canon law

canon law in the Irish context is found in three forms. First, in the specifically insular form, the penitentials; second, in synodal decrees, legislation presented as such (e.g. first Synod of Patrick), or as a law promulgated at a synod (e.g. the Cáin Adomnáin); third, in collectiones, law‐books for use in administration or the courts. From Ireland we have, comparatively, an embarrassment of riches in all three forms, and the earliest evidence for the interaction of Christian law with legal systems from outside the Graeco‐Roman world. Thus early Irish law manifests the influences of canon law in its language and discussions, while canon law was adapted to Irish legal practices. One of the fruits of this interchange for canon law was the development of the penitentials. This need to integrate two legal corpora, native and canon, may be seen as the distinctive feature of Irish canon law. If the lawyers of both systems were not to be continually at loggerheads, they had to be able to systematize the contents of their respective laws and develop a jurisprudence for this process. We see this in the Collectio canonum Hibernensis, compiled in Ireland in the late 7th–early 8th centuries, one of the earliest systematic codes (i.e. laws arranged by topics) of Christian law in Latin. By presenting laws in an encyclopedic, and supposedly consistent, format the differences between conflicting laws were overcome. The collectors had searched their sources for materials, and by arranging them in a system suggested that these sources were in harmony—for every judgement had its place within their collection. The Collectio also casts light on Irish society, as it draws from Irish law (e.g. on inheritance, marriage, rules of evidence, property). These links with native law made necessary a theory of the origins of both legal systems and their respective competencies. The result was the notion of a natural law functioning alongside a revealed law. Its systematic arrangement, combined with the possibility of integration with other systems, accounts for the popularity of the Collectio, both as a legal textbook and as a model of imitation and excerption, in continental Europe between the 8th and the 12th centuries.

Bibliography

Hughes, K. , Early Christian Ireland: Introduction to the Sources (1972)
O'Loughlin, T. , ‘Marriage and Sexuality in the Hibernensis’, Peritia, II (1997)

Thomas O'Loughlin