Next Sunday, January 26th, 2025, will be a date of historic significance for one of Ireland’s oldest – and for hundreds of years most influential – religious orders, the Cistercians. On that date, the monks of Mount Melleray Abbey (Waterford) and New Mellifont Abbey (Louth) will relocate to join their brethren of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance at Mount Saint Joseph Abbey, Roscrea. There, they will form a new community to be known as Our Lady of Silence.
Cistercian monks first came to Ireland in 1142, at the invitation of St Malachy of Armagh, making their initial foundation at Mellifont in present-day Co Louth.
The Cistercians, inspired by St Bernard of Clairvaux, grew from the Benedictine tradition to bring 500 years of order, discipline and uniformity to European and Irish monasticism. Medieval Cistercians were distinguished by their extraordinary agricultural skills, soaring Gothic architecture and their ability to adapt to local realpolitik.
However, following the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century – the “Grey Monks” or “Na Manaigh Liath” – gradually retreated to the continent. At the time of dissolution there were 46 Cistercian foundations on the island – 43 for men and three for women. Medieval historian Barry O’Dwyer has estimated that almost a third of the arable land of Ireland was farmed by the Cistercians.
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Almost three centuries later, in 1832, the Cistercians – Trappists – returned to Ireland from La Trappe, via Melleray, in northern France, establishing themselves in Waterford at Mount Melleray and going on to found four additional houses at Mount Saint Joseph (Roscrea); New Mellifont (Louth); Portglenone (Antrim) and Bolton (Kildare.) Separately, in 1932, a community of Cistercian nuns (Trappistines) came from Stapehill in Dorset to establish St Mary’s Abbey at Glencairn, Co Waterford.
Today, although some monasteries have novices seeking the contemplative life, falling numbers and ageing communities have had to be rationalised. Abbot general Bernardus Peeters, who leads the General Chapter in Rome, initiated a review of the Irish foundations in 2023 which sought to find a way forward in consultation with the monks themselves.
The agreed course was to form one community – Our Lady of Silence – with Dom Rufus Pound as abbot. Mount Saint Joseph was perceived as the most suitable location and will now open its doors to the monks of Mellifont and Melleray although the order emphasises that this is an “interim” arrangement.
The Trappists’ withdrawal from Melleray and Mellifont must be a cause of sadness both for the monks themselves and for the communities in which they flourished since the 19th Century. Melleray, in particular, has had a tradition of receiving guests seeking spiritual refreshment or solace.
Long before modern rehabilitative services, Melleray was acknowledged for administering “the cure” for alcoholism. James Joyce refers to Melleray’s hospitality in his short story The Dead: “How bracing the air, how kind and generous the monks who never seek a penny from their guests,” hostess Mary Jane tells those gathered over dinner to celebrate Little Christmas.
Today there are about 160 Trappist monasteries around the world, with about 1,800 monks and 1,600 nuns. Not all Cistercians, however, are Trappists
The choice of name for the new community, to number about 30 monks, is contemporary and significant, reflecting Pope Francis’s invocation of Mary’s silence and his own abhorrence of harmful or hateful speech. “In a society of noise,” he has said, “silence is a prophecy of the future world.”
To emphasise the point, he has prominently installed an icon of Our Lady of Silence in the Vatican offices, depicting Mary with her finger pressed to her lips. The icon was commissioned as a gift to Pope Francis by Capuchin Fr Emiliano Antenucci.
The Carta Caritatis, attributed to the great English Cistercian St Stephen Harding, has been the constitution of the Cistercians since 1155. But at the Abbey of La Trappe, Abbot Armand de Rancé (in office 1664 to 1695) instituted a strict regime with an emphasis on austerity, labour and silence, leading to the recognition by Pope Leo XIII of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance.
Today there are about 160 Trappist monasteries around the world, with about 1,800 monks and 1,600 nuns. Not all Cistercians, however, are Trappists. The Order of Cistercians of the Common Observance, which did not embrace De Rancé’s 19th-century rule, has 74 monasteries in 11 congregations across the world.
The regime at Our Lady of Silence will be rather removed from the austerities of La Trappe. The rules on diet, on work, indeed on silence itself have been greatly relaxed, although St Bernard’s division of the monastic day into work, study and prayer remains central as does Lectio Divina, the prayers of adoration, supplication and thanksgiving, sung in choir, six times daily.
Conor Brady, a former editor of The Irish Times, is honorary professor of journalism at the University of Galway. He received his secondary education at Cistercian College Roscrea, established as a boarding school for boys in 1905 by the Cistercian monks of Mount Saint Joseph Abbey
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