Trasy pieszych pielgrzymek z Warszawy na Jasną Górę

Pilgrimage Routes from Warsaw to Częstochowa

Summary: Movement along a road, the changing countryside, churches and cultural monuments, excitement and adventure, inspiration, fatigue and joy are all things that are encountered by pilgrims, that is people who for religious reasons set off in a group for a particular religious shrine. Already by the 15th centuryJasna Góra (Clarus Mons) at Częstochowa was the major focal point in Poland for pilgrimage, and hence not surprisingly there is an abundance of travel accounts of the roads to Częstochowa. There were already well-defined pilgrimage routes from the region of Mazovia, on the plains of Central Poland, to Jasna Góra by the 17th century. Animportant one was the north-south trading road from Cracow via Lelów, Częstochowa, Piotrków, and Rawa to Warsaw, about which there is a good store of information available in accounts by pilgrims. The earliest of these is the 1623 brochure entitled Droga częstochowska [The Częstochowa Road] by Father Zakrzewski, the first printed information on the subject. More information is to be found in the descriptions of the journeys to Częstochowa by the Polish kings (such as King John III Sobieski) and princes of the Church, whose starting point would often be Warsaw. A full description of the pilgrimage route has been left by the early twentieth-century novelist, Władysław Reymont, in a report entitled Pielgrzymka do Jasnej Góry [A Pilgrimnage to Jasna Góra]. He made the passage in 1894 as a participant in a pilgrimage along the traditional route of the Warsaw Pedestrian Pilgrimage which sets off from the Pauline Church and has continued essentially unchanged ever since its origins in 1711 down to modern times. Pilgrims who covered the distance on foot would return on foot too, but sometimes they would choose another pilgrimage route for the return journey. Itineraries used, and still continue to be determined by the places of religious worship, and monuments of national heritage passed on the way, the traditional points on the route, and for convenience of organisation. Nowadays there are seven major pilgrimages which set off every year from Warsaw to Częstochowa, each comprising a marching column of over ten thousand. Each of these events has its own traditions and customs. They also have their own routes which often overlap on particular stretches. As many as five of these major pilgrimages set out from Warsaw for the Feast of the Assumption (August 15th) at Jasna Góra, and they join up into a group several hundred thousand strong outside the gates of the Monastery at Częstochowa.

Peregrinus Cracoviensis, 1996, z.4, s. 243-256.

Instytut Geografii i Gospodarki Przestrzennej UJ

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