Mount Melleray Abbey is a Trappist monastery in Ireland, founded in 1833. It is situated on the slopes of the Knockmealdown Mountains, near Cappoquin, Diocese of Waterford. It is famous in literature due to Seán Ó Ríordáin's poem Cnoc Mellerí in Eireaball Spideoige. James Joyce mentions Mount Melleray in the final short story of his 1914 collection, Dubliners. In this story, entitled "The Dead", the monks of Mount Melleray are noted for their exceptional hospitality and piety.
History
The Cistercian order itself dates back to the 12th century and the Trappists to the mid-17th century. Following the suppression of monasteries in France after the French Revolution, some dispossessed Trappist monks had arrived in England in 1794 and established a monastic community in Lulworth, Dorset. The monks returned to France in 1817 to re-establish the ancient Melleray Abbey in Brittany, following the restoration of the Bourbons. During the July Revolution of 1830, the monks were again persecuted and were sent by Dom Antoine, Abbot of Melleray. to found an abbey in Ireland. The monastery was founded on 30 May 1832 at Scrahan, Cappoquin, by a colony of Irish and English monks, expelled from the abbey of Melleray, and who had come to Ireland under the leadership of Father Vincent de Paul Ryan. After many efforts to locate his community he accepted the offer of Sir Richard Keane, of Cappoquin, to rent a tract of barren mountain waste, some five hundred acres, subsequently increased to seven hundred. In the work of reclaiming the soil, they were assisted by the country folk. On the feast of St Bernard, 1833, the foundation stone of the new monastery was blessed by Dr. William Abraham, Bishop of Waterford and Lismore. It was called Mount Melleray in memory of the motherhouse. In 1835 the monastery was created an abbey, and Father Vincent, unanimously elected, received the abbatial blessing from Bishop Abraham, this being the first abbatial blessing in Ireland since the Protestant Reformation. It was from Mount Melleray that a small colony of monks was dispatched to found the English Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in 1835. Abbot Vincent vigorously undertook the work of completing the abbey, but died 9 December 1845. His successor, Dom M. Joseph Ryan, resigned after two years. To Dom Bruno Fitzpatrick, who succeeded as abbot in September, 1848, it remained to consolidate. He devoted his energy to missionary work. Building resumed in the late 1920s when Dom Marius O'Phelan bought the great cut limestone blocks from Mitchelstown Castle, which had been burnt by the local IRA on 12 August 1922. In 1925, the owners of Michelstown castle dismantled the ruins and the stones were transported from Mitchelstown by steam lorry, two consignments a day for at least five years. As the Abbey was being laid out, Dom Marius died and his successor, Dom Celsus O'Connell, continued to monumental task. He opted for a more prominent site directly over the mortal remains of 180 of his fellow Cistercians. The monks ended up with far more stones than they needed and these were eventually stacked in fields around the monastery. In 1849, Dom Bruno Fitzpatrick, who had become abbot the previous year founded New Melleray Abbey, near Dubuque, Iowa, U.S.A., and, in 1878, Mount Saint Joseph Abbey, Roscrea, Co. Tipperary, Ireland. He also founded the Ecclesiastical Seminary of Mount Melleray. Originating in a small school formed by Abbot Vincent in 1843, it was developed by Abbot Bruno and his successors. During his July 1849 visit to neighbouring Dromana House, Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle paid a visit to Mount Melleray and described the abbey in some detail, noting particularly the huge vats of "stir-about" or porridge the monks prepared for a large number of famine refugees that waited for food at the entrance to the monastery: "Entrance; squalid hordes of beggars, sit waiting" and "nasty tubs of cold stirabout for beggars". He notes that the monastery "must have accumulated several thousand pounds of property in these seventeen... years, in spite of its continual charities to beggars". Reminiscences of My Irish Journey in 1849. Thomas Carlyle, 1882. Abbot Bruno died 4 December 1893, and was succeeded by Dom Carthage Delaney, who was blessed 15 January 1894, and presided over Mount Melleray for thirteen years; his successor was Dom Marius O'Phelan, solemnly blessed by Dr. Sheahan, Bishop of Waterford, 15 August 1908. Dom O'Phelan is credited with resuming the building programme at Mount Melleray in 1925. In 1954 six monks went to found a small Trappist abbey in a remote, rural area of New Zealand, the Southern Star Abbey. Dom Eamon Fitzgerald, abbot of Mount Melleray, was elected abbot general of the order in September 2008.
