Located approximately 65 km (40 miles) west of Bergen op Zoom, Middelburg is the principal town and regional capital of Zeeland in the Netherlands.

Premonstratensian canons arrived from St. Michael's Abbey, Antwerp in 1127, creating a monastery on the site of a former Carolingian stronghold.

Today many of the surviving buildings from the monastic period (including the so-called "new church") are in the late Medieval Gothic style, and date from a rebuilding in the second part of the sixteenth century.

An important sixteenth century abbot was Nicolaas van der Borcht who in 1559 became the first bishop in the newly formed (and short-lived) Diocese of Middelburg.

While negotiating the surrender of the town William of Orange had given guarantees that the clergy would be left alone, but both the abbey and Catholicism in Middelburg were nevertheless forcibly terminated.

Initially it was used as the seat of the district assembly ("Staten van Zeeland") and for other administrative bodies including the locally important admiralty (naval) department, a mint, and a court chamber.

Other abbey buildings continued to accommodate government activities till the end of the twentieth century, such as the land registry and state archive.