Maria de Taye (died 28 July 1637) was the 25th abbess of

Forest Abbey Forest Abbey (french: Abbaye de Forest) or Vorst Abbey ( nl, Abdij van Vorst) was a Benedictines, Benedictine abbey located in the Brussels List of municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, municipality of Forest, Belgium, Forest, Belgium ...

at Vorst in the

Duchy of Brabant The Duchy of Brabant was a State of the Holy Roman Empire established in 1183. It developed from the Landgraviate of Brabant and formed the heart of the historic Low Countries, part of the Burgundian Netherlands from 1430 and of the Habsburg Neth ...

(now in Belgium) from 29 January 1609 until her death. She was originally from

Gooik Gooik () is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Flemish Brabant. The municipality comprises the towns of Gooik proper, Kester, Leerbeek, Strijland and Oetingen. It is also situated in the Pajottenland. On January 1, 2018 Gooik had ...

. During her time as abbess she overstretched the abbey's finances by purchasing a refugium in Brussels. She also commissioned paintings from Hieronymus van Orley to adorn the abbey church, and commissioned an atlas of the abbey's property from the

surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is ca ...

Filips de Dijn.P. Leroy, "Domein van de abdij van Vorst", in ''Doorheen de nationale geschiedenis'' (

State Archives in Belgium The State Archives (french: Archives de l'État or AE, nl, Rijksarchief) is the institution which preserves the national archives of Belgium. It is a research institute of the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo) under the Belgian Fede ...

, Brussels, 1980), p. 207.

References

1637 deaths Benedictine abbesses Belgian Benedictines Nuns of the Spanish Netherlands {{RC-bio-stub