Ter Apel Monastery () is a former monastery in the village of Ter Apel in the northeastern Dutch province of Groningen. It is the only monastery in the larger area of Friesland and Groningen that survived the Reformation in a decent condition, and the only remaining rural monastery from the Middle Ages in the Netherlands. The convent buildings house a museum for monastery and church history and for religious art, as well as two contemporary art galleries. The former lay church of the monastery still functions as a reformed church. The monastery is located in the extreme southeast of the province of Groningen on a forested sand ridge along the ancient trade route from Münster to Groningen. For passing travelers and pilgrims, the monastery was a place of hospitality and dedication. Ter Apel is the last monastery founded in Groningen, and of 34 monasteries in the province it is the only one still recognizable as a convent. Foundation In 1464, Jacobus Wiltingh, pastor of Garrelsweer and vicar in Loppersum, bequeathed Apell, a settlement among his possessions in the area called Westerwolde, to the Order of the Holy Cross on the condition that a monastery be built there, on the remains of a thirteenth-century Premonstratensian monastery. In May 1465, the General Chapter of the Holy Cross convened in Huy, on the Meuse, and accepted Apell as a gift from God. The monastery dedicated to Saint Gertrude of Nivelles in Bentlage, near Rheine, was to supervise the new monastery, and it sent four priests and several lay brothers to Apell, who founded the monastery and named it Novae Domus Lucis, the "House of New Light." Construction, between 1465 and 1561, followed the medieval plan of the mother in Bentlage, and included, besides the convent building, a gatehouse, water mills, a parchment facility, a bakery, a brewery, and a guesthouse. The monastery was bequeathed a number of gifts, including a stained glass window in 1561 by Lieutenant Johan de Mepsche and his wife Agnes, depicting Moses and the tablets containing the Ten Commandments. It also derived income from other sources. The grounds surrounding the monastery were rich in loam, which was used in construction; in 1492, an agreement was signed with the adjoining municipality of Roswinkel for the digging of loam, on land leased by the monastery from the hamlet of Weerdinge. After the Reformation When the area was conquered in 1593 by