The traditional habit was black and, when in church, over the tunic the choir sisters would wear a white, sleeveless, linen rochet, on the left side of which was embroidered a red, double-barred cross.

[2] The earliest historical date on record is 1300, the year in which the monastery was founded in the province of Teruel by the Marquise, Doña Gil de Rada.

New constitutions, drawn up by a Jesuit and approved by Pope Urban VIII in 1631, bound the canonesses to the recitation of the Divine Office, rigorous fasts, the use of the discipline, and a strict interpretation of the rule of poverty.

A school for poor girls was also established at Sion, which remained in operation until the monastery was closed in 1798 by the armies of the First French Republic during their occupation of the Low Countries.

The survivors were able to save a large part of the monastery archives, which remains a priceless source for the history of the Order and pre-Revolutionary Catholic life in Belgium.

[7] In 1480 Jan van Abroek, himself a Canon of the Holy Sepulchre, established a convent at Kinrooi, near Maaseik on the Meuse for his sister Meyntz, and two Augustinian nuns from Roermond.

[4] Dame Susan Hawley (Mother Mary of the Conception) was the foundress of the surviving English branch of the canonesses (born at New Brentford, Middlesex, 1622; died at Liège, 1706), having been professed at Tongeren.

[2] The school, opened under Dame Mary Christina Dennett who was prioress from 1770 to 1781, proved so successful that, during the occupation of the Lowlands by the French, the English canonesses had great difficulty in securing permission to leave the city.

The majority of the communities have ceased to wear a traditional religious habit, but their identifying insignia remains the double-barred Cross of the Order.