Pontigny monastery
| Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny | |
|---|---|
 Southeast view of the monastery church |
|
| location |
 FranceRegion Bourgogne Franche-Comté |
| Lies in the diocese | once Auxerre ; today Sens |
| Coordinates: | 47 ° 54 '33.9 " N , 3 ° 42' 52.1" E |
| Serial number according to Janauschek |
3 |
| Patronage | St. Edmund |
| founding year | 1114 |
| Year of dissolution / annulment |
1791 |
| Mother monastery | Citeaux monastery |
|
Daughter monasteries |
19 monasteries, list see article |
The Pontigny monastery (Latin Abbatia Pontiniacum ) is a former primary abbey of the Cistercian order located on the Serein river, approx. 300 m east of the town of Pontigny with approx. 800 inhabitants, almost 20 km (driving distance) northeast of Auxerre or northwest of Chablis in the Yonne department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in France .
history
The Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny is one of the four primary abbeys that were founded by the mother monastery of all Cistercians, the Abbey of Cîteaux . The towerless Gothic monastery, the "second daughter of Cîteaux", stands on a formerly impassable swamp and was built in 1114 with 12 monks under Abbot Hugo von Mâcon.
Pontigny itself became the mother monastery for 43 daughter abbeys in Europe, including the direct subsidiaries of the monasteries Bourras , Cadouin , Fontainejean , Jouy , Saint-Sulpice , Quincy , Chaalis , Les Roches , Cercamp , Trizay , L'Estrée , L'Étoile , Notre- Dame-de-Ré , Dalon , Le Pin and Valence as well as in what was then Hungary (now Romania) the Igriș monastery .
In the course of the French Revolution the monastery was closed; except for the church, the monastery buildings were destroyed.
architecture
Today only the church, made of precisely hewn light limestone , stands; it was built together with the narthex (vestibule) between 1140 and 1170 and, with a length of 108 m and a width of 25 m, is the largest surviving Cistercian abbey church. The ambulatory of the church was extended from 1185 to 1212 by a chapel wreath made of slightly brownish sandstone and provided with Gothic buttresses .
The location of the cloister and the other monastery buildings ( chapter house , refectory , dormitory, etc.) on the north side of the church was not common, but was in line with the traditions of the order (cf. Obazine Monastery ).
Pontigny represents the strict style of the Cistercians: the church is completely white inside and out, like the monks' robes. The two-story wall elevation is simple. The pillars of the nave are not supported by pillars, but rather rectangular templates with half-columns or services, which are supported halfway up on brackets - a typical invention of the Cistercians, the meaning of which is not entirely clear, but may be understood as "reduction" or "simplification" can be. A cross rib vault covers the approximately 14 m high central nave, the side aisles, which are only about 7 m high, have cross rib vaults .
The later expansion of the choir, which has Gothic features on the inside, albeit simple, does not disturb the overall external impression of the church despite its strut system . There are no pinnacles .
Quote
- The Cistercian order very quickly grasped the new possibilities of arching ribs over pointed arches, integrated them into the rigor and simplicity of its architectural system and developed a building type from it - as it stands before us in Pontigny in the oldest preserved form - which quickly spread throughout Europe thanks to the tight organization of the order […] and the easy handling of the system, which dispensed with the technically complex elevation solutions and static experiments of the wall resolution of the Île-de-France in favor of a solid, powerful construction of the wall, which corresponded to the Burgundian tradition and the Building customs from foreign countries came into play: a two-story elevation of the arcade zone and upper cladding with large, simple lancet windows, a strong design of the individual yokes with angular belt arches and half-column templates, which often do not reach down to the floor but are supported on brackets.
Furnishing
Apart from a wooden choir screen , the choir stalls (stalles) and a canopy tomb , the church does not contain any furnishings.
Others
In the course of its history, the monastery has often been a refuge:
- Thomas Becket , the Archbishop of Canterbury , stayed here from 1164 to 1166. He had fled England because of his conflict with Henry II and left the monastery after the king put massive pressure on the Cistercians.
- The theologian Stephen Langton stayed here from about 1207 to 1213, until the resistance of the English King John Ohneland to his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury subsided and he was able to travel to England to exercise his office.
- Edmund Rich of Abingdon, university professor and minister, found shelter here in 1240.
In 1909 the church passed into the possession of Paul Desjardins , who subsequently gathered French and international intellectuals in the "Decades of Pontigny" from 1910 to 1914 and then from 1922 to 1939. Among others took part: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , Jean-Paul Sartre , Simone de Beauvoir , TS Eliot , Thomas Mann , Heinrich Mann and Helmut Kuhn with his wife Käthe.
See also: Territorial prelature of the Mission de France in Pontigny
Viticulture
In addition to religious duties, viticulture also played a major role. The monks of Pontigny planted one of the first vineyards in the region, which formed the basis for the famous Chablis wine . They also introduced the Chardonnay grape, the most important white grape variety of Chablis to this day, and established viticulture as a central part of agriculture.
Personalities buried in the monastery
- Adela von Champagne , (* 1145; † June 4, 1206 Paris), wife of Louis VII , Queen of France
- Edmund Rich , (* around 1180 in Abingdon / England; † November 16, 1240 in Soisy-Bouy , France), Archbishop of Canterbury, saint
- Paul Desjardins (born November 22, 1859 in Paris, † March 13, 1940 in Pontigny), philosopher and writer
Way of St. James
The monastery was and is a starting point on one of the two routes of the Camino de Santiago to Santiago de Compostela starting from Vézelay .
literature
- Les Amis de Pontigny: Découvrir Pontigny . Pontigny 1994.
- German: discover Pontigny . Pontigny 1994.
- Terryl N. Kinder: Architecture of the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, the 12th century church . UMI, Ann Arbor, Mich 1984 (also dissertation, University of Indiana, Bloomington 1984).
- Monique Peyrafort-Huin: La bibliothèque médiévale de l'abbaye de Pontigny (XIIe - XIXe siècle) . CNRS Éditions, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-271-05715-9 .
- Claude Wiéner: Pontigny . Zodiaque Editorial, St.-Léger-Vauban 1987, ISBN 2-7369-0035-9 .
Web links
- Pontigny monastery. In: arch INFORM .
- Pictures from Pontigny
- French page on the history of the abbey
Individual evidence
- ↑ Klaus Bußmann: Burgund , Cologne 1977, p. 189:
- ↑ Jancis Robinson : The Oxford Wine Lexicon. 2nd, completely revised edition. Hallwag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7742-0914-6 , p. 134.