In 1875, an anonymous article titled "Monk Abel the Foreteller" appeared in the journal "Russian Starina". It was after this that this curious historical character got into the company of all kinds of fortune tellers and soothsayers, and interest in his mysterious heritage has not faded away even today.
The prophecies of the mysterious monk
It is believed that this was "editorial" material presented by journalist and writer Mikhail Ivanovich Semevsky (1832-1892).
It is curious that the modern excitement around monastic divinations is also fueled by the "mysterious" disappearance of the "Semevsky documents", which, generally speaking, suggests a literary mystification. For example, Mikhail Ivanovich presents an extremely curious autobiography of Vasily Vasiliev, written in the third person - "The Life and Suffering of Father and Monk Abel." This document is more reminiscent of the stylization of monastic chronicles.
Following it, we learn that, having abandoned the parental family, the nineteen-year-old boy Vasily set off on a journey to "southern and western, and then eastern countries." His wanderings continued for almost a decade and ceased when he "finally, having come to the northernmost country, moved into the Valaam monastery." This is how the monk Adam appeared.
There, on an island in the middle of Lake Ladoga, remote from the world, the newly-minted novice overcame all sorts of temptations of the "dark spirits", and "the highest favor" came to him. From the confused, and in some places simply incomprehensible narration, one can only conclude that the monk, driven to a semi-swoon by constant "taming of the flesh", imagined himself to be a "Divine soothsayer."
According to him, the monk's "prophetic gift" took the form of whispering voices. So, he claimed that once during a prayer he was “taken up to heaven”, where angels read some books to him. In his subsequent prophecies, Abel always referred to the "Divine revelation" received from these books. Later, he clarified that he hears the voices of several angels, one of whom reads one book, the other the second, and the third commands what to do. In modern psychiatry, this would be called a case of classical schizophrenia …
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Catherine the Great
From the "Life …" we learn that led by "angelic voices" Adam soon left Balaam and for nine years "went around many countries and cities with the preaching of the word of God." Finally, led by voices, he entered the Volga monastery of Nicholas the Wonderworker near Kostroma, becoming Abel. The abbot of the monastery gave Vasily obedience: "to go to church and eat, and sing and read in them, and meanwhile write and compose and compose books." The voices in the monk's head did not stop, and soon they "dictated" the first "book, wise and wise." This "terribly terrifying" manuscript also contained some vague prophecies about the reigning Empress Catherine II. Modern interpreters of Abel's work prove that the monk predicted how and when the great ruler of Russia would die.
In St. Petersburg, rumors about a strange monk reached Catherine herself, who, allegedly having learned about the prediction of her own death, imprisoned Abel in the Shlisselburg fortress for life "to the death of her belly."
It should be noted here that in the documents cited by Semevsky there is not the slightest indication of the date of the death of Catherine II. Why is the main question of the investigation so dismissively passed over in silence? There can be only one answer: no specific prophecy with the days and hours of the Empress's death simply did not exist!
What else did the monk write about in his books, and for what, in fact, was he punished? Everything turns out to be elementary simple, and to the question: "How dare you say in your book, how would the third emperor fall from his wife?" - the monk humbly replied: "This is why I wrote that it is in the Apocalypse, and I mean the death of the overthrow from the throne, from which he was overthrown for his unrighteous deeds, about which I heard in infancy …" That is, we are not talking about mythical prophecies, but about illicit memories of the overthrow of Peter III as a result of the 1762 guards palace coup led by Catherine.
So, everything is clear: an attempt, even a mental one, through divination on the life of the empress is one thing, but slander (this is how any mention of a palace coup was perceived) is completely different. And monk Abel found himself "by royal grace" in a solitary cell of the Shlisselburg fortress.
On November 5, 1796, the Empress's maids of honor found her unconscious on the floor in her quarters … She died the next day, November 6, 1796, according to legend, in full accordance with the prophecy of Abel.
From mystery to mystery
On November 6, Catherine's son, Emperor Paul I, ascended the throne. The writings of Abel interested Paul, and the monk was immediately taken to him. The emperor, after the very first words of Abel, realized that he was a holy fool, and, according to a long-standing tradition, asked for blessings for himself and his home … Then Paul asked the “soothsayer” about his fate, but the voices were silent, and Vasily could not predict anything intelligible, despite the future the tragic death of the ruler.
