Topics of coins
Jasna Góra – the Spiritual Capital of Poland
The Shrine of Our Lady on Jasna Góra has served as
a unique site of the Marian cult in the Polish land for
over six centuries.
The origins of Jasna Góra go back to the foundation of
the Pauline Monastery by Duke Vladislaus II of Opole
in 1382 on a hill near Częstochowa. Two years later,
the founder brought a painting of Our Lady with the
Christ Child – already an object of veneration then –
from Ruthenia, and committed it to the monks’ care.
The introduction of this extraordinary image was
probably associated with the arrival, from Hungary
to Poland, of young Jadwiga of Angevin, who was
crowned king of Poland in 1384.
According to sources, it was in 1388 that the sacral
centre began to be called Jasna Góra (Luminous
Mountain). In 1393, King Ladislas Jagiełło, on behalf
of his wife Jadwiga and himself, re-founded the Jasna
Góra Monastery. He also funded the renovation of the
miraculous painting, damaged during a raid on
the monastery in 1430.
The fame of the site kept growing and during the
reign of the Jagiełło and Vasa dynasties the shrine
was enlarged and embellished. Sigismund Vasa and
Ladislas Vasa erected fortifications surrounding the
monastery, owing to which the site became known
as Fortalitium Marianum. After the famous defence
of the monastery against the Swedes in 1655, Jasna
Góra took on a special meaning of the spiritual capital
of the Polish nation. On 1 April 1656 in Lviv, King
John Casimir Vasa proclaimed Our Lady the Queen
of Poland and commended the inhabitants of the
Republic of Poland to her protection. The Jasna Góra
Shrine was established as the symbolic throne of Mary
the Queen of Poland.
A truly momentous event in the history of the shrine took
place on 8 September 1717. It was the first coronation of
the miraculous image of Our Lady with papal crowns to
be performed outside the territory of Italy. During the
partitions, Jasna Góra, still keenly venerated by the Poles,
was a place where they sought consolation and hope.
In the 20th century, the history of the country’s spiritual
capital was strongly influenced by the ministry of Primate
of Poland, Blessed Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, who made
the cult of Our Lady of Jasna Góra the core of the entire
pastoral programme for the country, and by the pontificate
of the Pope, Saint John Paul II, who pilgrimised to the
Shrine of Częstochowa six times during his apostolic
travels. Jasna Góra – visited each year by millions of pilgrims from Poland and numerous countries of the
world – is today one of the biggest sites of the Marian
cult in the Church at large.
Father Grzegorz Prus
The reverse of the coin features an image of a family
in the style of a child’s drawing and an image of
the Monastery on Jasna Góra from the east side
in the background.
The obverse bears an image of Mary’s crown from the
painting of Our Lady of Jasna Góra, donated by Saint
John Paul II, as well as a fragment of the quotation
from the Act of Re-election of Our Lady as the Queen
of Poland by Polish Bishops in 1920.