Light-Filled Mountains: Pilgrimage Sites & Shrines in Poland

kalwaria-zebrzydowska-forum-0515527485-2.jpg, default, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska photo: Robert Neumann / Forum, Light-Filled Mountains: Pilgrimage Sites & Shrines in Poland

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The development of Catholicism in Poland over the centuries since the baptism of the country’s first ruler Mieszko I in 966, has left an imprint of over 400 devotion sites and shrines across the country. The most popular Polish shrines attract millions of pilgrims each year from Poland and abroad. Culture.pl looks at a few of the most notable and the histories behind them.

Jasna Góra: The light-filled mountain & the Black Madonna of Częstochowa

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Icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Częstochowa, photo: Marek Maruszak / Forum

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Driving through Poland in the summer months of July and August – the height of the country’s pilgrimage season – it is almost impossible not to pass at least one sizeable group of Catholic pilgrims walking along the side of the road heartily singing and chanting Catholic prayers as they make their way to the country’s most popular pilgrimage site, the Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa at Jasna Góra.

Over 120,000 faithful journey hundreds of kilometres by foot from all corners of Poland to reach the shrine in time for the church Feast days of the Assumption of Mary on the 15thAugust and the Feast of Our Lady of Częstochowa on the 26th August.

Taking into account year-round pilgrims paying a visit to the site by all forms of transport, around 4 million visit Jasna Góra each year (2019 c.a. 4.4 million), making it Europe’s second most visited site of Catholic devotion after Lourdes in France.

The main draw is the miraculous painting of Our Lady of Częstochowa, also known as the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, who, from the beginning, was credited with her intercession in many miracles. Jasna Góra was already a popular pilgrimage site in the 15th century, as evidenced by a written note from medieval chronicler Jan Długosz from 1480, which reads:

Text

From all of Poland and neighbouring countries, namely, Silesia, Moravia, Prussia, and Hungary, for the solemnity of Holy Mary – whose rare and devotional painting is here – a pious people come for amazing miracles that our Lady and Advocate has done here.

Author

Trans. BK

By this time, a chapel had already been built for the icon by King Jagiełło and his wife Jadwiga (Saint Hedwig), and a restoration of the image was undertaken by the royal couple in Kraków after it was desecrated in 1430 by pre-Reformation reformers who attacked the monastery and slashed the Virgin Mary’s face with a sword. The original scars can still be seen on the Black Madonna’s cheek in memory of the attack and make the image a potent symbol of suffering.

Known for her miracles, perhaps the most famous attributed to the icon is the retreat of Swedish enemy troops who surrounded the monastery on Jasna Góra in a 40-day siege as they prepared to invade Częstochowa during the Deluge in 1655. The enemy miraculously retreated after Polish troops prayed fervently before the image.

The icon was first brought to Poland by King Władysław (King Ladislas) in 1382. Władysław built the monastery on the hill overlooking Częstochowa for the monks of Saint Paul after an apparent visitation from the Virgin Mary, who told him she wanted to stay at the location. A great deal of mystery still remains about the painting’s origins prior to that moment, though some believe there to be a direct link as far back as the lifetime of Jesus and Mary.

According to these pious legends, the image was painted by Saint Luke the Evangelist during the lifetime of the Virgin Mary, with wood from a table top used by the holy family for their daily meals. It is believed the icon was subsequently discovered by Saint Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, who was a collector of relics from the Holy Land and brought by her to Constantinople in the 4th century. Then, at some point between the 9th and 10th centuries, it came to reside in the town of Belz, in Red Ruthenia to the north of Lviv.

Whatever the real story of its origins, a great deal of mysticism and an unrelentingly strong devotion surrounds Jasna Góra (which directly translates as the ‘luminous’ mountain or ‘light-filled mountain’) and Our Lady of Częstochowa as a pilgrimage site. A large number of volumes are filled each year with handwritten testimonies of faithful who credit miracles that have occurred in their lives to prayer before her image.

