Susteren Abbey

[1] Early in 714 Pepin of Herstal and his wife Plectrude sent Saint Willibrord letters of conveyance and protection for the monastery, permitting free election of abbots.

The Benedictine foundation served as a refuge for the missionaries working in Frisia and the Netherlands.

It was destroyed by the Vikings in 882 and refounded as a house of secular canonesses, whose first abbess was Saint Amelberga of Susteren, who died about 900.

The abbey was suppressed at the end of the 18th century when the French Revolution spilled over into the Low Countries.

The abbey church, one of the major examples of Romanesque architecture in the Netherlands, although marred by a poor restoration in 1885–1890, was built in the 11th century.