Call us now to talk through
your Vacation options!
- USA & Canada Toll-Free
1877 298 7205
- UK FreeFone
0800 096 9438
- International
+353 69 77686
« Back
Head out into the countryside to see some of the Forty Shades of Green. Visit Jerpoint Abbey to see romantic ruins with Romanesque details and a delightful cloister arcade with unique carvings.
Jerpoint Abbey is a Cistercian abbey near Thomastown, County Kilkenny, Ireland. It was constructed in 1180, probably on the site of an earlier Benedictine monastery built in 1160 by Domnall Mac Gilla Patraic, King of Osraige. Jerpoint is notable for its stone carvings, including one at the tomb of Felix O'Dulany, Bishop of the Diocese of Ossory when the abbey was founded.
The abbey passed into the possession of James, Earl of Ormand, in 1541 and has been a national monument and has been in the care of the Office of Public Works since 1880. Close to Jerpoint Abbey, at Newtown Jerpoint, are the ruins of a church where a local legend places the grave of Saint Nicholas!
The Order of Cistercians (OCist; Latin: Cistercienses), sometimes called the White Monks (from the colour of the habit, over which a black scapular or apron is sometimes worn) is a Roman Catholic religious order of enclosed monks. The first Cistercian abbey was founded by Robert of Molesme in 1098, at Cîteaux Abbey near Dijon, France. Two others, Saint Alberic of Citeaux and Saint Stephen Harding, are considered co-founders of the order, and Bernard of Clairvaux is associated with the fast spread of the order during the 12th century.
The keynote of Cistercian life was a return to literal observance of the Rule of St Benedict. Rejecting the developments the Benedictines had undergone, the monks tried to reproduce life exactly as it had been in Saint Benedict's time; indeed in various points they went beyond it in austerity. The most striking feature in the reform was the return to manual labour, especially field-work, a special characteristic of Cistercian life. The Cistercians became the main force of technological diffusion in medieval Europe.
The Cistercians were badly affected in England by the Protestant Reformation, the Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII, the French Revolution in continental Europe, and the revolutions of the 18th century, but some survived and the order recovered in the 19th century. In 1891 certain abbeys formed a new Order called Trappists (Ordo Cisterciensium Strictioris Observantiae - OCSO), which today exists as an order distinct from the Common Observance.