Title: Exporting Flemish Gothic architecture to China: meaning and context of the churches of Shebiya (Inner Mongolia) and Xuanhua (Hebei) built by missionary-architect Alphonse De Moerloose in 1903-1906
Abstract:This article examines the architectural work of Alphonse De Moerloose C.I.C.M., a Flemish Scheutist missionary who developed considerable building activity in northern China in the post-Boxer era.Two ...This article examines the architectural work of Alphonse De Moerloose C.I.C.M., a Flemish Scheutist missionary who developed considerable building activity in northern China in the post-Boxer era.Two relatively unknown historical studies from 1968 and 1994 have sketched De Moerloose's biography,5 and concluded that only a few of his Gothic Revival churches had survived the Chinese Civil War of 1947-1949 and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976.Fieldwork carried out in March 2010 and May 20116 allowed us to develop a specific architectural approach to his two best-preserved buildings.The churches of Xuanhua (Hebei Province) and Shebiya (Inner Mongolia) were built simultaneously between 1903 and 1906, for French Lazarist and Belgian Scheutist missionaries respectively (figs 1-2).At first sight, they look like Flemish Gothic Revival churches from the second half of the 19th century: the Shebiya church is a simple and effective village church, while the Xuanhua church is a more elaborate and prestigious urban affair.Combining the analysis of the material sources with archival images and letters from the recently better valorised archives of the Scheutists in Leuven,7 sheds new light on De Moerloose's work.Thanks to the literature from the two last decades about missions in China and Gothic Revival architecture in Belgium, the remarkable career of this exceptional missionary-architect will be better contextualized, and the meaning of the style he developed beyond the Great Wall of China will be unravelled.Read More