constantine shall not desire to reign, recalling thy fate… The
beginning of the reign of thy son Nicholas will start with a Voltairian
rebellion, and this will be an evil seed, a pernicious seed for Russia,
were it not for God’s grace overshadowing Russia. A hundred years
after that the Domicile of the Most-holy Bogoroditsa will become
destitute; the Russian Realm will become the abomination of desolation”.
“Who will sit upon the Throne of Russia after my son Nicholas?”
“Thy grandson, Alexander the Second, foreseen to be called the
‘Tsar-Liberator’. He will fulfill thine intention – freeing the
peasants, and later he shall vanquish the Turks, and also give the
Slavs freedom from the infidel yoke. The Jews will not forgive
him his great acts and will begin to hunt him down. They will
murder him on a clear day, in the capital city, faithfully subject to
him, by the hands of renegades. Like unto thineself, he has seal
the podvig of his service with his royal blood”…
“Is it then that the Jewish yoke that thou hast foretold shall begin?”
“Not yet. The Tsar-Liberator shall be succeeded by the
Tsar-Peacemaker, his son, and Thy grandson, Alexander the Third.
Glorious will his reign be. He will subdue accursed sedition, and
establish peace and order”.
“To whom shall he pass on the royal heritage?”
“To Nicholas the Second – the Holy Tsar, like unto Job the
Much-suffering. He will exchange the royal diadem for a crown of
thorns; he shall be betrayed by his own people, much as the Son of God
once was. There shall be a war, a great war, a world war…
Men will fly in the air like birds; they will swim beneath the waters
like fish; they will begin to annihilate one another with
foetid-smelling brimstone. Treachery will increase and
multiply. On the eve of victory, the Royal Throne will fall and
tears shall quench the thirst of the damp earth. A muzhik with an
axe will seize power in his madness and a truly Egyptian plague will
set in”… Avel the Seer began to sob bitterly and through his
tears he quietly continued:
“Later, the Jew shall flay the Russian Land with a scorpion, looting
its Hallows, shutting down the Churches of God, executing the best
people of Russia. This is by God’s allowance, it is the wrath of
the Lord for Russia’s rejection of the Holy Tsar. The Scriptures
testify concerning Him. The Nineteenth, Twentieth and Ninetieth
Psalms have revealed his entire destiny to me.
“‘Now have I come to know that the Lord hath saved His Christ; He shall
hear Him from His Holy Heaven, strong is the right hand of His
salvation’.
“‘Great is His glory through Thy salvation, splendour and majesty dost
Thou place upon him’.
“‘I shall be with him in tribulation; I shall rescue him and glorify
him; length of days shall I grant him; and I shall show him My
salvation’. (Ps. 19, 7; 20, 6; 90, 15-16)
“Abiding in the support of the Almighty, He shall be seated upon the
Throne of Glory. And His royal brother is he concerning whom it
was revealed to the Prophet Daniel: ‘And there shall arise in that day
Michael, the great prince, who standeth for the sons of thy people’…
(Dan. 12, 1)
“Russia’s hopes will be realized. The Orthodox Cross will gleam
upon [the Cathedral of Ste.] Sophia, in Tsargrad [Constantinople]; Holy
Rus’ shall be filled with the smoke of incense and with prayer, and
shall blossom like unto an heavenly lily”…
Emperor Paul Petrovich became lost in profound thought. Avel
stood motionless. Silent, invisible bonds passed between the
Monarch and the Monk. Emperor Paul Petrovich lifted up his head,
and in his eyes, fixed upon the distance, as though through a veil of
what was to come, profound royal emotions were reflected.
“Thou sayest that the Jewish yoke shall overhang my Russia in about a
hundred years. My grandfather, Peter the Great, told me the same
thing about my fate as didst thou. And I consider it to be a good
thing to forewarn my descendant, Nicholas the Second, of all that thou
hast foretold to me concerning him, in order that the Book of Judgments
might be opened up to him. That my great-grandson might be made
knowledgeable with regards to his way of the cross and the glory of his
passion and long-suffering…
“Record, O venerable father, all that thou hast spoken; put it all down
in writing, and I shall place thy prophecy in a special box and affix
my seal thereunto; and thy writing shall be preserved involate here, in
the cabinet of my Gatchina palace. Go, Avel, and pray unceasingly
in thy kellia -- for me, for my Descenants, and for the good estate of
our Realm”.
And, having placed Avel’s writing in an envelope, he deigned to
inscribe upon it the following:
“To be opened by Our Descendant on the centennial date of My demise”.
On 11 March 1901, on the centennial anniversary of the martyric end of
his regnant great-grandfather, Emperor Paul Petrovich of Blessed
Memory, following a Liturgy for the repose of his soul in the
Peter-Paul Cathedral by his sepulchre, Sovereign Emperor Nicholas
Alexandrovich, accompanied by the Minister of the Imperial Court,
Adjutant-General Baron Frederichs (soon endowed with the title of
Count) and other personages of the [Royal] Suite, deigned to arrive at
the Gatchina Palace in order to carry out the will of his forebear,
reposed in God.
The panikhida was extremely
touching. The Peter-Paul Cathedral was filled with
worshippers. It was not only the embroidery of the uniforms that
glittered there; it was not only dignitaries who were present
there. There was a plenitude of crude linen peasant shirts and
simple kerchiefs present, and the sepulchre of Emperor Paul Petrovich
was buried in candles and live flowers. These candles, these
flowers were from those believing in the miraculous help and
intercession of the reposed Tsar for his descendants and for the entire
Russian nation. People could see for themselves the fulfillment
of Avel the Seer’s prophecy, that the nation would uniquely honour the
memory of the Tsar-Martyr and will flow to His Sepulchre, imploring his
intercession and asking for the softening of the hearts of
The Sovereign Emperor opened the box and several times re-read the
account of Avel the Seer concerning his fate and that of Russia.
He already knew his own thorn-filled faith; knew that it was not for
naught that he had been born on the feastday of Job the
Much-suffering. He knew how much he would be forced to bear upon
his royal shoulders; knew of the approaching bloody wars, troubles and
great upheavals of the Russian State. His heart sensed also that
accursed black year when he would be deceived, betrayed and abandoned
by all…
Translated
into English by G. Spruksts from the Russian text of "Вещий инок" {"Veschii inok") ["The Clairvoyant Monk"] by
"Kiribeyevich" (the nom de plume
of Peter Nikolayevich Shabel'skii-Bork, 1896-1952). English
language translation copyright © 2005 by The St. Stefan Of Perm'
Guild, The Russian Cultural Heritage Society, and the Translator.
All rights reserved.