In 1146, twelve Cistercian monks and three lay brothers from Clairvaux came to Villers in order to establish the abbey on land granted them by Gauthier de Marbais. Villers Abbey (abbaye de Villers) is an ancient Cistercian abbey located in the town of Villers-la-Ville in the Walloon Brabant province of Wallonia (Belgium. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the abbey's fortunes continued to diminish. The number of monks and the abbey's wealth dwindled and it was finally abandoned in 1796 in the wake of the French Revolution.
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