St. Paul ( or Paulus) is the title of an oratorio by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy at the age of thirty Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, known generally as Felix Mendelssohn (February 3, 1809 – November 4, 1847) was a German composer of Jewish parentage of the early Romantic period. ...

St. Paul premiered on May 22, 1836 at the Lower Rhine MusicFestival in Dusseldorf. Numerous performances followed in England, Germany,Switzerland, Denmark, Holland, Poland, Russia, and the United States (in Bostonin 1837, New York in 1838, and in Baltimore in 1839).

"Mendelssohn wanted to write a work with spiritual substance in a time when the communal focus had shifted from the church to the concert hall. To Mendelssohn and to many of his contemporaries, however, the concert hall was more than a place of entertainment; it was a platform where profound ideas and concepts were shared and where religious experiences were desired. Mendelssohn's intent in writing St. Paul was to provide an edifying experience by creating an intense and realistic representation of Paul's life and drawing spiritual applications."

Dr. Siegwart Reichwald Professor of Musicology, Palm Beach Atlantic University Author of "The Musical Genesis of Felix Mendelssohn's Paulus"

It was Mendelssohn's most popular work during his lifetime.