Keizersberg Abbey

Keizersberg Abbey, also known as Mont César Abbey (Dutch: Abdij van Keizersberg; French: Abbaye du Mont-César) is a Benedictine monastery on the hill Keizersberg or Mont César in the north of the university town of Leuven, Belgium.

The Keizersberg ("Caesar's" or "Emperor's hill") was the site of the castle around which the city of Leuven grew up, and which local legend connected with Julius Caesar. The castle was demolished in 1782 by order of Emperor Joseph II. On the east side of the same hill a commandery of the Knights Templars was built in 1187, which when the order was abolished came to the Knights Hospitallers in 1312. This was secularised by the French in 1798, when the church and larger buildings were demolished.

A Benedictine house of studies was established in Leuven in 1888 by nine monks from Maredsous Abbey, and land was acquired on the present site in the following year for the construction of a larger establishment, in which the remains of the old commandery were incorporated. The first major conventual block, the north wing, was completed in 1897. The abbey was formally founded on 13 April 1899 as part of the Beuron Congregation, under the first abbot, Dom Robertus de Kerchove.

Columba Marmion (declared Blessed in 2000), abbot of Maredsous, was also appointed prior of Mont César in 1906, which he remained until his death in 1923.

The foundation is perhaps best known in the English-speaking world under its French name, Mont César Abbey, for its connection both with Blessed Columba and with the reformer and ecumenist Dom Lambert Beauduin, who while a member of this community launched his liturgical movement from here in 1909, and began publication of the associated periodical "Les Questions Liturgiques et Paroissiales" in the following year. Dom Lambert left Mont César in 1925 to be prior of Amay Priory, established from Mont César, from where he later founded the famous Chevetogne Abbey.

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