Brecht Abbey
Brecht Abbey, also known as the Abbey of Our Lady of Nazareth, is an abbey of Trappistine nuns located in Brecht, in the Campine region of the province of Antwerp (Flanders, Belgium). Life in the abbey is characterized by prayer, reading and manual work, the three basic elements of Trappist life. Early history In 1235, Bartholomeus van Tienen and his son Wicbert moved to Lier to establish a third Cistercian nunnery after Bloemendaal (around 1210) and Maagdendaal (1221). In May 1236 his daughters Christina, Sybilla and Beatrijs followed, who had also initially entered Bloemendaal. Blessed Beatrice (1200–1268) was its first prioress. In 1245, the sisters asked the General Chapter for permission to move the convent. Two years later this is also a fact and the sisters move into a new convent north of the town of Lier on the location known as 'Nazareth'. For five centuries the abbey flourished, until 1797, when it was closed in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when the French Revolutionary Army occupied the Austrian Netherlands. The abbey did not recover from the closure even after the Belgian Revolution in 1830, when Belgium gained independence from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. Modern history In