The Pauline Order Cultural Heritage Trail was created to present to the modern world the history of the Order of St. Paul the First Hermit, dating back to the 13th century – called, not without reason, the Golden Age of the Church. The Trail allows for presenting the Pauline heritage, spanning over seven hundred years, to a wide audience. It is a wealth of material, spiritual and cultural nature, located in various parts of Poland and Europe.
ABOUT THE TRAIL
In accordance with its guiding idea, which is SPIRITUALITY ON THE WAY, the Pauline Trail is a unique journey in space and time, skillfully combining the tourist potential of picturesque areas and magnificent monuments with the mission and activity of the spiritual sons of Saint Paul the Hermit and Blessed Eusebius of Esztergom. It shows not only the characteristic, unique charisma of the Order, but also its exceptional role in shaping the religiousness and spirit of the nation, on which the Pauline monasteries had a significant influence over the centuries. This was the case with Poles, Hungarians, Croats and Slovaks.
The creation of the Trail began in the Silesian Voivodeship. In March 2019, the Marshal of the Silesian Voivodeship – Jakub Chełstowski, and the General of the Order – Father Arnold Chrapkowski, signed a letter of intent in this matter. A year later, work began on the development strategy for the Trail, along with its visual identification. The document was created in December 2020, and the Pauline Trail Foundation was registered a few months later.
The first to be included in the Trail were the sites located in the Silesian Voivodeship: the Częstochowa monastery complex with the world-famous National Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin Mary Queen of Poland at Jasna Góra, the nearby monastery with the parish church of St. Barbara, and the monastery with the Sanctuary of Our Lady Patroness of Families in Leśniów. In implementing the development strategies of the Trail, in 2021, more Pauline sites were included: the monastery on Skałka in Kraków, which is the pearl of the Pauline heritage in Lesser Poland, and the monastic house and parish church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Częstochowa in Czerwienne in Podhale, commonly known as Bachledówka.
Talks have also been held with the Marshals of the Mazovian and Lublin Voivodeships so that the Trail can be expanded to include more sites. The plan is to include, first of all, other places related to the existence and spirituality of the Paulines in Poland, and later also in Slovakia and Hungary – all the way to Croatia. On the one hand, this will allow for the presentation of the unique role of the Order, founded in Hungary, in creating the political and religious structures of Central Europe over the centuries, and on the other hand, it will allow the widest possible audience to become acquainted with the unique spiritual and cultural heritage of hermit monks.
Currently, there are twenty-four Pauline monasteries and religious houses in Poland, located in almost all voivodeships – however, it is the voivodeships of Silesia, Lesser Poland, Greater Poland, Masovia and Łódź that can boast the largest number of institutions – each of them has three Pauline seats.
The Pauline Trail is multidimensional in both content and form. On a journey through lands full of charming landscapes and magnificent architectural structures, it allows the recipient to immerse themselves deeper into the space of faith, culture and history. It presents the life, charisma and mission of the Pauline Order – not only in this commonly known version, associated almost exclusively with the pilgrimage movement to Jasna Góra, but also in what remains hidden from the world on a daily basis.
The main idea of the Trail is SPIRITUALITY ON THE WAY, combining a contemplative attitude (spirituality) with activity (the way). SPIRITUALITY – because the Trail enables an encounter with a living, functioning monastic community and uses its contemplative charisma. ON THE WAY – because it is a concept referring to an active pilgrimage, perceived primarily in a symbolic, spiritual sense. In this way, the Trail evokes the topos of a man on the road – homo viator and becomes a living, dynamic story, co-created constantly anew by the recipient, about earthly existence – a pilgrimage of faith, about a monastic vocation – a spiritual path of life.
As defined in the Statute, The Pauline Trail is therefore to be a “balanced product”, implementing mutually complementary dimensions of the tourist-pilgrim experience on three levels: activity, spirituality and knowledge. It could be said that it is a skillfully balanced golden mean somewhere between the values identified by 21st century man with sacrum and profanum. This means that it is addressed both to the deeply religious faithful, for whom the most important will be contemplation, prayer, close contact with God, as well as to people who perceive the Pauline heritage primarily as a cultural and historical phenomenon worth knowing. This scale is complemented by the inclusion of active tourists among the users of the Trail, for whom the most important motivation to visit one of the Pauline sites will be their location on the picturesque and at the same time frequently used Jurassic hiking and cycling routes.
The Pauline Trail consists of four main elements: offer in facilities – that is, everything that the recipient experiences in individual places; joint events – events organized in the facilities themselves and in their surroundings, which unite and promote the Trail as a whole; supplementary routes – related to the Trail, grouping attractions around it, related to its main idea and co-created with partners; and finally, the Pauline Hiking Trail – connecting the two most important Pauline monasteries in Poland – Krakow’s Skałka with Jasna Góra. Each of the four elements of the offer mentioned here contains spiritual, cultural and historical values. The promise of going deeper into all these spaces is thus fulfilled.
Without a doubt, the further development of this unique, one-of-a-kind work is conditioned by the involvement of entities related to the organization of tourism in all provinces where the heritage of the Pauline Order can be experienced: Silesia, Lesser Poland, Greater Poland, Mazovia, Łódź, Lower Silesia, Lublin, West Pomerania, Opole, Kuyavian-Pomeranian. We invite all those interested in the development of the Pauline Trail initiative to contact us:
Pauline Trail Foundation
ul. Kordeckiego 2
42-225 Częstochowa
kontakt@szlakpaulinow.pl
