We left Łódź bright and early on the Monday morning to head to Krakow, but en route we stopped off at the monastery of Jasna Góra in Częstochowa.
For anyone reading this who doesn't know, there is a beautiful icon here of our Lady of Częstochowa. It's known as a Black Madonna (the phrasing of which itself has an interesting history - if you're curious, it's worth going and looking into it, but I'm not going to devote time to it here) which has long been a place of pilgrimage.
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The (simplistic) version of the history of this icon is as follows. It was supposedly painted by St. Luke, on a table made by the Jesus whilst learning the carpentry trade from Joseph, found by St. Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, taken to Constantinople until the 8th century, after which it was taken to Poland, eventually ending up in Częstochowa. There are a few different versions of how it ended up here, but the most common one is that the horses pulling the wagon in which the icon was contained refused to move on, with the Prince who had it at that point taking this as a sign that this was where it should stay.
The marks on Our Lady's face are from Tatar invasions, where an arrow pierced her throat, and a Hussite invasion where one of the invaders slashed at the image with his sword twice (whilst attempting a third, he died in agony). Through history there have been attempts to fix it, but it always reverts to the damaged form.
Beautiful, huh?
Shame it was so busy I didn't really get to see it... There were so many people there that it was impossible to get in. It was closed for for a lot of the day due to Masses being said. Were were told that it should be open for a couple of hours in the middle of day, so headed back, but Mass was being said again with lots of bishops around the icon, so you can't really complain... I did manage to get a slight glimpse from up in the choir loft. Turns out having a friend who can speak French and blag his way in is quite useful! Guess this just means I will have to return at some point to see it properly.
Despite not being able to properly see the icon, it was still an amazing day. We got there just in time for Mass which was said in a small side basilica.
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| Photo WYM |
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| Photo WYM |
After Mass we had a while to wonder around (which is when we attempted to view the icon). What I did really enjoy was looking at all the fantastic Catholic tat. A couple of my favourites below (I didn't even bother taking photos of the glow in the dark rosaries/Mary statues because they seem to be everywhere!):
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| Beautiful bling gold fridge magnet |
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| What a cute little football player |
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| Oh wait... it's an angel! |
This was an incredibly hot day! It was wonderful while we were walking around/sitting and eating. Not so wonderful when one of the coaches overheated and didn't want to start again... I did half wonder whether this was the new version of the horses refusing to move and whether someone had taken the icon, but I assumed there'd be a much bigger outcry if that had been the case. The resulting wait meant that we had to just sit and talk and sit in the sun/attempt to find some shade to sit in. Such a hardship...
(And just to avoid leaving you in suspense, we did eventually manage to get going and headed onwards to Krakow!)
