French-style Jiaxing Vincentian Monastery

French-style Jiaxing Vincentian Monastery

The French-style Jiaxing Vincentian Monastery is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Vincentian Monastery is situated at No. 153 Guangming Street, Hangming Community, Jiefang Subdistrict, Nanhu District, Jiaxing City. Also known as the Missionary Monastery, it lies immediately west of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal and was an educational institution specifically for training clergy of the Congregation of the Mission. In the 28th year of the Guangxu reign (1902), French priest Father Bousquet acquired land just outside Jiaxing’s northern gate and commenced construction, completing it the following year. Upon completion, the monastery housed around forty to fifty Chinese and foreign monks who studied doctrine and trained missionaries. From 1903 to 1908, the Vincentian Monastery functioned as the sole general seminary of the Catholic Missionary Congregation in China, also referred to as the motherhouse. The monastery ceased operations in 1949. It was later owned by Jiahang Company for many years before being returned to the Catholic Church in 1994. Covering an area of 47.5 mu, the monastery includes a constructed floor space of 5,677 square meters and features Western-style architecture. Oriented east-west, it is built with brick and wood, having mostly two-story structures with the exception of a three-story western wing. When the monastery was first built, it was planted with camphor trees, which today are all over 100 years old. As a historic testament to the spread of the Catholic Church in China, the Vincentian Monastery holds significant historical value. Its typical Western architectural style also offers high architectural and aesthetic worth. In 2013, it was jointly listed as a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit along with the Jiaxing Catholic Church.

Hangming Community: Located at No. 1 Mingjing Road, Guangming Street. … More details about Hangming Community ++

Further Reading:

· Fifth Batch of Zhejiang Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units

· Seventh Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units