Kloster Pontigny – Wikipedia

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Zisterzienserabtei Pontigny

Southeast view of the monastery church
Make France France
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region
Lies in the diocese once auxerre; today sens
Coordinates: 47 ° 54 ′ 33.9 ″ N , 3 ° 42 ′ 52.1 ″ O 47.90941944444444 3.7144722222222 Coordinates: 47 ° 54 ′ 33.9 ″ N , 3 ° 42 ′ 52.1 ″ O
Order number
nach Janauschek 		3
Patronal feast St. Edmund
founding year 1114
Year of dissolution/
Cancellation 		1791
Mutterkloster Kloster Cîteaux

Daughter monaster

19 monasteries, List see article

The Kloster Pontigny (years. Abbey Pontiniacum ) is located a former primary abbey of the Cistercian order on the river Serein in France, approx. 300 m east of the approx. 800 inhabitant Pontigny (driving route), which counts approx. 800 inhabitants, northwest of Auxerre or northwest of Chablis in the Yonne department in the northwest of the Bourgogogne region Franche Comté, 13.5 km from the border with the Grand Est region (big east). It is 147 km southeast of Paris, [first] , 133 kkus Netwestlich this Messterklosts Cut Circ [2] and 179 km north northwest [3] the Benedictine Abbey Cluny, the starting point of Burgundian Romanesque.

The Cistercian Abbey from Pontigny is one of the four primary abbots, which was founded by the mother monastery of all Cistercians, the Cîteaux Abbey. The towerless Gothic monastery monastery, the “second daughter of Cîteaux”, stands on formerly rough swamp area and was built in 1114 with 12 monks under Abbot Hugo von Mâcon.

The Auxerre county, in which Pontigny was located, was not part of the Burgundy in the 12th century. She was connected to the county of Nevers in 1006–1273, came for the first time in 1242 by marriage to a Duke of Burgundy, Odo, then 1265–1270 to the Kapetinger Johann von Damiette, then the Flandrische Haus Dampierre, finally by marriage of the heiress Margarete III. With Duke Philipp II. 1369 finally to the Duchy of Burgundy. The diocese of Auxerre, to which Pontigny belonged, was a Suffragan of the Archdiocese of Sens, to which the dioceses Paris and Chartres and thus the most important centers in the French crown country were subordinate.

King Ludwig VI. granted the abbey 1131 lucrative privileges. In the period that followed, she received rich donations by Thibaut (Teobald) II., Count of the Champagne and (as Thibaut IV) Graf von Blois.

Pontigny himself became the mother monastery for 43 daughter abbots in Europe, including the immediate daughter foundations of the Klöster Bourras, Cadouin, Fontainejean, Jouy, Saint-Sulpice, Quincy, Chaalis, Les Roches, Cercamp, Trizay, L’Estrée, L’étoile, emergency Dame-de-Ré, Dalon, Le Pin and Valence as well as in the then Hungary (today Romania) of the monastery Igriş.

The monastery was lifted in the course of the French Revolution; The monastery buildings were destroyed except for the church.

The regional council Bourgogne-Franche-Comté acquired the church with the surrounding area in 2003 and sold both in 2020 to a foundation that would like to build a hotel, a gourmet restaurant and museums there. [4]

Today only the church is made of exactly hewn light limestone. With a length of 108 m and 25 m wide, it is the largest preserved abbey church in the Cistercians. It was the second church of the monastery. The start of construction is not mentioned chronically, the highest probability of 1137, 1138 (in this the monastery acquired a quarry) or 1140. With the Narthex (porch) it may have been completed in 1170. The first, just closed choir consisted of just one yoke and had no handling, but on both sides, three chapels each joined the east side of the transept. [5] As early as 1185 to 1212, this simple choir was replaced by today’s polygonal choir with a strut and a corresponding choral process with chapel wreath. Its facade is like that of the side aisles of the nave made of slightly brownish sandstone.

Therefore, the original design is only preserved in the nave and in the transept. The side aisles of the nave still have pointed arched crossbread vaults after the pattern introduced with Cluny III (start of construction 1088). However, as an innovation compared to Burgundian Romanesque with their barrel vaults over the central aisles and their almost all -arched wall openings, the central nave is divided into yokes in the Pontignny nave and covered with cross -rib vaults, and all windows are pointed arched. With this combination, the monastery church had a share in the Gothic, which was simultaneously emerging in the nearby crown country (Cathedral of Sens from 1135, choir circumstances of the basilica of Saint-Denis from 1140). Because the original choir and preserved nave without struts were built (as the Romanesque Abbey Church Cluny III had), it is mostly referred to as Romanesque. (The Romanesque abbey church Cluny III already had struts.) However, a peculiarity for the style of style has the templates of the central nave vault: the diagonal ribs are based on the corners of the floor of outgoing, flat rectangular wall pillars, but the belt arches are born on half -columns that are not on Start the floor, but several meters above the floor on consoles.

In the younger choir, ribs such as belt arches are born on the ground on the ground with round cross -sections. And the choral range and its chapels continued have cross -rib vaults as well as the high choir.
On the outside, the choir is equipped with struts without fialty attachments. The Limburg Cathedral received similar struts. As in many other churches of the First Gothic the windows of the ship and choir have no tracery.

