Aghaboe

Aghaboe () is a small village in County Laois, Ireland. It is located on the R434 regional road in the rural hinterland west of the town of Abbeyleix.

It contains the ruins of the Abbey of Aghaboe which was founded by St. Canice in the Ossory in the 6th century and, beside it, the church that later would become the Church of Ireland church of St. Canice. At some point before the Norman invasion of Ireland, Aghaboe Abbey succeeded Seirkieran as the principle abbey in Ossory. Canice built a daughter house of Aghaboe was at Kilkenny, the principal town of Ossory. The Synod of Rathbreasail in 1111, which first divided Ireland into territorial dioceses, included both Aghaboe and Kilkenny in the Diocese of Ossory, with the episcopal see at Kilkenny, whose abbey church became St Canice's Cathedral. The erroneous belief that the see was originally at Aghaboe and later transferred to Kilkenny is traced by John Bradley to a 16th-century misinterpretation of a 13th-century property transfer.