C

CANON LAW
Canon Law, both as the actual decrees of legislators
(popes, bishops, synods) and as jurisprudence (collec-
tions of decrees, systems, and commentaries on law),
saw itself throughout the Middle Ages as in continuity
from the texts of Divine Law (i.e., the Christian Old
Testament, read as “the Law and the prophets” [cf.
Matthew 7:20]) and Christ as the new lawgiver. It drew
out this Law into its details, and applied it to new
situations. This connected dual focus, an ideal “then”
and a specific “now,” make it a source of unique value
(and complexity) to the historian. In it we observe
theconcerns of a society (e.g., power structures, land-
holding, status), how they managed problems, how they
viewed social and legal ideas (e.g., their conception of
Christianity), and their image of an ideal society.
In the insular context, Canon Law is found in three
forms. First, in that specifically insular form, the
penitentials: manuals prescribing penalties in repara-
tion for individuals’ sins. Second, in synodal legisla-
tion: both the acts of synods that took place or as
legislation that is presented as having come from a
synod (e.g., the First Synod of Patrick), and as “a
law” on specific topics such as Cáin Adomnáin(the
Law of Adomnán), which came from the Synod of
Birr (697). Third, in collectiones: law books for those
who applied the law in administration or a court
situation. From Ireland we have, comparatively, an
embarrassment of riches in all these forms from the
early medieval period, and the earliest evidence for
the interaction of Christian law with legal systems
from outside the Greco-Roman world. Thus Brehon
Law manifests the influences of Canon Law in its
language, discussions of problems, and decisions,
whereas Canon Law was adapted to Irish legal prac-
tices, expressed in canonical forms applying native
principles on matters such as land-holding, divorce
and inheritance, and procedures, and took over elements

from that law to solve difficulties that had emerged

in Canon Law in the fifth and sixth centuries on the

Continent. For example, the problems of sins after

baptism and public penance, which bedevilled Canon

Law from the fourth to the seventh century, for exam-

ple, in Spanish collections of law, were solved in

Ireland by adopting the native notion of an honor

price as a means of satisfying justice after an injury.

The crime against God was processed analogously to

a crime of an inferior against a superior in the native

system, and this solution passed through Irish legal

texts to the rest of the Latin Church (cf. Archbishop

Theodore’s judgment of the Penitential of Finnian).

This need to integrate two legal corpora—native and

canon—may be seen as a 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 jurisprudence for this process.

Wesee this occurring in the greatest product of

Irish Canon Law: the Collectio canonum hibernensis.

Compiled in Ireland in the late seventh to early

eighth century, it is one of the earliest, and possibly

the earliest, systematic presentations of Christian

law in Latin. While earlier collections were arranged

in a chronological format, the Collectio gathered

specific legal problems and judgments together

under general headings and attached to each judg-

ment its basis as law. Thus, for example, all the laws

relating to bishops (e.g. duties, powers, and selection)

were gathered into one place (Bk 1: On Bishops), and

arranged in a logical order with the particular “laws”

that might inform judgment listed in order of prece-

dence (e.g., Lex dicit[“the Old Testament says”], fol-

lowed by Synodus... dicit[the Synod of... says],

followed by X ait[the authority X has said]). In this

way the differences between legal positions, for exam-

ple, two conflicting laws from different synods, were