St. Trudo's Abbey, Bruges

The origins of St. Trudo's Abbey are believed to go back to about 1050, when the hermit Everelmus settled near the entrance to the city of Bruges where the road to Ghent crosses the River Reie.

Like other hermits, Everelmus attracted followers, who gradually formed a community, which was referred to as servi Dei ("servants of God") in the charter of 1130 by which Thierry, Count of Flanders, gave them the piece of ground on which they lived.

As the mixed community of the servi Dei or pauperes Christi monachis of the Eekhoute, as they became known, grew bigger it required more organisation.

[1] The rule of Arrouaise prescribed that the female members of the community had to live separately, and from 1149 they occupied a property at Odegem (Steenbrugge) belonging to St. Martin's Abbey in Tournai.

To help them make a good start the bishop allowed some sisters to transfer from Roesbrugge Abbey, which had attached itself to St. Victor's previously.

They included a small school in their duties, and for that reason escaped closure under the rationalst reforms of the Emperor Joseph II.

Priory was once again restored to the status of an abbey, having been downgraded some twenty year previously, with Sister Adelheid Goedertier as the first abbess.

[1][2] In 2011 the sisters, unable to continue the burdensome maintenance of so large and historic a property, sold the abbey at Male to a private individual, and in October 2013 settled in their new premises, a small monastery on the Oude Osteendse Steenweg in Sint-Pieters Brugge.