PARK (LE PARC), MONASTERY OF

Premonstratensian abbey at Heverlee, Louvain, Belgium, Diocese of Mechelen, circary (province) of Brabant. It was founded as a double monastery c. 1128 by Duke Godfrey I of Lorraine, and itself founded in 1137 the Abbey of Ninove on the Dendre (suppressed in 1796). The nuns of Park soon transferred, probably to the Augustinian Parc-les-Dames (Cistercian 1215–1796). The nuns of Gempe and 19 churches were under the rule of the abbot of Park, which became a flourishing monastery. The Annales Parchenses (1148–1458) were compiled in the abbey. Abbot T. van Tuldel, mitred in 1462, resisted the commendatory system energetically. In the 17th century Park was a center of Tridentine reform in the order. Abbots J. Druys and J. Maes in 1630 drew up new statutes and the ordinarius of the order. Suppressed in 1789–90 by joseph ii and in 1797 by the French, Park was restored in 1836 and became an abbey again in 1872. In 1896 it undertook a mission in Montes Claros, Brazil. Until 1914 it published the scientific periodical Analectes de l'ordre de Prémontré. The abbey is one of the most charming in Belgium. The Romanesque church was extensively remodeled in the 17th and 18th centuries; the style of the monastery is Renaissance and baroque. Park has always been a center of learning; its monks included the historian R. van Wafelghem and the Vatican expert in Coptic sciences F. A. van Lantschoot. Its archives are extensive and valuable.

Bibliography: c. l. hugo, S. Ordinis Praemonstratensis annales, 2 v. (Nancy 1734–36) v. 2. j. e. jansen, L'Abbaye norbertine de Parc-le Duc (Malines 1929). n. backmund, Monasticon Praemonstratense, 3 v. (Straubing 1949–56) 2:317–322.

[n. backmund]