In 1236 the nunnery of Our Lady of Nazareth at Lier (Duchy of Brabant) was accepted into the Cistercian Order (Saint Beatrice of Nazareth (1200-1268) was its first prioress). For five centuries the abbey flourished, until 1797, when it was closed in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when France occupied the Austrian Netherlands. The abbey did not recover from the closure even after the Belgian Revolution in 1830, when Belgium gained independence from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.