Reading room: three sets of sentences
Click a sentence to see what it gives and what it does not. A sentence with no place gets no point on the diagram.
1877
Account by Fr J. K. Łomnicki
Paraphrase from V2. A visitor from outside Warmia, travelling by rail. Year in the V2 material: September 1877 (to be checked in the source).
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Fr Józef Kazimierz Łomnicki, parish priest of Serock, visited Gietrzwałd in September 1877.
Gives: a witness from outside Warmia (parish priest of Serock, Mazowsze, per V2) and a time: September 1877. A named place: Gietrzwałd as the destination of the visit.
Does not give: the road by which he arrived. Serock is the witness’s parish, not a point on the route of a Warmian pilgrim company.
On the diagram: the church in Gietrzwałd. To the diagram
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He described the church on the hill, visible from the railway station in Biesal.
Gives: two named points, the station in Biesal and the church on the hill, and the view from one to the other.
Does not give: a distance, a direction or a path from the station to the village. A line of sight is not a track. The station is not an encouragement to walk along the rails.
On the diagram: Biesal station, the church, the line of sight and the empty field of the approach. To the diagram
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He also mentioned houses by the hill and a village road beside a stream.
Gives: a picture of the village: houses at the foot of the hill and a road beside a stream.
Does not give: a name or location for this road, or any link with the approach from the station. That is why it stands in the “no location” box, not on the line.
On the diagram: the no-location box. To the diagram
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This is evidence of a newcomer’s view of the pilgrimage’s destination, not an official survey of the road.
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The account does not establish the exact route of the approach, nor does it prove that every pilgrim company used the same road.
1977
Description of the łosiera, W. Piwowarski
Paraphrase from V2. A sociological study from 1977 (Studia Warmińskie XIV), not an account by a participant in the journey.
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Piwowarski describes the łosiera as a votive pilgrimage: the fulfilment of a vow made by the local community.
Gives: a definition: the łosiera as a votive pilgrimage, the fulfilment of the community’s vow (per the V2 paraphrase; in dialect it could also mean an ordinary pilgrimage, see fact 1).
Does not give: any place on the ground. The sentence describes a ritual, not a landscape.
On the diagram: nothing. This sentence does not point to a place, so it gets no point.
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Before setting out, the participants gathered at a wayside chapel.
Gives: the custom of assembling at a roadside sacred marker.
Does not give: which chapel or which village; in the V2 material the source does not indicate one. That is why the chapel stands in the “no location” box.
On the diagram: the no-location box. To the diagram
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The leader (prowadnik) organised the pilgrim company and led the singing, and candles were carried at its head.
Gives: the order of the procession: leader, singing, candles at the front.
Does not give: a width, a surface or the course of the road. The order of the group does not say which way it went.
On the diagram: nothing. This sentence does not point to a place, so it gets no point.
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In Gietrzwałd the group was welcomed by bells; candles were laid in the church as an offering.
Gives: the destination: a welcome with bells in Gietrzwałd and an offering of candles in the church.
Does not give: the route the group took. Knowing the destination is not knowing the road.
On the diagram: the church in Gietrzwałd. To the diagram
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This description allows the ritual to be reconstructed, but it does not define a specific road between the settlements.
Destination · undated
Three places visited
Paraphrase of the description by the Warmian Walking Pilgrimages. The year the description was written is not given in the V2 material, so we do not place it on the timeline.
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The description by the Warmian Walking Pilgrimages points to three places visited: the apparition chapel, the spring and the image of Mary on the main altar.
Gives: three places within the shrine: the apparition chapel, the spring, the image on the main altar.
Does not give: a plan of the shrine or an access road to the village.
On the diagram: all three are one node: Gietrzwałd. To the diagram
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The road gained meaning through prayer and an encounter with a place of worship, not through the sheer number of kilometres covered.
Gives: a hint of meaning: the road mattered through prayer and an encounter with the place, not through kilometres.
Does not give: any place or stretch. It has not been settled whether this is the content of the source or a comment from V2, so it needs checking.
On the diagram: nothing. This sentence does not point to a place, so it gets no point.
Two anchors and the gap between them
Of the nine paraphrases, only two named places can be pinned to the drawing: the station in Biesal and the church. What links them is not a road but a line of sight. Things that are described but have no location sit in a separate box.
Conventional diagram · not a map
No location in the sources
- assembly chapel
- village road by the stream
- SBiesal station
- A named point (1877 · 2). Its position in the drawing is conventional. Show sentence 1877 · 2
- CChurch in Gietrzwałd
- A named destination in four sentences (1877 · 1 and 2, 1977 · 4, destination · 1). In the shrine: the apparition chapel, the spring, the image on the altar, with no plan. Show sentence 1977 · 4
- LLine of sight
- A line of sight from the station to the church according to the 1877 account. It is not a road and has no length.
