Boyle Abbey, Boyle

Boyle Abbey was the first successful foundation in Connacht of the Cistercian order which had opened its first Irish house at Mellifont, County Louth, in 1142.
In the 12th century Malachy of Armagh became aware of two new monastic orders in France, the Cistercians and the Cannons Regular of St. Augustine and he decided to introduce both orders to Ireland in an effort to reform the old Irish church which, both morally and organizationally, had fallen out of line with much of the rest of Christian Europe.
The first Cistercian Abbey was founded at Mellifont, Co. Louth. St. Malachy made arrangements that young aspirant Irish men who want to become Cistercians should be trained in St. Bernard’s own monastery of Clairvaux or one of its daughter houses.
The Cistercians wanted to found an abbey in Moylurg as a daughter house of Mellifont and they did try to find a suitable place. They tried Grellachdinach and Drumcunny. By 1148 the Celtic monastery of ATH-DA-LARAG had either very few monks or none at all. So Taoiseach McGreevy, a local chieftain, negotiated and gave the Celtic monastery of ATH-DA-LARAG in “pure free and perpetual alms” to the Cistercians.
The Cistercians were welcomed and given land grants of about 50000acre scattered west of the River Shannon in 27 out-farms called granges. The Cistercians respected their Celtic monastic buildings. They did not demolish them, but joined their own buildings onto the original ones at ATH-DA-LARAG.