Chevetogne as ‘trait d’union’ between Catholicism and Orthodoxy: The Stimulating Contacts of an ecumenically engaged Catholic Monastery with Eastern Christians and Louvain Theologians (1925-1965)

On the eve of the centenary of the foundation of the first Catholic ‘monastère de l’union’ in Amay-Chevetogne (1925) historians and theologians will study the contacts of the Benedictine monks of Chevetogne and their Louvain friends with Eastern Christians – mainly emigrated Russian Orthodox intellectuals –, and the impact of these encounters on their theological, ecclesiological and ecumenical views during four decades. The network-text corpus will focus on Orthodox theologians of Saint-Serge – a.o. Nicholas Arseniev, Cyprian Kern, Léon Zander and Basile Zenkovsky –, on community members who became Orthodox – a.o. Lev Gillet and David Balfour –, on the Benedictine monks Lambert Beauduin, Clément Lialine, Olivier Rousseau and Emmanuel Lanne, and on the Louvain theologians René Aubert, Charles Moeller, Gérard Philips and Gustave Thils. The project also includes the digitalization of the enormous treasure of letters of Chevetogne fathers with their Orthodox contacts as well as the diary of the Russian Orthodox historian Pierre Kovalevsky (1918-1953).

Keywords:Emigration history, Chevetogne, Vatican II, Migrant knowledge, Irénikon, Louvain, Russian emigration, Orthodoxy, Ecumenism, Catholic theology

Disciplines:History of religions, churches and theology, Modern and contemporary history