Villers-Bettnach Abbey is a former Cistercian abbey in the commune of Saint-Hubert. In 1134 Heinrich von Spanheim, abbot of Morimond Abbey, founded Villers-Bettnach Abbey on land given for the purpose by Simon I, Duke of Lorraine; Heinrich himself was the first abbot, holding the position together with that at Morimond. The community flourished, and monks from Villers-Bettnach later settled a number of daughter houses.
In 1552 the monastery was laid waste. Between 1724 and 1729 a new church was built. The French Revolution caused the dissolution of the monastery in 1790, and the abbey buildings and site were turned over to agricultural uses. Those buildings that survived were later acquired by the town of Boulay-Moselle (Bolchen), which built a convalescent home there. The site is now looked after by the Association des Amis des Sites de St-Hubert.
The cloister was sited to the north of the church. The monumental gateway arch of the 17th century (the Portail Coislin) survives, as do numerous remains of the 13th century church, a vaulted hall church of six bays with a transept and a polygonal apse, and a Chapel of St. Catherine with bifora windows, which stands over a building of the 12th century. Another survival is the 17th century Peasants' Chapel (German: Bauernkapelle; French: Chapelle des Humbles), which is now used as a parish church. The conventual buildings were somewhere to the left of the church.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.