Mellifont Abbey, Co. Louth

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[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW. From Photo by W. Lawrence, Dublin.]

MELLIFONT ABBEY, CO. LOUTH:

Its Ruins and Associations. A Guide and Popular History.

"A house of prayer, once consecrate To God's high service--desolate! A ruin where once stood a shrine! Bright with the Presence all divine!" (W. Chatterton Dix.)

Permissu Superiorum.

Published by James Duffy & Co., Ltd., Dublin, for the Cistercians, Mount St. Joseph Abbey, Roscrea. 1897.

Printed by Edmund Burke & Co., 61 & 62 Great Strand Street, Dublin.

INTRODUCTION.

In the following pages an attempt is made to describe the ruins of Mellifont as they now appear, and to explain the uses, or probable uses, that the buildings yet remaining must have served when the monks dwelt there. Obviously, some important structural alterations were made when changing the venerable Abbey into a fortified residence; nevertheless the ruins exhibit, on the whole, the characteristics of the primitive plan and style in which Mellifont, as well as all the Cistercian monasteries both in this country and on the Continent, were built. The explanation is founded on reliable authority, being gleaned from most authentic sources, such as, Les Monuments Primitifs de La Règle Cistercienne, which is a copy of the Rule drawn up by the Founders of the Order; the Monasticon Cisterciense; Violet Le Duc; Jubainville, Etudes sur l'Etat intérieur des Abbayes Cisterciennes au XII. et au XIII. siècle; Meglinger, Iter Cisterciense; La Vie de Saint Bernard, by Vacandard, etc.

As no Records, or Chronicles of Mellifont now exist, the historical part of the compilation has been derived from different sources, chiefly from our old Annals--The Annals of the Four Masters; those of Boyle, of St. Mary's Abbey, Dublin; Clyn and Dowling's; and of Clonmacnois; Ware's Bishops, etc.; the Miscellany of the Archæological Society; Ussher's Sylloge; Morrin's Calendars of Patent Rolls, etc. The part relating to disciplinary subjects was drawn principally from Martène's Thesaurus Anecdotorum, Vol. IV., which contains the Decrees of the General Chapter of the Cistercian Order, also, from the Constitutiones et Privilegia, Menologium, and the Fasiculus Sanctorum Ordinis Cisterciensis, by Henriquez; Originum Cisterciensium, tom. I, Janauschek; l'Histoire de La Trappe, Gaillardin, etc. The vindication of monks in general, from the aspersions cast on them by their enemies, and the facts appertaining to the Rebellion of 1641, are borrowed exclusively from Protestant sources,--Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum, Tanner's Notitia Monastica, Maitland's Dark Ages, Leland's History of Ireland, Temple's History of the Insurrection, 1641, Tichborne's History of the Siege of Drogheda, Carte's Ormond, etc.