Malcalan (Machalan) (d. 978), Irish monk, was a companion of Cadróe (qv), whom he assisted in establishing a community at Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache (in northern France, close to the present French-Belgian border), c.945. He is reputed to have been elected abbot or prior of the community. He was later sent to the Benedictine abbey of Gorze for further training in the monastic life, while Cadróe was sent to Fleury. Malcalan later returned to Saint-Michel, where he established a reformed monastic community. He subsequently became abbot of Waulsort (in the Ardennes), which was recognised by a charter of Otto I as a monastery of the Scotti that had been given to ‘certain servants of God, coming from Ireland for the sake of pilgrimage and desiring to live under the rule of St Benedict’.
In 961 Malcalan was invited by Roric, son of Charles the Simple and bishop of Laon, to restore the church of Saint-Vincent de Laon; having become abbot, he was still in the position in 973. A treatise entitled ‘Dialogus de statu sanctae ecclesiae’, which emphasises the responsibilities of Roric towards the cathedral church of Laon, has been attributed to Malcalan. The treatise was formerly attributed to Martinus Hiberniensis (qv), master of the cathedral school at Laon, but that attribution now seems less tenable; in any case, the author was almost certainly Irish. Löwe, who edited the treatise, has argued persuasively that it was a product of the Cluniac reform then in progress in France. Malcalan died on 22 January 978.