MARRIAGEand status. Marriage among the lower classes counted
for little or nothing—they had no birthright, little
property, and lived outside the bounds of decent,
respectable society. Cáin Lánamna is similarly con-
cerned with property transference in the marital union
and with the arrangements for its distribution in the
event of separation. It emphatically does not deal with
moral issues—although it states that marriage should
not be entered into “with mutual deceit”—or with
any area of the marital relationship falling within the
sphere of canon law. Matters relating to morality in
marriage and the family were more properly dealt
with in canon law. The earliest piece of canonical
legislation that has canons relating to marriage is the
so-called “Second Synod of Patrick,” a collection of
31 canons from the seventh century. It is the only
synodal document to survive from the pre-Norman
Irish Church in its entirety, and is therefore a valuable
witness to the type of legislation being passed by the
church at the same time as Cáin Lánamna was being
drawn up. Several of its canons concern marriage,
betrothal, adultery, and canonical incest by affinity
or marriage.
Native lawyers distinguished three principal kinds
of marriage: lánamnas comthinchuir, “a marriage of
joint income,” lánamnas for ferthinchur, “a marriage
on a man’s income,” and lánamnas for bantinchur,
“marriage on a woman’s contribution.” The first kind
seems to have been the normative form of marriage.
Marriage was publicly sealed by arnaidm, “binding,
tying,” marked by the formal exchange of property
between the families of the bride and groom, and
was witnessed and secured by guarantors of appro-
priate status. The giving of property or wealth from
the man or his family to the bride’s family, known
in Roman law as donatio ante nuptias, was rooted
in Germanic and Celtic law. The giving of such a
gift may not have been essential to a marriage, but
no good marriage was complete without it. Conse-
quently most of the preliminaries about marriage
were concerned with the size of the dowry, because
that determined the character of the marriage, as is
clear from the three principal forms of marriage
discussed in Cáin Lánamna. The introduction of a
betrothal contract, sealed with a vow, was made by
the church. The right of the woman to choose her
own partner was severely limited. As Synodus II
Patriciiputs it: “The maiden shall do what the father
wishes, because ‘the man is the head of the woman’
(Eph 5:23). But the father must ascertain the will of
the maiden, for ‘He [God] left man in the hands of
his own counsel’ (Sir 15:14)” (can. 27). If the woman
married without her parents’ consent, or refused to
accept the partner chosen for her, she could forfeit
her right to the family inheritance. The law generally
tried to protect women against gross abuse, such as
being forced into marriage by someone who only
had his own interests at heart. In comparison with
the male-dominated prescriptions of Roman law,
which upheld a double standard, one for men and
quite another for women, Brehon law was quite lib-
eral and compassionate, and permitted divorce to
women for several reasons.
Some of the prescriptions on marriage in the Col-
lectio canonum Hibernensis, Book 46 (De ratione mat-
rimonii), are (1) that the bride should be virginal and
the marriage ceremony properly and publicly con-
ducted; (2) That she should remain faithful to her hus-
band (46:2); (3) That either partner should put aside
the other for adultery until she/he does penance, after
which they may be reconciled, which marked a break
with earlier ecclesiastical practice; (4) that neither part-
ner may remarry while the other is alive (46:15); (5)
that it is permissible to remarry after the death of one’s
partner, but it is more acceptable before God to remain
chaste (46:13b), more especially for the woman; and
(6) that a surviving brother should never marry his late
brother’s wife (46:35,: also Synodus II Patricii, can.
25), a prescription clearly not observed in medieval
Irish society.
Essentially, the Collectio Hibernensisprovides an
idealized statement of Christian society, in which all
eventualities or possibilities were provided for. The
canonists knew better than we do just how little
observed in fact these prescriptions were: polygamy,
concubinage (among lay as well as clergy), arbitrary
repudiation, incest, and multiple serial unions were
common in Irish and other societies throughout the
Middle Ages. The notion of the ubiquitous validity of
legal norms, such as exists in the modern state,
scarcely existed. It is precisely for this reason that
some of the canons of the Collectioare inconsistent
or repetitive, a feature it fully shared with earlier canon
law and the barbarian law-codes: different circum-
stances and different schools of law gave rise to dif-
ferent judgments. In addition, no distinction was made
between canon law or ethics and theology: the same
group of people drew up penitential decrees, with their
tariffs of penance, which included prayer, fasting, pros-
trations, almsgiving, and temporary sequestration with
Scripture reading. The sanctions of Brehon law were
largely monetary. Later Irish synods issued and reis-
sued canons against simony, clerical marriage, the
freedom of the church from rent and exaction, and
incestuous marriage (a matter complained of by both
Lanfranc and Anselm), but apparently without much
effect.
A. BREEN