Zwartsters van Lier
The Zwartsters van Lier are a Roman Catholic religious order for women that has existed since 1395.
history
The community of Zwartsters van Lier was founded in 1395, when a certain Jan Van den Masthe gave them a house with land. She adopted the Rule of St. Augustine between 1459 and 1464 .
After they had already received the approval of the construction of their own chapel on February 1, 1515 by the chapter of S. Gummarus , the city magistrate gave them permission to enlarge their convent, which until then always had five or six sisters, to seven or more increase eight members.
The monastery , which at the end of the 16th century was described as poor and low in income, was able to increase to 11 sisters for the first time in 1625. In the first half of the century the monastery finances seem to have improved significantly and they built a new plague house in 1637 , a new monastery chapel in the following year and a new hospital ward in 1642.
For around a century and a half, the community was in distress due to the French Revolution . On July 27, 1794, the 21 sisters were informed that they had to pay 1,000 guilders , which was a heavy burden for the monastery. Fearing the abolition of the monastery, the superior , Sister Benedicta Meeus, rented the Hof van Cuyck on January 11, 1798. It soon became apparent that their fears were justified. After a monastery inventory had been requested on March 5, 1798, a commissioner appeared on May 8 of that year at around 11:30 a.m. and announced to the sisters that their monastery was being closed. Obviously, they left it only under pressure - for example, a nurse bit the hand of the soldier who was roughly grasping her arm. When the buildings were about to be sold, the superior found a middleman named Van Hal who bought the monastery at the August 11 auction for 82,000 livres . The question remains to this day how Mother Benedicta got the money, since the community was in no way able to pay such a sum.
On October 21, 1821, the monastery received state recognition and approval for 14 members, which was a problem because at that time there were still 18 sisters. In the following years the monastery made a positive development. After the exterior of the monastery was renovated in 1868, a new hospital ward was built a few years later.
The congregation , which was still limited to its mother house, grew to 39 sisters by 1891, was aggregated to the Augustinian order on December 26, 1927 and grew to 48 sisters by 1931, but the number fell to 22 by 1947.
The Congregation was now beginning to flourish. As early as 1946, the sisters took over the former Alexian monastery, in which they set up an old people's home that they looked after from their monastery. But the development took on such positive traits that the first branch was founded in 1958, which took place on January 15 of that year with the opening of a hospital in Deurne and four years later with a retirement home in Zandhoven . With the latter, however, the congregation of episcopal law took over financially and went into debt. However, these weren't the only problems. Rather, the person of the Superior General, Sister Madeleine Verbeeck, developed into a person about whom opinions were divided. The year 1964 turned into a catastrophe in the course of which no fewer than 22 sisters resigned, among them the Superior General , Moeder Madeleine , who was deposed on September 24th .
Four years later, the Grauwsteers van de Sint-Antoniusstraat in Antwerp merged with them, so that in 1970 the community had a total of 57 professed in five houses, but by 1995 it had reduced to 30 sisters in three branches.
literature
- Werner Grootaers: De Zwartbesters van Lier , Liers genootschap voor geschiedenis (ed.), Lier 1995