My writer friend Paul Kingsnorth tips me off to a marvelous project in rural Ireland: the establishment of an Orthodox women’s monastery by some Romanian nuns. The Orthodox Monastery of the Life ...

Important European universities began as Irish monasteries, built by literati that left Ireland with the education to teach the chaotic post-Roman world to read. Old Irish books are tortured ...

Along the same lines, you have done a lot of research on monastic life in medieval Ireland, some of which you presented at the Burns Lecture earlier this month. The common perception of monasteries is ...

Ireland is at its greenest in County Wicklow ... where there are a couple of inns and cafés and the remains of Glendalough's medieval monastery. Its tower still stands, and the graveyard holds ...

Colmcille’s appeal endures in the north and northwest of Ireland. Derry derives its name from Doire Colmcille, meaning Colmcille’s oak grove, for he founded a monastery there. In Gartan on ...

"They took a European model, so if you think of the old Irish monasteries like a Nendrum, you'd have a round tower with your church in the centre. "But with this you'd have a cloister. That's a ...