Ponthion

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Coordinates: 48°45′33″N 4°42′44″E / 48.7591666667, 4.71222222222

Administration
Commune of Ponthion
Location

Country	France
Region	Champagne-Ardenne
Department	Marne
Arrondissement	Vitry-le-François
Canton	Thiéblemont-Farémont
Intercommunality	Communauté de communes de Champagne et Saulx
Statistics
Elevation	108 m (avg.)
Land area^¹	7.26 km²
Population^² (1999)	114
- Density	15/km² (1999)
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code	51441/ 51300
¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
² Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel) only counted once.

Ponthion is a commune of the Marne département in France, located southeast of Châlons-en-Champagne.

[edit] History

It was a royal pfalz (crown estate) under both the Merovingian (mainly Neustrian branch) and the Carolingian dynasties. In appears repeatedly in the Frankish royal and ecclesiastical history.

In 753 Pope Stephen II left Rome. Aistulf, when the pope met him at Pavia, refused to enter into negotiations or to hear of a restoration of his conquests. Only with difficulty did Stephen finally prevail upon the Lombard king not to hinder him in his journey to the Frankish kingdom.

The pope thereupon crossed the Great St. Bernard into the Frankish kingdom. the Merovingian King Pepin the Short received his guest for a conference with at Ponthion in January 754. Stephen implored his assistance against his oppressor the Lombard King Aistulf, and begged Pepin for the same protection for the prerogatives of St. Peter which the Byzantine exarchs had extended to them. The king there promised him orally to do all in his power to recover the Exarchate of Ravenna and the other districts seized by Aistulf, and in the charter establishing the States of the Church, soon after given at Quiercy, promised to restore these prerogatives. The Frankish king received the title of the former representative of the Byzantine Empire in Italy, i.e. "Patricius", and was also assigned the duty of protecting the privileges of the Holy See.

The condemnation of future Pope Formosus and others was announced to the emperor and a Synod of Ponthion in July 872, early in the pontificate of John VIII.

After Charles the Bald's coronation in 875, the new emperor summoned a great synod at Ponthion, which met in June 876, and at which a papal brief was read, appointing Ansegis, Archbishop of Sens, as Vicar Apostolic of Gaul and Germany. Hincmar, the recognized chief Metropolitan of the West Frankish kingdom (who wrote his treatise De jure metropolitanorum in defence of his rights as metropolitan), and nearly all the Frankish bishops made an energetic protest against what they considered an infringement on their rights, and refused to recognize the vicar, so that the latter could not exercise the rights which had been conferred upon him.

[edit] Sources

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913. passim
Westermann, Großer Atlas zur Weltgeschichte (in German)