Roosendael Abbey (the abbey of the valley of roses) was a community of

Cistercian nuns Cistercian nuns are female members of the Cistercian Order, a religious order belonging to the Roman Catholic branch of the Catholic Church. History The first Cistercian monastery for women, Le Tart Abbey, was established at Tart-l'Abbaye in th ...

, founded in the 13th century on the banks of the River Nete 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 ...

, at a location now in

Sint-Katelijne-Waver Sint-Katelijne-Waver (, old spelling: ''Kathelijne-Waver''; french: Wavre-Sainte-Catherine, ) is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp. The municipality comprises the towns of Onze-Lieve-Vrouw-Waver and Sint-Katelijne-Waver ...

. The monastery was established in or before 1227 by the nobleman

Gillis Berthout {{Infobox noble , name = Gillis Berthout , title = Chamberlain of FlandersLord of Leffinge, Lichtervelde, and Oudenburg (by marriage) , image = , caption = , CoA = Argent, three pales gule ...

, according to later tradition for his daughters Elizabeth and Oda. An early member of the community who gave it a wider reputation for sanctity was Blessed Ida of Louvain. The monastery was ordered closed in 1795, during the French occupation of Belgium, and the nuns were forced off the premises in January 1797. The main building became a country house in the 19th century. In 1828 the archivist of the National Archives of Belgium was notified that a pile of old parchment was available from a second-hand clothes dealer in Brussels. This transpired to be the remains of the monastery's archives, with over a thousand documents, including papal bulls and ducal charters, the oldest going back to 1235.

Current use

The site is now a residential youth centre. The grounds are a park. All that remains of the monastic buildings are a monumental gate, a coach house, an infirmary and an ice cellar.Domein van Roosendael
, local authority tourism website. Accessed 14 December 2015.

References

{{Reflist 1220s establishments in Europe 1797 disestablishments in the Southern Netherlands Cistercian monasteries in Belgium Christian monasteries established in the 13th century Sint-Katelijne-Waver