Pontigny Abbey

Hildebert (or Ansius), a canon of Auxerre, petitioned abbot Stephen Harding of Cîteaux to found a monastery in a place he had selected for this purpose.

Accordingly, in 1114 Stephen sent twelve monks under the guidance of Hugh of Mâcon, the first abbot and a friend and kinsman of Bernard of Clairvaux, to establish the new foundation.

This way connected to the crown lands around Paris, it participated in the inception of Gothic style, already in the first phase of construction (probably since 1138) of its abbey church.

[2][3] Many members of the community of Pontigny went on to occupy high positions in the church and many distinguished personages sought refuge there.

In 1909 the remaining southern wing (refectory and dormitories of the lay brothers) was bought by the philosopher Paul Desjardins, who from 1910 to 1914 held meetings every year at the abbey, known as "Decades of Pontigny", or conferences of ten days' duration, where the intellectual élite of Europe met including inter alia Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, T. S. Eliot, Thomas Mann, Heinrich Mann, Nikolai Berdyaev.

[citation needed] Between 1922 and 1939, after the end of World War I, Desjardins reorganized the conferences to evaluate the future of Europe, annually bringing together such notables as Charles du Bos, Roger Martin du Gard, André Gide, Paul Langevin, André Malraux, François Mauriac, Jacques Rivière and Alice Voinescu, among others.

[1] Among the burials in the abbey church are the following: Next to their religious duties the monks of Pontigny were also much occupied in the cultivation of vineyards.