Last year we were introduced to a twelfth-century Cistercian saint, Christian O’Connarchy of Mellifont Abbey. Here is a brief reminder of him from a late nineteenth-century guide to the monastery this holy Cistercian founded:

In 1186, St. Christian O’Connarchy, or Connery, who had been the
first Abbot of Mellifont and afterwards Bishop of Lismore and Legate of
the Holy See, died, and was buried at O’Dorney, Co. Kerry, a monastery
of his Order, which was founded in 1154, from Manister-Nenay. He had
resigned all his dignities six years before, in order the better to
prepare himself for a happy death. He was enrolled in the Calendar of
the Saints of the Cistercian Order, and his festival was kept in England
in pre-Reformation times, on the 18th March. In the eulogy of him in
the Cistercian Menology it is said, “that he was remarkable for his
sanctity and wonderful miracles, and that next to St. Malachy, he was
regarded by the Irish nation as one of its principal patrons,” even down
to the time that that was written, A.D. 1630. An Irish gentleman who
visited Italy in 1858, wrote from Venice to a friend, that he had seen
amongst the fresco paintings which covered the wall of the beautiful
church of Chiara- valla, the first Cistercian monastery founded in
Italy, a painting of St. Malachy; also one entitled, “S. Christianus
Archeps. in Hibernia Cisterciensis” — “St. Christian, a Cistercian monk,
and Archbishop in Ireland.” The error in ranking him as Archbishop
probably arose from his having succeeded St. Malachy as Legate. It was
in his Legatine capacity that he presided at several Synods, chiefly the
memorable one convened by King Henry at Cashel, in 1172.

Mellifont Abbey, Co. Louth, its ruins and associations : a guide and popular history, 64.

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