Vlierbeek Abbey

The Benedictines cultivated the surrounding land, and played a great role in the spiritual and intellectual development of the area.

Over the next few centuries they worked almost constantly on the abbey complex, having often to repair or rebuild what had been destroyed by fire or conflict.

[1] During the occupation by the French Revolutionary army the abbey, like all other monasteries, was suppressed in 1796, and the monks were expelled.

[1] In 1830 de Becker donated the church to the churchwardens and in 1837 he made a further gift to them of the remaining abbey buildings.

In early 1970 the province of Brabant bought the remaining rural area round the abbey in order to prevent the neighbourhood from being parcelled out in building plots.

[2] For more than 60 years Chiro Vlierbeek, a Catholic youth group, has used the abbey buildings.

In the churchyard are burial monuments of prominent persons, including the professors Alberdingk-Thijm (1827-1904), Emiel Vliebergh (1872-1925), Mgr.