Aidan Bellenger

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Aidan Bellenger (born 21 July 1950) is an English historian and former Benedictine monk, schoolmaster and sometime Abbot of Downside.

Early life[]

Bellenger took a first degree in History at the University of Cambridge.[1] He then underwent monastic training as a Benedictine monk at Downside Abbey for three years and at Ampleforth for two more. In 1968, aged 27, he was ordained a priest.[2] In 1978 he returned to Cambridge as University Lightfoot Scholar and graduated Ph.D. with a dissertation on refugees in the French Revolution.[1]

Career[]

For most of his life a member of the Downside Abbey community in Somerset, Bellenger was parish priest, prior, head master of Downside School, and abbot from 2006 to 2014. He was monastic editor of The Downside Review for the year 2017–2018.[1]

In 2010, as Abbot of Downside, Bellenger said of the abbey

The main ways in which the monks of the Downside community work to spread the Gospel are through the witness of our life and our prayer, through education, especially in the school which we run, and through serving in the parishes which have been entrusted to our care... We monks are trying to listen to what God is saying to us. We have found that our monastery is a place where many people come to pray, and where they also try to listen to God's voice and get to know and love him better.[3]

A Senior Research Associate of St Edmund's College, Cambridge, Bellenger is a member of the Faculty of History, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Historical Society, and the Higher Education Academy.[1]

An article by Bellenger about Buckfast Abbey was published on 2 June 2018 in The Tablet, a leading Roman Catholic journal”.[4]

Selected publications[]

  • "Two Antiquarian Monks: the Papers of Dom Bede Camm and Dom Ethelbert Horn at Downside", Catholic Archives 6 (1986) 11
  • "Dom Bede Camm (1864–1942), Monastic Martyrologist", in Diana Wood (ed.), Martyrs and martyrologies: papers read at the 1992 Summer Meeting and the 1993 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (1993)
  • "Gasquet, Francis Neil (1846–1929)" in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2007)
  • "Seeking God as a Benedictine Monk" in Edward Leigh, Alex Haydon, The Nation that Forgot God (Social Affairs Unit, 2009, ISBN 978-1-904863-41-0)[5]
  • Downside Abbey: An Architectural History (Merrell, 2011, 978-1-85894-542-2)[6]

Notes[]

  1. ^ a b c d Dr Dominic Aidan Bellenger, profile at st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk, accessed 20 October 2021
  2. ^ Evidence of Dom Aidan Bellenger, truthproject.org.uk, accessed 20 October 2021
  3. ^ Father Aidan Bellenger, "Welcome to Downside Abbey", downside.co.uk, 25 December 2010, accessed 20 October 2021
  4. ^ The Tablet, 2 June 2018, p. 9
  5. ^ The Nation that Forgot God, socialaffairsunit.org.uk, accessed 20 October 2021
  6. ^ Colin Amery, “Amazing Grace: Review of Downside Abbey: An Architectural History, edited by Dom Aidan Bellenger”, The Spectator, 3 December 2011
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