Jasna Góra is the largest pilgrimage destination in Poland, and its most visible form is the multi-day march on foot. People walk from all over the country, including the Silesian Voivodeship, and almost all the groups want to reach the monastery before the Marian feasts in August. This text tells of the beginnings of this tradition, of the Way of the Cross beneath the monastery walls and of the places in Częstochowa that have served pilgrims for centuries. We write about the image itself in the text “The Jasna Góra image: what is known and what is legend”, and about the defence of 1655 in the text on the fortifications and the siege.

The Warsaw pilgrimage: more than three hundred years of marching

The most famous walking pilgrimage to Jasna Góra is the Warsaw Walking Pilgrimage. It sets out every year on 6 August from the Church of the Holy Spirit in Warsaw and enters Częstochowa on 14 August, on the eve of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The first one set out in 1711. According to the portal dzieje.pl, which draws on a PAP wire report, these were members of the Archconfraternity of the Five Wounds, active at the Pauline monastery, and the pilgrimage was a thanksgiving for the end of the typhus epidemic that had raged in the city since 1707. Other sources, by contrast, write of a plague epidemic and of the Craftsmen's Confraternity of the Five Wounds, so the kind of disease and the name of the confraternity differ depending on the source. The route is 248 km long and is in principle fixed, with changes caused by roadworks or organisational difficulties.

The history of this pilgrimage also has a tragic page. In 1792, according to dzieje.pl, Cossack troops in tsarist service murdered all the pilgrims. The place is commemorated by a monument over the victims' grave near the village of Krasice, which the groups visit on the seventh day of the march. In 1920, because of the situation on the approaches to Warsaw and the state of siege, the pilgrimage officially did not take place. The route was, however, walked even during the German occupation.

Older traditions and the longest routes

The Warsaw pilgrimage is not the oldest. The Jasna Góra Press Office regards the Pabianice pilgrimage as the oldest documented one, with an entry in the chronicles of the parish of St Matthew under the year 1468. The Sieradz pilgrimage is sometimes described as more than 400 years old, but the District Museum in Sieradz dates the first organised one to the middle of the 19th century, although earlier documents confirm the participation of pilgrims from Sieradz. The Jasna Góra chronicles also record an expedition of highlanders from the Żywiec region in 1611, but it is not known whether they took place regularly after that date.

Two pilgrimage peaks are set by feast days: the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 15 August and the feast of Our Lady of Częstochowa on 26 August. Groups set out from the end of July to the beginning of August, or in the second half of August. Among the longest routes are the Szczecin one, which according to Jasna Góra data is almost 650 km, and the Kashubian one from Hel, lasting 19 days and leading through five voivodeships, including Silesian.

A walking pilgrimage has a set order. Participants sign up to groups, receive pilgrim badges or cards, and the march is led by guide priests and by services: marshals, medical, quartermaster or music. The day is divided into stages with stops, for example every few kilometres, with Mass, prayer and an overnight stay. The rules of the Warsaw Walking Pilgrimage describe it as an act of religious penance and a “retreat on the road”.

The Way of the Cross beneath the monastery walls

On the hill pilgrims also have their own routes of prayer. In the monastery garden, in the hollow left by the fortress's former moats, 14 stations of the Way of the Cross were erected in 1900-1913 through the efforts of Fr Euzebiusz Rejman. The sculptural groups were cast in bronze to a design by Pius Weloński, who worked with Konstanty Laszczka, Hipolit Marczewski and Leonard Wasilkowski, and the granite pedestals were designed by Stefan Szyller. The garden was laid out at the beginning of the 20th century by the garden engineer Stefan Szczeciński. Construction therefore spanned a whole range of years, and there is no single date of consecration.

A Rosary Way was also created around the monastery: in 1989-2005, on the initiative of Fr Rufin Abramek, 20 stations with the mysteries of the Rosary were set up to a design by Wiktor Zin and Tomasz Ross. In the Chapel of Our Lady hangs a cycle of 18 paintings by Jerzy Duda-Gracz, called the Jasna Góra Golgotha, painted in 2000-2001: it comprises 14 stations of the Way of the Cross and four scenes after the Resurrection.

In Silesia similar calvaries can be visited without travelling to Częstochowa, for example the Panewniki Calvary in Katowice, with Way of the Cross chapels completed in 1953, or the Pszów Calvary, consecrated in 1929.

26 August 1956: the Jasna Góra Vows of the Nation

Among the most important events in the history of pilgrimage to Jasna Góra are the Jasna Góra Vows of the Nation. They were made on 26 August 1956 in the presence of an estimated one million faithful, on the tercentenary of the Lwów vows of King John Casimir of 1 April 1656. The text was written by Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński during his internment, and the vow was read out by Bishop Michał Klepacz, because the Primate could not attend.

Częstochowa, which serves the pilgrims

Around Jasna Góra there has been infrastructure for pilgrims for centuries. The former marketplace of the monastery settlement, Rynek Wieluński (Wieluń Market Square), was used for weekly horse fairs, and pilgrims' carts stopped on it; today it is a car park. The parks below Jasna Góra surround the monastery on the east side and, together with it, have had the status of Historic Monument since 1994.

At the western foot of the hill stands the Valley of Mercy, a Pallottine shrine set up on the site of a former brickworks, and in the districts of Częstochowa there are further shrines: the shrine of St Joseph in Raków and the shrine of the Blood of Christ in Grabówka. In the Beskids a similar role as a regional destination for walkers is played by the shrine in Szczyrk, described in the text on the four Marian shrines of Silesia.