Paul Bryantsev

Holy Hieromartyr Paul Bryantsev, a priest, was born on 23 October 1889 in the village of Pomyalovo in the Novaya Ladoga district of Saint Petersburg province, in the family of the psalmist Alexei Pavlovich Bryantsev and Maria Nikolaevna. His father died in 1902, and the children were admitted to school at the state's expense. Paul finished the Alexander Nevsky spiritual school, then the Saint Petersburg seminary in 1911, and was a teacher. On 18 July 1914 he was called up; on 11 November he was wounded near Lovich, and for his courage received the silver medal on the ribbon of Saint George. On 6 June 1916 he was found unfit because of the wound. In hospital he met his future wife, the nurse Evdokia Sviridova, who knew Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna and asked her to help him. The grand duchess asked the rector of Petrograd University to admit him, since he was lame from the wound and could no longer be a primary school teacher. In 1916 he was accepted in the history and philology faculty.

In 1918 he was sent as a teacher to a labour school. On 3 May 1919 Metropolitan Veniamin of Petrograd ordained him deacon for the Holy Trinity church in Pomyalovo, and in 1921 priest; he served in the village of Memino. On 9 December 1933 he was arrested with a group of priests and laymen from the Volkhov and Kirishi districts. In searches, poems he had written, read and copied by priests, were found. Under pressure he admitted guilt, and that he had written the poems and spread them. On 26 February 1934 an OGPU troika sentenced him to five years in the camp of Sevvostlag, thousands of kilometres away. From there he wrote to his family: he was weak, did guard duty twelve hours a day, and had fallen ill with scurvy. In January 1936 he wrote that he was living as at a railway station, waiting to be sent home. On 1 January 1937 he wrote to his daughter, urging her not to be discouraged by troubles and to believe in a better future.

In February 1938 a new case was started in the camp against him, joined to that of Archbishop Onuphrius, Bishop Anthony and other priests. On 27 February he was interrogated and asked to name the members of a counter-⁠revolutionary organization; taught by the bitter experience of the first investigation and of the camp, he said he knew nothing. On 17 March 1938 he was sentenced to death, with others, but died before the sentence was carried out, on 13 May 1938, and was buried in an unknown place.

The Azbyka page includes him in a synaxis of holy martyrs of the Church of Kursk, among them Archbishop Onuphrius Gagaliuk, Bishop Anthony Pankeev and other priests. Saint Paul is commemorated on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 1 June, on 11 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Saint Petersburg and on 1 August in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kursk, in the new style.