The visitor who makes the effort to see Monasteranenagh will have a rewarding experience, writes Tadhg O’Keeffe about the early Cistercian abbey in County Limerick
The arrival in 1142 of Cistercian monks from Burgundy was a key event in the history of medieval Ireland. A movement to reform the native Irish Church had been launched half a century earlier, and its ultimate goal – to bring the structure of the church into alignment with the contemporary European Church – had already achieved considerable success. Various abusive practices had been outlawed in 1101, a new diocesan network had been created in 1111 and the Rule of St Augustine had been introduced to native monasteries in the 1120s. The foundation in 1142 of Mellifont Abbey, Co Louth, the first Cistercian house in Ireland, marked a new phase in the project to transform Irish monasticism. It was so successful a venture that, by 1153, there were no fewer than seven monasteries founded by monks who had been trained there.
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