Description
Holy place - a forest clearing on the Rospuda River on the edge of the Augustów Primeval Forest, north-west of Augustów. Next to it is the mouth of the Jałówka River, which carries water from the nearby Jałowo Lake. An ancient place of religious worship from pagan times.
Inside the wooden fence there are: a chapel from 1990, several wooden and stone crosses, cabinet chapels and a large wooden saint. On one of the wooden crosses, which are clearly very old, there is a copper plate with the information that the cross was issued in 1283 by the converted, baptized Yotvingians of the Skomęta team before they went to Zambia. Although the cross was burned by the pagans and thrown into the river, it miraculously survived and stands to this day. The text on the plaque was signed by Father Antoni Kochański, the parish priest in Janówka. The cross owes its interesting appearance to numerous small coins pressed into the dry wood by pilgrims.
On this site there was probably a cemetery of the Orthodox Church. St. John the Baptist, built by Bohdan Hrynkiewicz Wołłowicz, a horseman from Grodno, around 1514, shortly after Sigismund the Old received the grant of this part of the forest.
For centuries, every year, on St. John - June 24, a ceremony was held here, during which locals prayed, ate a ritual meal, washed in the Jałówka River (which is considered miraculously healing) and offered money and food under the crosses, tying decorative towels to them. These rites most likely had their origin in the Orthodox celebration of Jordan and were brought by the settlers in the 16th century. The tradition has survived to this day - every year in St. John, a mass is celebrated in the chapel.