By far Poland’s most famous and popular pilgrimage site, its fame extends beyond the country’s borders, with pilgrims of 76 nationalities having paid a visit to the site in 2019 and several churches devoted to her outside of Poland.

Święty Krzyż: Shrine of the Holy Cross, Łysa Góra

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Święty Krzyż, photo: Henryk Przondziono / Forum

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Whilst Jasna Góra can claim to be Poland’s most often visited pilgrimage site, Swięty Krzyż takes the title of Poland’s oldest.

Situated in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains (Holy Cross Mountains National Park), a Benedictine monastery was documented on the site in the 11th century. Some pious legends suggest an even earlier religious connection and identify the site as the location of the first Christian church in Poland, erected under the initiative of Princess Dobrawa (Doubravka of Bohemia), wife of Poland’s first ruler, Mieszko I.

As its name suggests, the pilgrimage site is connected to the relics of the wood of the holy cross on which Jesus was crucified. According to legend, the relics were gifted to the monks of the monastery by Saint Emeric of Hungary.

At the time a prince, Saint Emeric was invited to Poland on a hunting expedition by Boleslaw I, Poland’s first crowned king. Emeric was lost in the forest when he encountered a deer with a shining cross between its antlers, and not long afterwards an angelic vision which promised to save him in exchange for his most treasured possession, a relic of the holy cross, which Emeric wore. Supposedly led to safety by the angel to the Benedictine monastery, where he was taken care of, Emeric remembered the angel’s words and left the relic of the holy cross at the site.

According to medieval chronicler Jan Długosz, afterwards, King Boleslaw I built a worthy church and monastery complex on the hill to house the relics.

The site achieved particular popularity as a pilgrimage site during the reign of King Wladyslaw Jagiełło of the Jagiellonian dynasty in the 14th century, when the king visited the monastery and relics before his baptism and coronation. Jagiełło would continue to make pilgrimages to the site before major journeys out of the country. The site was also a popular pilgrimage for several subsequent kings.

Today, the site is home to a late baroque basilica with an interior in the classicist style, which was erected in the late-18th^th century, though the former old Benedictine monastery still stands.

Gietrzwałd: The Lourdes of Poland

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Gietrzwałd, photo: Mieczysław Włodarski / East News

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The red-brick cathedral shrine in Gietrzwałd in northern Poland is the location of Poland’s only Marian apparition to have officially been approved by the Catholic Church.

Between 27June and 16 September 1877, the Virgin Mary appeared to two teenage girls daily with a plea to pray the rosary. Once the news of the apparitions began to spread, they attracted hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Gietrzwałd.

A year after the apparitions, the church in Gietrzwałd was extended, with neo-gothic elements fused together with existing gothic elements to create the elevation that can currently be seen today.

As a result of the Marian apparitions and some parallels between them and the earlier apparitions at Lourdes, Gietrzwałd is sometimes colloquially referred to as ‘the Lourdes of Poland’, though it was already a pilgrimage site in the mid-16^th century due to the veneration of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Gietrzwałd, whose image was crowned by Primate Stefan Wyszyński in 1967.

The apparitions were approved by the Catholic Church on the centenary of their occurrence in 1977, and a pilgrims’ house was built.

Old Licheń: The Polish Vatican

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Stary Licheń, photo: M. Czasnojć / Forum

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The five-nave basilica crowned with a 45-metre-high gold dome in Stary Licheń (Old Licheń) makes it one of the most visually imposing of all of Poland’s pilgrimage sites. The basilica forms part of the Marian Shrine built around the miraculous icon of Our Lady of Sorrows, Queen of Poland.

With a design inspired by Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica, the two-story basilica in Old Licheń, which includes a 140m tower, as well as one of Europe’s largest organs, is Poland’s largest Catholic place of worship, the 7th largest in Europe, and 11th largest in the world.

