The New International Encyclopædia/Czenstochowa

CZENSTOCHOWA, chĕn’stō̇-Kō̇’vȧ. A town of Russian Poland in the Government of Piotrkow, situated near the left bank of the Warthe, on the Warsaw-Vienna Railway. It consists of the old and the new town, and is of considerable industrial importance. There are a number of large cotton-mills, iron-foundries, paper-mills, breweries, flour-mills, etc. Population, in 1897, 45,130. Czenstochowa owes its fame to the adjacent monastery of the Order of Saint Paul the Hermit, situated on the Warthe and visited annually by over 200.000 pilgrims. The chief attraction is the picture of the Virgin, made of dark wood and known among the Catholics of Poland and Russia as the Black Virgin. It is supposed to be of Byzantine origin and to have been brought to the monastery at the end of the fourteenth century. The monastery was formerly fortified, and in 1655 withstood a siege of thirty-eight days by the Swedish troops.