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Críth Gablach

The Oxford Companion to Irish History | 2007 | 700+ words | Copyright

Críth Gablach is a legal tract on status, written in Irish, probably in the first half of the 8th century. It is an ambitious attempt to analyse the sources of status among the ordinary free laity; the church, the professional orders, the unfree and half‐free are mentioned only in passing. Free laymen are divided into two principal orders, commoners and nobles; kings are treated as part of the nobility. Within these two principal orders, however, there are numerous grades, and the author may have exaggerated the complexity of early Irish status. After the discussion of royal status, the text has a virtual appendix on kingship, in which kings are perceived as existing in a contractual relationship with their peoples.

Thomas M. Charles‐Edwards

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