Unexpected Connections. The Benedictine Abbey of Maredsous and Christian Architecture in China, 1900-1930s

Abstract

Recent research has revealed that the Benedictine abbey of Maredsous exerted significant but conflicting influences on missionary architecture in China through two different channels. These influences were by no means the result of a strategy pursued by the abbey of Maredsous. After having introduced the interwoven Belgian and Benedictine missionary networks in China, this article focuses on the two architectural connections of Maredsous in China. First, the missionary-architect Father Alphonse De Moerloose, who was not a Benedictine but a Scheut Father; he exported the Gothic Revival style of Augustus Pugin and Baron Bethune to northern China in the years 1900-29 and referred to the abbey church of Maredsous for his major projects. Second, Dom Adelbert Gresnigt, a monk-artist from Maredsous who stayed in China from 1927 to 1932 and developed an indigenised architectural style. Known as the “Sino-Christian style”, it was the antithesis of the style of the abbey of Maredsous and the Belgian Gothic Revival exported to China by Father De Moerloose.