At one solemn service Catherine II saw a woman fall to her knees before an icon of the Mother of God and throw a paper on the floor

At one solemn service Catherine II saw a woman fall to her knees before an icon of the Mother of God and throw a paper on the floor. When the paper was picked up, it turned out to be a complaint against the Empress, addressed to the Mother of God herself. In her letter to the Virgin Mary, a gentlewoman of slender means begged her, as sovereign of the heavens, to bring to reason the sovereign of the earth, who by her own oversight had plunged the writer into poverty. Having learnt the particulars of the whole affair, Catherine ordered the petitioner to be summoned, and when she was brought to the palace, the Empress acknowledged her mistake, pointing out that in this world only God is perfect. The noblewoman was given back her estate, and from Catherine personally she received a costly gift.

The incident is believed to have occurred in the Kazan Cathedral, that is, in the court church of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God, built in 1733, in which Catherine was both married and sworn in, and on whose site Paul I would conceive the building of the Kazan Cathedral, which is why this church too is sometimes called the Kazan Cathedral.

illustration: Catherine II on the steps of the Kazan Cathedral on the day of her accession, 28 June 1762. Unknown artist. Late 18th to first third of the 19th century