Living with the religious past: heritage-making as progressive nostalgia at St. Agatha Monastery

Catholic monasteries in Western Europe are in a state of prolonged decline, and in response monastic communities are actively shaping the ‘afterlife’ of their legacy through heritage-making. This article argues that heritage-making in this context is driven by an anticipatory progressive nostalgia: the belief that safeguarding monastic heritage can inspire an impulse towards societal engagement. We examine this dynamic through St. Agatha Monastery, the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the Netherlands, which has hosted the Heritage Centre for Dutch Consecrated Life since 2006, a centre that houses the archives of most religious institutes in the Netherlands. Most recently, a lay group has taken up residence in part of the site, in an attempt to engage with monastic values and practices. By focusing on these different forms of heritage-making, we uncover both the promise and precarity of anticipated progressive nostalgia, raising questions about the continuity of monastic traditions through their heritagisation in secularising contexts.