Pontigny
| Pontigny | ||
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| region | Bourgogne-Franche-Comté | |
| Department | Yonne | |
| Arrondissement | Auxerre | |
| Canton | chablis | |
| Community association | Chablis Villages et Terroirs | |
| Coordinates | 47 ° 54 ' N , 3 ° 43' E | |
| height | 102-183 m | |
| surface | 11.92 km 2 | |
| Residents | 752 (January 1, 2017) | |
| Population density | 63 inhabitants / km 2 | |
| Post Code | 89230 | |
| INSEE code | 89307 | |
 The Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny |
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Pontigny is a French commune with 752 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2017) in the Yonne department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in eastern France .
The place is best known for the famous Pontigny monastery and as the seat of the Mission de France .
geography
Pontigny is located in the Serein Valley on the river of the same name about 19 km northeast of Auxerre .
history
The first mention of the place goes back to the 6th century.
Saint Porcaire, one of the women who accompanied Germanus from Auxerre to Ravenna in 448 , retired as a hermit in a forest in the Sereintal. In the place where she lived there is still an estate that bears her name.
Pontigny Abbey was founded in 1114 at the request of Ansius, a priest of the Auxerre diocese, by monks from the Cîteaux monastery , the original monastery and starting point of the Cistercian order . It developed very quickly, especially when Theobald II , Count of Champagne , granted permission to build a church in 1150.
From 1164 to 1170, the monastery served as a refuge for Thomas Becket , then Archbishop of Canterbury , when he fled England due to a conflict with Henry II . Only after massive pressure exerted by the king on the Cistercians did he leave the monastery. Two other Archbishops from Canterbury, Stephen Langton and St. Edmund Rich of Abingdon , whose tomb in Pontigny became a place of pilgrimage, followed the example of their predecessor and withdrew to the monastery in a dispute with their king.
During the French Revolution , the monastery was closed and much of the convent was destroyed. The village of Pontigny, which until then belonged to the parish of the neighboring Venouse , became an independent parish.
In the middle of the 19th century, the priestly community of St. Edmund settled in the remaining monastery complexes to lead a life in the convent and to create a base for their country evangelism.
The Mission de France has had its motherhouse in the monastery since 1949 .
The municipality of Pontigny maintains a partnership with the German municipality of Sankt Thomas (Eifel) .
Population development
| year | 1962 | 1968 | 1975 | 1982 | 1990 | 1999 | 2009 | 2017 |
| Residents | 664 | 668 | 684 | 727 | 737 | 748 | 724 | 752 |
| Sources: Cassini and INSEE | ||||||||
Pontigny is a municipality with fewer than 1,000 inhabitants. Since the early 1960s, the population has been growing steadily at an approximately average rate. Due to increased emigration at the beginning of the period, the population stagnated despite a comparatively high birth rate. In the 1990s, this development was reversed again through increased influx.
Attractions
The site and history of the community are determined by the former Pontigny monastery. One of the remains of secular history is the ruined medieval village of Révisy, located on the territory of today's municipality. A remarkable two-arched bridge spanned the Serein.
The farm buildings of the monastery complex, classified as Monument historique , which were destroyed during the revolution, were partly rebuilt later and continued to be used for secular purposes. These include the monastery hall, the wine press, the granary, the pottery or the fountain.
Pontigny monastery
- The construction of the medieval monastery church Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Edme de Pontigny began in the 12th century.
- The tomb of the philosopher and writer Paul Desjardins is located in the cemetery .
economy
The main source of income has been agriculture since the flourishing of monastic life. In addition to grain cultivation and tree nurseries, viticulture is the decisive factor. The brick kiln is one of the traditional craft trades.
In the former monastery there is now a center for vocational training for the physically handicapped.
Personalities
From 1910 to 1939, the writer Paul Desjardins gathered writers, philosophers and artists from many countries several times a year in the decades of Pontigny in the former monastery that he had acquired in 1909. His guests included André Gide , Edmond Jaloux , Roger Martin du Gard , Jean Schlumberger , André Maurois , Pierre Viénot , Jacques Rivière , François Mauriac , Paul Valéry , Charles Du Bos , André Malraux , Paul Claudel , Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , Jean-Paul Sartre , Simone de Beauvoir , TS Eliot , Alice Voinescu , Thomas Mann , Heinrich Mann , Walter Benjamin (1938) and Ernst Robert Curtius .
