Old Mellifont

In 1140 St. Malachy, the great reforming Archbishop of Armagh, was travelling to Rome. Attracted by the fame of St. Bernard he visited Clairvaux and was so impressed that he sought the Pope’s permission to resign his bishopric and enter Clairvaux as a novice-monk. This was refused but on his return journey he left some of his companions at Clairvaux to be trained in Cistercian life with a view to founding a monastery of the Order in Ireland.

 St. Malachy chose a site for his proposed monastery five miles north of Drogheda in Co. Louth. The land and materials for the building of the new abbey were donated by the local king.

 The first group of monks, the Irishmen trained by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, accompanied by some French monks who were to direct the building of the new abbey, arrived in 1142. The construction of the new monastery was completed in 1157.

For nearly 400 years until the Reformation Mellifont Abbey flourished and was at the forefront of every movement towards reform in the Irish monasteries. It can be said that under both Irish and Norman abbots, the life of the Mellifont community was regarded, in the context of its times, as exemplary. Unfortunately by a decision of King Henry VIII in 1539 to suppress all the monasteries of his realm and to divide their possessions among his political supporters monastic life at Mellifont Abbey came to an end.

Today the ruins of the monastery stand silently on the banks of the little river Mattock, but the voices that sang the praises of God in the old stone church continue that song around the throne of God. In 1938 a new band of Cistercian monks from Mount Melleray returned to the old monastery lands less than four miles away to re-establish monastic Cistercian life in Co. Louth.