Located near Konin in central Poland, the basilica has space for around 7,500 worshippers and together with outdoor areas of the entire sanctuary complex, the whole site has an ability to welcome over 100,000 pilgrims, as it did for the visit of Polish Pope, Saint John Paul II, who visited to bless it in 1999.

Following 10 years of construction, the basilica was finally completed in 2004 with the miraculous painting of Our Lady of Sorrows, Queen of Poland, placed in its main altar.

The history of the formation of the shrine dates back to the mid-19th century and the revelations delivered by the Virgin Mary to shepherd Mikołaj Sikatka. The revelations occurred in 1850 in the Grąbliński Forest, 2km from Licheń, in front a painting of her image, which was hanging on a pine tree. In the revelations to Sikatka, the Virgin Mary called for prayer, penance, and people to change their way of life. She also warned of the upcoming cholera epidemic, which occurred in 1852, during which she was said to have performed miracles.

The Virgin Mary also asked for her image to be moved to a more prominent place, which was granted in 1852, when the image was moved to the parish church of Saint Dorothy in Licheń, where it remained for 150 years. The image was crowned by papal diadems in 1967, before it was finally placed in the main altar of the newly built Basilica of Old Licheń in 2006.

According to oral tradition, even before Sikatka’s apparitions, the exact figure of the Virgin Mary depicted in the image is believed to have appeared to Polish soldier Tomasz Kłossowski when praying while injured in the Battle of Leipzig. Promising to save him, she also asked him to find the exact picture of her as she had appeared to him and place it near his home. Years later, Kłossowski is said to have found the exact same image of her from his vision in a chapel near Częstochowa, and after obtaining permission to take it home, placed it on a pine tree in the Grąblin Forest. It was there that the image was later the site of apparitions to Sikatka. Those apparitions were investigated by the local church and ultimately led to the development of the shrine in her name.

Today, Old Licheń is among Poland’s most popular pilgrimage sites, receiving visits from around 1.5 million pilgrims each year.

Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: The Polish Jerusalem

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The procession of the Dormition of the Mother of God in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, photo: Piotr Tumidajski / Forum

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The only one of Poland’s pilgrimage sites to be a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site, a status it received in 1999, the sanctuary and landscape and pilgrimage park of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska near Kraków is comprised of over 40 baroque churches and chapels. The majority were built by the governor of Kraków, Mikołaj Zebrzydowski, and his family in the 17th century and modelled on a 1585 map of Jerusalem.

The pilgrimage site is part of a trend of constructing Calvaries; that is, stations of the cross constructed in the grounds of churches or monasteries, usually in hilly and picturesque landscapes spatially similar to the layout of buildings in Jerusalem. Such construction became popular in 17th century Europe, and Kalwaria Zebrzydowska was the first calvary to be constructed in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The shrine is both a Marian sanctuary and one dedicated to devotion of Christ’s Passion. This makes it a particularly popular location for pilgrims in the Holy Week leading up to Easter, when an elaborate Passion Play is performed.

Situated in the hills and forests in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, the site’s most prominent building is the St Mary’ Basilica. The basilica was the first building to be built with the help of Italian and Dutch architects and houses the miraculous icon of Our Lady of Kalwaria.

A popular pilgrimage site receiving over 1 million pilgrims a year, Kalwaria Zebrzydowska is also one of the pilgrimage sites most closely connected to the life of John Paul II. He travelled there frequently during childhood and as a young adult, visiting the icon of Our Lady of Kalwaria and participating in a pilgrimage with his father and brother after the death of his mother. He and his father returned after the death of his brother. He would come to visit it many more times as a priest and Archbishop of Kraków.

Wąwolnica: The resort of last hope & the most miracles in Poland

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Wąwolnica, photo: Marek Bazak / East News

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Located near the city of Lublin, the over 700-year-old shrine in the town of Wąwolnica houses the gothic wooden sculpture of Our Lady of Kębło. The shrine dates back to written accounts of apparitions of the Virgin Mary during the Tatar invasion of the town of Kębło in 1278, when the Virgin Mary’s appearance was believed to have saved the lives of Polish prisoners and contributed to the Polish defeat of the Tatars in a battle nearby.