The emperor favored the former monk, who did not predict any horrors for him. Paul ordered to send Abel to the Alexander Nevsky Lavra with the restoration of his monastic rank. After living in the Lavra for only one year, the soothsayer again moved to the Valaam Monastery. There he began writing the next book of prophecy.
Soon the manuscript came to the head of the secret chamber, General Makarov. When he recounted its content to the emperor, he immediately ordered to take Abel from Balaam and imprison him in a fortress … What caused Paul's disfavor? And what could Abel write?
Here we must remember that the future emperor grew up as a very nervous and superstitious child who believed in prophetic dreams and omens. Therefore, it is easy to imagine the mystical halo that surrounded the books of Abel in the eyes of Paul. In the vague writings of the monk, he saw some terrible signs of a tragic future.
Meanwhile, March 12, 1801 came. Emperor Paul was killed by conspirators, and his eldest son Alexander I came to the throne.
This time the soothsayer stayed free for one year and two months, having managed to write his third book. Its content is unknown, but supposedly there was a prediction that Moscow would be taken by enemies and burned … It turns out that somewhere at the turn of 1803, he predicted events that took place in real life only 10 years later! I must say that the fact of Abel's prediction of the invasion of Napoleon and the burning of Moscow long before the invasion of the French army is not confirmed by any authoritative historian, nor is it in the literature of that time.
The last lifetime prophecies of Abel include two fascinating historical secrets, as if anticipating the imprisonment of Abel in the Savior-Euthymius monastery.
We are talking about the death in November 1825 in Taganrog of Emperor Alexander I and subsequent events associated with the personality of the Siberian elder Fyodor Kuzmich. Here Abel is credited with the expected prophecy about the "life after death" of the emperor "in atonement for the sin of participation in the regicide of his father, Emperor Paul." The second prophecy is the prediction of the 1825 Decembrist uprising.
Of course, in reality, the prediction of such events could well serve as a pretext for the life-long imprisonment of the holy fool. However, what does historical science say about this? The personality of the Siberian elder Fyodor Kuzmich has not been compared for a long time with the image of the emperor Alexander who left to atone for the sins. After all, anthropological, graphological and even psychological examinations categorically deny the reality of this version.
The objections to the prediction of the 1825 uprising are no less significant. Here, all historical chronicles and eyewitness accounts unanimously emphasize a coincidence of random circumstances that came as a complete surprise to the authorities. How can this be compared with well-known prophecies, accurate to literally an hour?
Revolution and Nicholas the Bloody
The story about the testament of the monk Abel looks even more fabulous. Allegedly, there was a small hall in the Gatchina palace of Emperor Paul, where a locked and sealed casket with intricate decorations stood on a pedestal. It was prescribed to open it when the 100th anniversary of the death of Paul I.
On March 12, 1901, the lot to open the casket fell to Nicholas II. Together with his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, he left in high spirits for Gatchina. The royal couple returned in deep sadness and thoughtfulness. After that, the emperor began to mention the fatal date for him and the entire royal dynasty - 1918.
Here again, the real story does not fit in with the later legends, and this is confirmed by the authoritative research of the writer Mark Aldanov. Despite deep faith in the existence of soothsayers, Aldanov never managed to find a single reliable prophecy about the collapse of the Russian Empire.
So, did Vasily Vasiliev exist and did he have a prophetic gift? There is not a single mention of the "fortune-teller monk Abel" in the historical literature of that time, in the memoirs of contemporaries or in any documents. Moreover, the legend about the monk mentions the main casemates of the empire, but in their archives neither Vasily Vasilyev nor Abel is present. All contemporary publications are based on an 1875 article in the journal Russkaya Starina attributed to editor Semevsky. All investigations of the prophecies of Abel appeared much later than the predicted events, which is very typical for other "soothsayers". Historians believe that most of Abel's "predictions" were formed in the 1920s in émigré circles in Paris and Harbin. Then the texts began to actively replenish in the "uncensored" 90s of the last century, which continues to the present.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №24. Author: Oleg Fay