- GApproach from the station to the village: absent from the sources
- Not described in these paraphrases. It is an empty box, not zero kilometres.
- No location in the sources
- The box below the drawing. The assembly chapel and the village road by the stream are described, but we do not know where. Sentence 1977 · 2 · Sentence 1877 · 3
Select a sentence in the reading room or use the links above. A sentence with no place gets no point on the diagram.
Today · a separate matter · not checked in this project
A checklist before setting out, not a reconstruction of the old route
The points below do not describe any old road and are not a walking route. The Atlas has no current timetables, road conditions or permissions to enter any land. Date checked: none; nothing on this list has been verified.
- Transport. Check the current timetable with the operator for the day of departure and return. A historical mention of the station in Biesal (1877) says nothing about today’s connections.
- Approach. Choose a public road with a pavement or verge; the status and condition of the road are given by its manager (municipality, county, forest district). The Atlas does not indicate a walking route.
- Tracks. Do not walk along or on the railway line. The line of sight from the station is not a path. Cross the tracks only at designated places.
- Destination. Check service times and entry rules on the shrine’s website (a link from V2, not checked again). A group walking pilgrimage is described on the website of the Warmian Walking Pilgrimages.
Limits of this reading room and what was changed
What the result means
- The serif sentences are paraphrases carried over from version V2, not quotations. In this version they have not been compared with the originals. That remains to be done.
- The three italic notes (1877 · 4, 1877 · 5, 1977 · 5) are the Atlas’s critical commentary, not the words of the sources. Their descriptions of the sources’ content have not been checked either.
- A zero for the question “Which way did they go?” means: none of the nine selected paraphrases gives the course. It does not mean that there was no road, or that the sources are silent altogether. Nine sentences are a selection from V2, not the full set.
- The 1977 description is a researcher’s study, not a participant’s testimony. The description of the destination has no date in the material and is not placed on a timeline.
- The Atlas’s own diagram is not a map. It shows no route.
What was removed from V2 and why
- The stretch-hypothesis auditor (form, examples, “verdict”): its result depended on drop-down lists, not on data, and could look like approval or refusal of a route. Replaced by a short “Today” list, with no verdict.
- Notebook in browser storage: comparing two testimonies does not need it. Dropped; the page saves nothing.
- Autoplay, “Previous/
Next”, three tabs and four filters: all the sentences are visible at once, so they were replaced by two columns side by side and a single question. - Photograph of the basilica interior from Wikimedia Commons: loaded from the network and did not explain the road. Removed; the page works offline.
Kept: the division of sentences by evidential status, the link between a sentence and the diagram, the warning about the tracks, the links to sources and the four facts below.
Four supports from V2 (references to be checked)
- 1. Łosiera, that is, an offering
- The word meant a pilgrimage tied to a vow; in Warmian dialect it could also mean an ordinary pilgrimage. Piwowarski, p. 156
- 2. Intentions of those absent
- Pilgrims represented a village or parish and carried the requests and thanks of people who could not go. Piwowarski, p. 167
- 3. Summer of 1877
- According to the shrine’s history, the apparitions lasted from 27 June to 16 September. Shrine history
- 4. 8 September
- The feast of the Nativity of Mary was one of the important days of pilgrimage; the history also mentions 29 June and 15 August. Shrine history
Sources
Links carried over from V2. In this version they were neither opened nor verified; they are not bundled with the page and do not affect its offline operation.
- Władysław Piwowarski, “Łosiery do Gietrzwałdu” [Łosiera pilgrimages to Gietrzwałd], Studia Warmińskie XIV (1977), pp. 153–175. A sociological and ethnographic description of the łosiera tradition; according to V2 it does not contain the geometry of a single route.
- Sanktuarium Matki Bożej Gietrzwałdzkiej: Historia [Shrine of Our Lady of Gietrzwałd: history]. According to V2: a calendar of the 1877 apparitions, dates of the influx of pilgrims and the account by Fr J. K. Łomnicki from the station in Biesal (V2 gives the date of the account as 12–18 September 1877; to be checked).
- Warmińskie Pielgrzymki Piesze: Historia pielgrzymek do Gietrzwałdu [Warmian Walking Pilgrimages: history of the pilgrimages to Gietrzwałd]. According to V2: the pilgrimage tradition and three places visited.
No rights to quotations or reproductions were obtained; hence the paraphrases. There is no photograph of the roadside marker. None was invented.