According to parish records, the Tatars set up camp in Kębło to collect stolen goods and take prisoners. They put a stolen statue of the Virgin Mary on a huge boulder to mock it in front of the prisoners who prayed before her. When the Tatars in Kębło received the news that their compatriots had been defeated in a battle in Opole, they prepared to flee with their goods and prisoners. At that moment, they reportedly saw the Virgin Mary figure rise into the air surrounded by light and hang above them. Frightened, they abandoned the stolen goods and Polish prisoners and fled.

The Polish prisoners had little doubt that the Virgin Mary had helped to restore their freedom. When news spread of the apparitions, the location quickly became the site of pilgrimages, leading the local landowner, Otto Jastrzębczyk, under whose command the Poles had won a victory over the Tatars, to build a wooden church in which the figure was placed.

The figure in the chapel today dates from the 15th century, as the original was destroyed by fire. In 1700, the figure was moved to the parish church in Wąwolnica because the existing church was falling apart and couldn’t satisfy the large number of pilgrims regularly coming to see the statue. The church was later rebuilt in its current form between 1907 and 1914. It was elevated to the rank of a minor basilica by Pope John Paul II in 2001.

In recognition of the many centuries of worship and the miracles attributed to her intercession, the statue of Our Lady of Kębło received her coronation with papal diadems on the 700th anniversary of the apparitions in 1978. Simultaneously with the coronation, a golden book was set up for people to write down testimonies of miracles that had happened after prayer to Our Lady of Kębło.

The shrine is particularly visited in relation to ill health and as a last resort when all other hope is lost. Many seemingly medically impossible recoveries have been, and continue to be, reported by faithful after visits to the shrine. One visiting priest from Jasna Góra stated that the shrine regularly had more reported miracles than even Jasna Góra.

Łagiewniki: A 20^th-century shrine of architectural contrasts

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Łagiewniki, photo: Monkpress / East News

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A list of Poland’s most significant Catholic shrines wouldn’t be complete without mention of Łagiewniki and the Shrine of Divine Mercy, known worldwide for its connection with Sister Faustyna Kowalska of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Kowalska’s visions of the Christ of Divine Mercy led to the miraculous Divine Mercy Painting, which is located on the site and copies of which have been adopted by churches across the world as a form of Catholic devotion.

In 1931, Sister Faustyna had a vision of the Christ of Divine Mercy. Based on her descriptions, her vision was recreated by painters in the 1930s and 1940s. The last of these painted impressions was placed in Łagiewniki and became a pilgrimage site after the visions became known, and the image has been credited with many miracles since then.

The entire pilgrimage site at Łagiewniki is composed of two architecturally distinct parts. The first is the neo-Gothic convent buildings of the sisters, which house the chapel that contains the 1944 Divine Mercy Painting and below it, relics of Sister Faustyna. The second is a modern basilica in an elliptical shape with a 77-metre-high viewing tower, which makes the building resemble a boat. Sister Faustyna’s remains were moved to the basilica and are now buried there.

Built between 1999 and 2002, the basilica was a result of the growing popularity of Łagiewniki as a pilgrimage site. It opened to pilgrims for the first time after the Second World War and gradually became more popular in the decades that followed. It was often visited by Karol Wojtyła (Saint John Paul II before he became Pope).

It also gained further interest after the 1981 publication of Sister Faustyna’s diary. This interest only grew after Pope John Paul II publicly referred to it as the ‘capital’ of the cult of Divine Mercy in 1985 and Sister Faustyna was canonised in 2000.

A site of continually growing popularity with pilgrims, it has received visits from three Popes: John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.

_{Written by Blanka Konopka, Nov 2021}

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