The text describes the town of Podkamień, located in the Złoczów district of Galicia. The history of the Dominican church situated near the town is recalled, as well as the story of the painting of the Immaculate Virgin and the legends associated with it (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1866, T:14, p. 196, after: Digital Library of the University of Łódź).

A modernised reading of the text

Podkamień in Galicia.

The town of Podkamień lies in Galicia, in the Złoczów district. Its name is derived from the rocky mountain at the foot of which it lies. On the top of this mountain rises the Lord's temple, one of the most magnificent in the area, and in it there is a miracle-working image of the Mother of God, to which a multitude of devout people from all parts of the country make pilgrimages to draw consolation in their troubles and distress. The origins of this church date back to the 12th century.

When the arrival of Jack and his apostolic companions led to the establishment of numerous Dominican foundations, several Dominicans also settled in this wooded and rocky retreat. However, soon afterwards, around 1245, the Tartars, having made their forays into the area, came across this place and, having burnt down the wooden church, murdered twelve monks and their prior Urban.

It was not until 1404 that Piotr Cebrowski of Żabokruk, having founded a castle and town on the mountain where the monastery had first been, thought of building a church there and bringing in Dominicans. He went to Lviv for this purpose and received permission from both the Lviv convent of the order and Archbishop Gregory of Sanok, who even promised to come to the ceremony of the consecration of the church and the introduction of the monks.

This foundation was accepted and approved at the Sandomierz General Convocation for the order of permanent monasteries. Cebrowski went to Rome, where he obtained papal privileges for various indulgences. Numerous crowds of the pious began to visit the place, especially as churches were very rare at that time. But this time, too, it did not take long, barely half a century, for devotional songs to sound in the newly-built temple.

In 1519, the Tatars again came from the direction of Sokal and burnt and demolished Podkamień, the monastery and the castle to the ground. The monks, having left the place during the attack, did not visit it for several years. Therefore, when Podkamień fell into the hands of the reformer Martin Kamieniecki, Voivode of Podolia, the monastery land also fell into his possession, and the monastery could not recover. Various miraculous visions led to the erection of a chapel, covered with a curtain of fabric; until the town was given to the Cetner family after Kamenetsky and Danilovich, the foundation was renewed.

Balthasar Cetner built a monastery downstairs, and when it was about to collapse, the monks decided to build another, more magnificent one upstairs, which has been preserved. In 1640, with the help of Alexander Cetner, son of the founder, bishop of Podolia and castellan of Halicz, Prior Zaklika began construction, which he carried out for several years. The church was surrounded by a defensive wall, towers and ramparts, from which Tartar incursions were often repulsed.

The fame of the place prompted Gębicki, the Bishop of Luck, to appoint a clerical commission to examine and investigate the numerous miracles that the living faith of that time had created. The fame of the place grew, and with it the number of guardians and benefactors multiplied. Jan Sobieski, living not far from there in Olesko, the place of his birth, often visited Podkamień, and when the vault of the newly built church collapsed, he raised it at his own expense, spending 300,000 zlotys.

He himself enrolled in the Rosary brotherhood, and promised the monks to make this monastery a second Czestochowa. After the Vienna Crusade, he sent some of the captured Turkish banners to the Podkamieniec church. The notorious oddball, Mikolaj Potocki, built the left wing of the monastery building into an alumni house. Leduchowski marshal, later Voivode of Volyn, erected a tall column, with a statue of N. P. Mary.

Rusyan established here a convocation for noble youth and saved a considerable sum for it. In its splendid condition, he maintained the monastery with up to 150 monks. He even received a privilege for a printing house from August III, although he did not use it. In 1727, at the request of King August II and the Senate, Pope Benedict XIII allowed the painting to be crowned. It was the third in succession, and no less splendid as the previous ones.

We have a description of it in an account printed in Lviv. It was celebrated by Bishop Rupniewski of Lutsk. The celebration lasted a whole week. Many legends are attached to the image of the Immaculate Virgin in Podkamien. The people of Podkamień still speak of the "luminous lady", who, in whiteness brighter than the moon, floated above the place of her choice. Another legend has it that she descended in an angelic retinue to the ruins of a church destroyed during a Tartar attack, and as proof of her presence on earth, once imprinted her footprints on a stone.

When the building of the church was nearing completion, according to legend, the devils, wanting to destroy the temple, tore out the rock and hurled it at the construction site. But Providence did not allow this, because as they approached the monastery, a hen crowed, and then they had to leave the rock on the same spot where it is today. They even show the hollows in the rock to be from the claws of evil spirits.

This legend is not unique; it can be heard with some variation in several areas. The church in Podkamień, built in the shape of a cross, painted al fresco, is all sheet metal. It contains several tombstones of knights. The spacious monastery has up to several hundred rooms. Today there are only six monks in it, including Father Sadok Barach, a well-known collector of historical materials which the Podkamieniec convent often paid for to be printed. The corridors are full of paintings of historical value, including portraits of Okolski, Wiśniowiecki and the Potockis.

Two large, enormous paintings depict moments from the coronation of the miraculous image. The view from the high tower of the church is exquisite. On one side are the blackened forests of the Volhynian and Polesie plains, on the other are the picturesque ranges of the Carpathian chain hills. The view from the Volyn Governorate is particularly beautiful. Among the wreaths of greenery rises the Pochaiv Monastery, once more famous than Podkamień and also possessing the miraculous "feet of Mary".

The little town of Podkamień, small, untidy, inhabited for the most part by Jews, would have been completely forgotten if the walls of the temple, visible for several miles above it, had not risen up on a mountain, in which the face of the Mother of God, full of pity and austerity together, was radiant.