Wittem Monastery

Wittem Abbey is a Roman Catholic monastery in Wittem, now a district of Gulpen-Wittem in the Dutch province of Limburg in the Diocese of Roermond.Wittem Abbey was founded by Ferdinand von Plettenberg, Hereditary Marshal of the Bishopric of Münster, who had acquired the southern Dutch lordship of Wittem in 1722 and expanded it into an independent imperial county by 1732. The monastery was to serve as the house monastery of his family, his church as a mausoleum and the monastery buildings at the same time as a family residence. The Capuchin Order was entrusted with the pastoral care, whose branch in Cologne sent twenty monks. The foundation stone was laid on 16 June 1729, and the construction work was commissioned by the Münster master builder Johann Conrad Schlaun, who also built the parish church of St. Agatha in Eys, a district of Gulpen-Wittem, for the same builder from 1732 to 1734. The construction was carried out by the young Aachen master builder Johann Joseph Couven. The church building was already largely completed in 1731, the handover of the monastery to the Capuchin Order took place on 16 May 1735, the feast day of St. John Nepomuk, but the official consecration of the church did not take place until 16 June 1770 by the Auxiliary Bishop of Liège. In 1797 the secularization of the monastery took place.

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