[1] They were sent by St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, at the invitation of Anselm of Trazegnies, lord of Péronnes-lez-Binche and canon and treasurer of the Collegiate Chapter of Soignies, who offered land on the banks of the Dender for the foundation of an abbey.

It became one of the wealthiest monasteries of Hainault and variously founded, or was given the supervision of, several daughter houses: the abbeys of Fontenelle at Valenciennes (1212), Nieuwenbosch near Ghent (1215), Épinlieu at Mons (1216), Beaupré near Mechelen (1221), Le Refuge at Ath (1224), Le Verger at Cambrai (1225) and Baudeloo at Saint-Nicolas (1225).

At the end of the 13th century, Baudouin of Boussu, doctor of theology, was appointed to succeed Thomas d'Aquin at the University of Paris.

The widely held suspicion was that a Jewish perpetrator had falsified conversion to Christianity to gain access to the image.

After a request by the King of France Philip of Valois, Pope Benedict XII issued a papal bull granting indulgences to pilgrims to Cambron.

Among the pilgrims and visitors were several important figures, including the Emperor Maximilian I, who, passing through Belgium in the early 16th century, visited the sanctuary of Our Lady of Cambron.

The master of novices André Enobarb, a distinguished humanist who corresponded with Erasmus, wrote a Latin tragedy about the miracles of Our Lady of Cambron.

The abbot Robert d'Ostelart (d. 1613), supported the college in Ath and provided scholarships for theology students at Leuven.

Baudouin Moreau, author of a famous commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, became an emissary of the Cistercian Order in Rome.

Jean Farinart, of Chièvres, who succeeded Robert d'Ostelart as abbot, was an excellent theologian and doctor of theology at Douai.

At the end of the 17th century, the wars of King Louis XIV devastated the province of Hainaut and set off the abbey's first period of decline.

The abbey's tower, built under the direction of the architect Jean-François Wincqz,[2] was constructed in a pure Neoclassical style.

[1] But in 1783, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, the so-called enlightened despot, classified Cambron Abbey as one of the useless monasteries and convents.

The waning of Austrian power, hastened by the Brabant Revolution, and the establishment of the short-lived unified Belgian states, allowed the monks to return to the abbey for a time beginning in December 1789.

The abbey was later sold to the Counts of Val de Beaulieu, who built a large château on the site and whose property it remained until 1993.

Others of the monastery's farms remain at Diksmuide, Rosière, Thiennes, Horrues, Wodecq, Rebais, Lombise and Stoppeldijk.