In 1190, Pope Clement III. issued a Bull addressed to the General Chapter of the Cistercian Order, dated July 6th of that year, enrolling St. Malachy in the Calendar of Saints, and appointing the 3rd of November for his festival.
At that same General Chapter, it was decreed that the Irish Abbots be dispensed from attending the General Chapter annually, and it was decided that they should be present every third year; and a few years later, the Abbot of Mellifont was charged to select three of their number who should repair thither every year.
In 1193, Dervorgilla died at the monastery of Mellifont. The Annals of the Four Masters and other Annals simply relate the fact of her having died there in the 85th year of her age, without alluding to the place of her sepulture.
In that year, also, portions of the Relics of St. Malachy were brought to Mellifont and were distributed to the other houses of the Order in Ireland. Several of our Annals say that the Saint’s body was brought over from Clairvaux, but that is obviously a mistake; for until the French Revolution, the bodies of St. Malachy and St. Bernard occupied two magnificent altar-tombs of red marble within the chancel, at Clairvaux. A charter, dated 1273, is still extant, whereby Robert Bruce, the rival of John Baliol for the Scottish Crown, conveys his land of Osticroft to the Abbot of Clairvaux for the maintenance of a lamp before St. Malachy’s tomb in that church. And the General Chapter of the Order held in 1323, when raising the Saint’s festival to a higher rank, expressly mentioned that his body “rested” at Clairvaux. Meglinger, a German Cistercian monk, who visited Clairvaux in 1667, and wrote a description of that famous abbey as he beheld it, says that he was shown the heads of Saints Malachy and Bernard, which were preserved in silver cases. He also mentions the superb altar-tombs of the two Saints. Later on, the two celebrated Benedictine monks, Dom Martène and Dom Durand, when in quest of MSS., called at Clairvaux, and were shown the tombs and heads of the Saints. It is scarcely necessary to remark that this respect and veneration were entertained for the tombs only because they contained the bodies of the holy men.
In 1194, Abbot Moelisa, who then governed Mellifont, was made Bishop of Clogher.
CHAPTER VI.
MELLIFONT IN TROUBLOUS TIMES.
| “But I must needs confess That ’tis a thing impossible to frame Conceptions equal to the soul’s desires; And the most difficult of tasks to keep Heights which the soul is competent to gain.” (Wordsworth.) |