France, Pontigny Abbaye

France, Pontigny Abbaye

In 2014, Pontigny Abbaye widely celebrated its 900th anniversary. During these nine centuries, many interesting facts have accumulated in the abbey’s biography. For example, his monks were the first to produce the famous Chablis. The abbey gave the Catholic world three Archbishops of Canterbury at once – Thomas Becket, Stephen Langton and Saint Edmund, whose remains rest in the abbey. Pontigny also became the resting place of the Queen of France, the wife of Louis VII Adele Champagne, and one of the most important monasteries on the pilgrim Path of St. James.

In addition, the abbey of Pontigny was among the five main monasteries of the Order of the Cistercians. It became the second daughter abode of the main monastery of the Order of Sito, founded after the abbey of La Ferte in 1114. The first abbot was Hugo Makonsky, who was sent along with a dozen monks by Stephen Harding, one of the founders of the Order, to the bank of the Søren River, in the vicinity of the city of Auxerre, to build a new monastery. A few decades later, the monks of Pontigny themselves laid down their daughter monasteries and founded them more than two dozen, and Hugo Makonsky received the title of Bishop of Auxerre.

XIII century was for Pontigny, as well as for other monasteries of the order, the heyday, renovations and new construction. And from the XV century began the decline of the abbey, which was aggravated by the battles and storms of the period of religious wars. Most of the abbey was burned, and it was only half restored. During the Great French Revolution, after nationalization and auctioning, the abbey was, for the most part, destroyed. The monastery church has remained, whose status was reduced to the parish. Today, services are still held there.

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At the beginning of the 20th century, the philosopher Paul Dejardin became the owner of the monastery, who held the Decades of Pontigny conference until 1939, in which many famous writers participated – Thomas Mann, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Antoine de Saint-Exupery and others.

Currently, a center for the adaptation of people with disabilities is located in the buildings of the former abbey.

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