In the late 12th century, a nobleman named Count Gerard van Loon commissioned an abbey to serve as his final resting place. Over the next few decades, amid plenty of political tumult, Herkenrode Abbey in Hasselt, Belgium, was converted to the first Cistercian convent for women. It was a site of pilgrimage from the 13th to the 15th centuries, and despite regional wars and economic uncertainty, it stayed the course. During the 16th century, it exp…
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