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 of it.
Wacławek was tired of soldiering and decided to spend the rest of his life in prayer in the Polish wilderness. He renounced his privileges, gave away his wealth, and made the journey from Podolia (in today’s Ukraine) to what are now known as the ‘Holy Cross’ mountains.
He had been to Jerusalem as a warrior turned penitent and brought back a wooden figurine of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. This figurine gave birth to religious life in these mountains and in so doing became our first pilgrim.
In 1399 he helped found a small church dedicated to Saint Catherine, demolishing the pagan structures that had stood there before. The village that grew around it was informally called Wacławek’s settlement, before taking the saint’s own name. The town today is simply known in Polish as Święta Katarzyna (St. Catherine) and is a key destination for any pilgrim visiting these parts.
St. Catherine- truth to power
Believed to have lived in the 3rd or 4th centuries, St. Catherine was one of the most important saints in the religious culture of the late Middle Ages, Patron saint of philosophers and scholars, it was believed she helped protect against sudden death.
She protested the persecution of Christians under Emperor Maxentius, and when he summoned the empire’s most eminent scholars to argue her down, she defeated them all in debate. Imprisoned in humiliation, she converted the Emperor’s own wife and several soldiers to Christianity. He ordered her killed on a spiked wheel; when it shattered miraculously at her touch, she was beheaded instead.
According to tradition, angels carried her body to Mount Sinai 0 the mountain where Moses received the Ten Commandments. In the early 9th century, monks of the Sacred Monastery on Sinai discovered her body, hair still growing, with miraculous healing oil emanating from her bones. The monastery became known as Saint Catherine’s Monastery, one of the great pilgrimage destinations of the medieval world. Her cult spread through Europe with the return of the Crusaders in the 12th–13th centuries.
Did you know? The wooden figurine Wacławek carried to Poland was made from cypress. Cypress is the ‘sacred wood; of the eastern Mediterranean -the wood of tombs and resurrection, the wood of the Holy Land.
Leave a Reply