De Monasterio Desolato: Patronage and Politics in a Frontier Irish Convent

The nuns of Ballymore, Ireland, vanish from the historical record in the later fifteenth century. Previous scholarship on the house has adhered to an older view of medieval Cistercian women, suggesting that Ballymore’s failure was due to enclosure and an inability on the nuns’ part to manage their landholdings effectively. This article argues that both the foundation of the convent and its eventual disappearance owe more to political circumstances than to economic mismanagement: Ballymore was located on the border between Anglo-Irish and Gaelic-Irish areas, and the town was the caput of the de Lacys’ Westmeath manor. As the Gaelic Irish lords experienced a resurgence in power, the fortunes of the de Lacys — and therefore the nuns of Ballymore whom they patronized — went into decline.