Holy Cross Path

Category: Poland

  • Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński: The Primate Who Kept Poland Safe

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    On 3 August 1901, Stefan Wyszyński was born in the village of Zuzela, in north-eastern Poland. He became Primate of Poland in 1948 and held the office for 33 years, until his death in 1981. Those were the years when communism tried hardest to remake Poland and its people. The Church as a safe deposit…

  • Holy Cross Mountains Walk: Wąchock to Bodzentyn

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    Is it a good walk from Wąchock to Bodzentyn? Yes, but it’s a story walk, not a views walk. You’ll spend most of the day under trees, and nearly every kilometre has something to tell you. Where it fits The route is part of the Świętokrzyska Droga św. Jakuba, the Holy Cross stretch of the…

  • Camino & Polish Pilgrimage

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    I have walked in Ireland, on Japanese islands and in the Holy Cross Mountains of Poland. The longer I walk, the more convinced I am that sacred places don’t all ask the same thing of you. Here is the clearest way I can put it: The Camino can be whittled down to a journey towards…

  • Holy Cross Mountain: Walk 1

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    If you only have one day in the Holy Cross Mountains, this is the walk I’d give you. It has forest, the highest summit in the range, and a village at the end that still lives at its own pace. It’s an easy introduction to the region, and it shows you what makes this landscape…

  • The Dissolution of Święty Krzyż

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    Long before it was a Christian pilgrimage site, Łysa Góra, the “Bald Mountain”, had already taken hold of people’s imagination. Its wooded summit is strewn with huge stones, which folk tradition said were the ruins of a castle built by giants. It was almost certainly a pagan Slavic sanctuary when the first Benedictine monks arrived.…

  • The Book of Henryków: Poland’s First Written Sentence

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    Here’s a piece of trivia I love. The oldest known sentence written in Polish isn’t a royal decree or a prayer. It’s a husband offering to help his wife with the housework. The Book of Henryków Around 1270, Cistercian monks at Henryków Abbey in Silesia kept a chronicle of their lands, written in Latin. In…

  • Bookmark this book!

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    I first read James A. Michener’s ‘Poland’ under lockdown in 2020, having just returned to Poland from Japan. Learning a country through a book while that country sits outside your window, inaccessible, prepared for me what was outside and lit a fire in me to get to know it on the same level as the…

  • The Legend of Wacławek

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    At the edge of an ancient fir forest, almost 600 years ago, a solitary pilgrim arrived in the Świętokrzyskie lands. His name was Wacławek, a noble knight, who had spent years fighting the Tatars on the eastern borderlands. He had everything a medieval man could want; titles, renown, respect. And he walked away from all…

  • About Holy Cross Path

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    The Świętokrzyskie Mountains are among the oldest sacred landscapes in Europe. Long before Christianity arrived in Poland, fires were lit on their bald summits. A Benedictine abbey rose there in the twelfth century. Kings came to pray before battle. Pilgrims still climb the mountain today. Almost none of this is known in the English-speaking world.…