Prince Antoine d'Arenberg (1593-1669), also known as Father Charles of Brussels, was a Capuchin biographer and architect who served as definitor and commissary-general of his order.
[2] In 1623 Archduchess Isabella instituted an annual Lenten Forty Hours' Devotion in the court chapel in Brussels, which Fr Charles preached to great acclaim in 1624.
The house in Tervuren was built on land granted by Isabella, surrounded with ponds and groves (now part of the Sonian Forest).
The foundation stone was laid by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria on 20 March 1651, and the church was dedicated by Jacobus de la Torre on 14 July 1652.
[2] In 1650, when in Rome for the general chapter of the Capuchin order, Fr Charles had obtained from Pope Innocent X several corpses of martyrs recovered from the Roman catacombs.