Ter Apel Monastery

Ter Apel Monastery

Ter Apel Monastery, church and east wing
Monastery information
Order	Canons Regular of the Order of the Holy Cross
Established	1465
Disestablished	1593
Mother house	Bentlage Priory, Bentlage, Rheine
Dedicated to	Novae Domus Lucis
Diocese	Roman Catholic Diocese of Osnabrück (until 1593) Roman Catholic Diocese of Groningen-Leeuwarden
Site
Location	Ter Apel, Netherlands
Coordinates	52°52′34″N 7°4′28″E / 52.87611°N 7.07444°E / 52.87611; 7.07444Coordinates: 52°52′34″N 7°4′28″E / 52.87611°N 7.07444°E / 52.87611; 7.07444
Visible remains	East, north, south wings
Public access	yes

Ter Apel Monastery (Dutch: Klooster Ter Apel) is a former monastery in the village of Ter Apel in the northeastern Dutch province of Groningen. It is the only monastery in the larger area of Friesland and Groningen that survived the Reformation in a decent condition, and the only remaining rural monastery from the Middle Ages in the Netherlands. The convent buildings house a museum for monastery and church history and for religious art, as well as two contemporary art galleries. The former lay church of the monastery still functions as a reformed church.

The monastery is located in the extreme southeast of the province of Groningen on a forested sand ridge along the ancient trade route from Münster to Groningen. For passing travelers and pilgrims, the monastery was a place of hospitality and dedication. Ter Apel is the last monastery founded in Groningen, and of 34 monasteries in the province it is the only one still recognizable as a convent.

In 1464, Jacobus Wiltingh, pastor of Garrelsweer and vicar in Loppersum, bequeathed Apell, a settlement among his possessions in the area called Westerwolde, to the Order of the Holy Cross on the condition that a monastery be built there, on the remains of a thirteenth-century Premonstratensian monastery. In May 1465, the General Chapter of the Holy Cross convened in Huy, on the Meuse, and accepted Apell as a gift from God. The monastery dedicated to Saint Gertrude of Nivelles in Bentlage, near Rheine, was to supervise the new monastery, and it sent four priests and several lay brothers to Apell, who founded the monastery and named it Novae Domus Lucis, the "House of New Light." Construction, between 1465 and 1561, followed the medieval plan of the mother in Bentlage, and included, besides the convent building, a gatehouse, water mills, a parchment facility, a bakery, a brewery, and a guesthouse.