Resumen de Gothique ou chinoise, missionnaire ou inculturée?: les paradoxes de l'architecture catholique française en Chine au XXe siècle
Gothic or Chinese, missionary or indigenized? The paradoxes of twentieth-century catholic architecture in China.
The rebuilding of churches demolished by the Boxers in 1900 financed with Chinese indemnities, adopted triumphant Western styles, in particular the various national forms of Gothic in conformity with the origin of the missionary-builder. Highly present in the public space, this architecture reinforced the "feudal and colonial" character of the Catholic missions in China -under French protectorate- and exacerbated anti-foreign feeling. The work of the missionary-architect Alphonse De Moerloose in northern China remained in the Christian Gothic line of A.W.N. Pugin's "True Principles", in the perspective of universal Christian civilisation. After the First World War, Pope Benedict XV launched a new missionary policy that was based on the development of local churches and native priests. In China, the ambitious process of indigenization, implemented by Archbishop Celso Costantini, included major architectural projects. In 1927, the Benedectine monk-artist Adelbert Gresnigt was commissioned to create a new "Sino-Christian" style that would answer the architectural challenges of both enculturation and modernity. His masterpiece is the building of the Catholic University of Peking (1929-31): a classical plan conforming to Durand's rules of composition, a functional concrete construction, with Chinese roofs and wall facings. This "Sino-Christian" style, however, not only provoked the hostility from many Western missionaries but also from Chinese Catholics, who did not want churches that looked like temples and pagodas. The crisis of the 1930s and the wars of the 1940s only momentarily ended the issue of religious identity related to architectural styles. It is paradoxical to observe that the new Christian architecture, developing in China since the last decades of the twentieth century, favors Gothic forms over Chinese ones.