The walls and vaulted structures of both parts of the church are kept in simple white – like the cowls of the Cistercians.

The location of the cloister and the other monastery buildings (chapter hall, refectory, dormitorium, etc.) on the north side of the church was not common, but was definitely in accordance with the religious traditions (see Obazine Kloster).

Klaus Bußmann (1977):

The Cistercian Order has quickly understood the new possibilities of curling of ribs over the pointed arch, integrated it into the strict and simplicity of its architectural system and developed a type of construction – as it stands in front of us in Pontigny in the oldest preserved form – which spread quickly throughout Europe Thanks to the tight organization of the order […] and the slight handling of the system, the technically complicated outline solutions and static experiments of the wall resolution of the Île-de-France in favor of a solid, powerful structure of the wall that corresponded to the Burgundian tradition Construction of foreign countries came towards: a two -storey tear from arcade zone and highaden with large simple lance windows, a strong formation of the individual yokes with square belt arches and half -column templates, which are often not to be used to the ground, but are intercepted on consoles. [6]

(In fact, the design of the pointed arch windows without or with tracery is also a question of the style of the style at Cistercian churches, as the comparison of the early Gothic church of the Sonnenkamp monastery in Neukloster with the highly Gothic Doberan Münster. Unusual, but not a stranger to the Gothic overall, as a look at the Freiburg Münster shows.)

In addition to a wooden choir barrier, the choir stalls added later, the church contains (stalls) And no equipment items for a canopy.

Source of Reformation approaches [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

Abbot Guichard, who initiated the construction of today’s church, later seems to have supported the movement of the Waldensians as Bishop of Lyon, who have been pursued by the official church since his successor in the bishop’s office, Jean Bellesmain. [7]

Refuge [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

In the course of its history, the monastery was often refuge:

  • Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, stayed here from 1164 to 1166. He had fled by Henry II from England because of his conflict and left the monastery after the king had massively put pressure on the Cistercian.
  • The theologian Stephen Langton stayed here from around 1207 to 1213 until the resistance of the English king Johann Ohseland was waned against his appointment as an archbishop of Canterbury and he was able to enter England to exercise his office.
  • Edmund Rich von Abingdon, university lecturer and clergyman, found accommodation here in 1240.

Location of secular culture [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

In 1909 the church passed into the possession of Paul Desjardin, who then gathered French and international intellectuals from the “Decades of Pontigny” from 1910 to 1914 and then from 1922 to 1939. Among others, participation: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, T.S. Eliot, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann and Helmut Kuhn with his wife Käthe.

Mission of France [ Edit | Edit the source text ]

The mother house of the Mission de France is in Pontigny. As a result, Pontigny has the canon law status of a territorial prelature.

In addition to the religious tasks, viticulture also played a major role. The monks of Pontigny created one of the first vineyards in the region to form the basis for the famous wine from Chablis. They also introduced the Chardonnay vine in the area, the most important white grape variety of Chablis, and anchored viticulture as the central component of agriculture. [8]

  • Adela von Champagne, (* 1145, † June 4, 1206 Paris), wife of Ludwig VII., Queen of France
  • Edmund Rich, (* around 1180 in Abingdon/England, † November 16, 1240 in Soisy-Bouy, France), Archbishop of Canterbury, Heiliger
  • Paul Desjardin (born November 22, 1859 in Paris, † March 13, 1940 in Pontigny), philosopher and writer

The monastery was and is a starting point on one of the two routes emanating from Vézelay on the Jakobsweg to Santiago de Compostela.

In the order of appearance

  • Lucid bugule: The Fontenay Abbey . 6th ed., Covered and improved by Hubert Aynard. Translated from French and commented with comments by Bernhard Nessler. Laurens, Malakoff 1984.
  • Terryl N. Kinder: Architecture of the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny, the 12th century church . University Microfilms International (UMI), Ann Arbor 1984 (zugleich Dissertation, University of Indiana, Bloomington 1984).
  • Wedneste: Pontigny . Zodiac editorial, St.-Léger-Vauban 1987, ISBN 2-7369-0035-9.
  • The friends of Pontigny: Discover Pontigny . Pontigny 1994.
    • German: Discover pontigny . Pontigny 1994.
  • Monique peyrafort-huin: The medieval library of the Pontigny Abbey (12th – 19th century) . CNRS Éditions, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-271-05715-9.
  1. ↑ Itineraire.com – de Paris vers Pontigny
  2. ↑ Itineraire.com – from Saint-Nicolas-lès-Cîteaux to Pontigny
  3. ↑ Itineraire.com – de Cluny vers Pontigny
  4. ↑ The Cistercians in France’s monastery becomes a hotel , ORF.AT of December 12, 2020, accessed May 16, 2022.
  5. ↑ Encyclopaedia universal: Pontigny Abbey
  6. ↑ Klaus Bußmann: Burgundy , Cologne 1977, p. 189:
  7. ↑ Michel Rubellin: Guichard de Pontigny and Valdès in Loyn: the meeting of two reforming ideals (www.persee.fr)
  8. ↑ Jancis Robinson: The Oxford wine lexicon. 2nd, fully revised edition. Hallwag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-7742-0914-6, p. 134.