a major figure in the development of Trappist brewing in Belgium. Anselmus was a monk with the Saint Benedictus Abbey of Achel in the province of Limburg in the late 19th century. This was a very short yet prosperous period for this Trappist abbey that began with Achel being granted abbey status in 1871 and ended with the property being temporarily abandoned just prior to World War I in 1914.

While a Superior at Achel’s new daughter house in Echt, Father Anselmus is credited with having traveled to assess the ruins of a Trappist abbey in Rochefort, Belgium, on October 11, 1887. Two months later, the former grounds of the Our Lady of Saint Remy abbey (Rochefort) were acquired by Achel and would become one of three daughter houses established during this period (Rochefort, Diepenveen, and Echt).

Rochefort was originally populated by monks in 1464, but the abbey was shuttered and looted in the mid-1790s as the region was transferred from the Austrian Netherlands to postrevolution France. At this time Rochefort’s property was sold to a Frenchman named Lucien-Joseph Poncelet, who demolished the church and repurposed the property as a farm shortly after Napoleon was crowned Emperor in 1805.

By the time Anselmus and Achel acquired the farm in 1887, France had a president rather than an emperor and Belgium had survived its own revolution and gained independence. Achel restored the original abbey from its agricultural uses and erected a new church among other buildings. Anselmus was Superior in 1899 when Rochefort first began brewing strictly for in-house consumption. Importantly, he was also present at the “Strictoris Oberservantiae” Chapter meeting that established the Trappist order (officially known as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance) in 1892.

Rochefort officially became an “abbey” in 1912 and released its first two commercial products, “Middel” and “Merveille,” in 1952.

See also achel brewery, rochefort brewery, and trappist breweries.