Dom (Paul) Bellot (1876-1944)

n spite of its relatively short period in Canada, the stylistic movement started by Dom Bellot known as "Dombellotisme" (1935-1955) was an important influence on Quebec religious architecture in the first half of this century. Paul Louis Denis Bellot was born on June 7, 1876, in Paris, France. From 1894 to 1901, he studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, obtaining his diplôme d'architecture in 1900. In 1902, he had renounced his architectural career to become a benedictine monk only to take it up again to build monasteries for the Benedictines who were forced into exile when French anti-clerical laws were passed. He constructed two monasteries: one at Quarr Abbey, near Appuldurcombe, Isle of Wight (1907), and the other at the Abbey of Saint Paul in Oosterhout, near Breda, in the Netherlands (1906). Between 1907 and 1920, Dom Bellot constructed churches to accompany both these monasteries. These two projects marked the beginning of his independent professional career as a monk-architect. In 1922, Dom Bellot set up his own architectural practice at Oosterhout with H.C. Van de Leur and within six years executed over twenty projects (mostly parish churches and educational buildings) in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. This work went largely uncelebrated until the 1927 publication of the book Une oeuvre d'architecture moderne, par Dom Paul Bellot which was essentially a summary of the first stage of Dom Bellot's career as an architect and an exposé of his ideas on architecture. Dom Bellot believed that beauty in architecture was an expression of the divine as mediated by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Throughout his career, he emphasized the importance of historical evolution in which the new in architecture must reflect a continuation of the old and not a complete rejection of it. A system of proportions in building was a key feature in his architecture.

In the years following the appearance of Une oeuvre d'architecture moderne, Dom Bellot's commissions increased and his architecture was given more coverage in periodicals. In 1928, he returned to France and once again set up an architectural practice where he immediately received numerous commissions including extensions to the Abbey at Wisques, the Church of the Immaculate Conception at Audincourt, the Church of Notre-Dame-des-Trévois at Troyes, the Monastère des Tourelles at Montpellier, the priory of Sainte-Bathilde at Vanves, the Church of Saint-Joseph at Annecy (Haute-Savoie), the cloister and library at Solesmes, and extensions to the Monastery of La-Pierre-qui-Vire, near Avallon.

During this time, Dom Bellot also travelled, mostly to Portugal and Canada, to promote his work at conferences. In 1834, he visited Canada to give a series of 19 conferences on modern religious art where he was well received and newspapers carried detailed reports of his lectures.

Shortly afterwards, Dom Bellot received his first big Canadian commission in 1936 for the completion of Saint Joseph's Oratory in Montreal from Père Henri-Paul Bergeron of the Congrégation de Sainte-Croix who had helped organized his earlier lecture series. In order to realize this project, Dom Bellot made numerous trips in 1937 and 1938 between Europe and Canada. The construction of Saint Joseph's Oratory had began in 1924 to designs by the architects J. Dalbé Viau and L. Alphonse Venne. However, construction had halted with the death of Alphonse Venne in 1936. In collaboration with the Quebec architects Lucien Parent and René-Rodolphe Tourville, Dom Bellot resumed its construction in 1937 with the design of a dome consisting of two concrete shells topped by a cupola. The result was a very large and highly elevated dome with a diameter of 38.4 meters by 29 meters in height and of a design similar to that of Brunelleschi's dome in Florence.

Towards the end of the 1930s, Dom Bellot was in charge of numerous building projects not only in France but also in Portugal and in Canada. In 1939, he was in Quebec to execute a monastery for the Benedictines of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac. The only Canadian work designed entirely by him and an architectural masterpiece, the Monastery of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac marked the end of Dom Bellot's career in architecture. His scheduled return to France later that year was cancelled as a result of the Second World War and his permit to practice architecture in Canada was not renewed in 1941. Dom Bellot died of cancer on June 5, 1944, in Montreal. He is buried at the cemetery of the Monastery of Saint-Benoît-du-Lac where his work was continued by Dom Côte who added the hostel, campanile and cloisters. The influence of Dom Bellot's style on Quebec religious architecture, however, did not disappear with the monk-architect's death. "Dombellotisme" was to be seen in Quebec for another decade through the work of his disciples, among them, Adrien Dufresne (1904-1982), who, having initiated correspondence with the monk-architect in 1926, was Dom Bellot's first Canadian contact; Edgar Courchesne (1903-1979); and Dom Claude-Marie Côté (1909-86).

Sources: Maurice Culot & Martin Meade, eds., Dom Bellot: moine-architecte (Paris: Éditions Norma, 1996).
Nicole Tardif-Painchaud, Dom Bellot et l'architecture religieuse au Québec (Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1978).
Peter Willis, Dom Paul Bellot: Architect and Monk, and the Publication of Propos d'un bâtisseur du Bon Dieu 1949 (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Elysium Press Publishers, 1996).

Text: Alice Ming Wai Jim