HIBERNO-LATIN LITERATURE
penitential is next and then the great penitential of
Cummian the Tall, dating from the mid-seventh century.
There are many others, including a short collection of
canons attributed to Adomnán, and also a number in
Old Irish penitentials based upon Latin originals.
Canon Law
Canon law texts include the so-called First and the
Second Synods of Patrick. The First Synod is a very
early document ascribed to Patrick, Auxilius, and
Isserninus. Though it survives in the form in which it
was used during the Romani reform, it may be based
upon an original from the fifth or sixth century. The
Second Synod is an interesting collection of decisions
upon various matters, specifically of the Romani
reform movement of the seventh century. The early-
eighth-century compilation of Irish canon law known
as the Collectio canonum Hibernensis, put together for
the use of an Irish church unified after the divisions of
the Paschal controversy, is one of the earliest system-
atic canon collections. Other miscellaneous canonical
documents also survive.
Theological Literature
There are several interesting theological and Scriptural
treatises surviving from before 700, including the ear-
liest treatises on the Catholic Epistles from the Latin
church, and a commentary on Mark. The earliest datable
text, composed in 655, is De mirabilibus Sacrae Scrip-
turae (Wonders of the Holy Scripures), by an author
using the name of Augustinus. In the naively rational-
istic spirit of the Middle Ages, it attempts to give a
physical explanation for the miracles in the Bible—for
example, the sun standing still at Joshua’s command,
Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea dry-shod,
and an interesting explanation of tidal flow. The most
widely diffused text, of which there are many hundreds
of manuscripts and vernacular translations, is a descrip-
tion of the twelve sources of moral evil in the world and
their remedy,De XII abusivis, written between 630 and
- Some of the other interesting compositions of
the period are Adomnán’s tract on the Holy Places
of Palestine (De locis sanctis), the Pseudo-Isidorian
theological-cosmological treatise De ordine creaturarum
and Dicuil’s De mensura orbis terrae.
Epistolography
Quite a number of letters, both open and private, sur-
vive. These include the famous letters of Columbanus;
the letter written in 632 and 633 to abbot Segéné of
Iona, probably by Cummian the Tall, relating to the
Easter question; and that known as Colmán’s Letter to
Feradach on the textual emendation of the poet Caelius
Sedulius and other texts.The Computus
The calculation of the Easter term, or computus, was
of great importance throughout Christendom and of
particular interest to the insular churches from earliest
times. The foundation of the insular computus was the
tract known as De ratione Paschali, for long described
as “an insular forgery,” but now known to be a fourth-
century Latin translation of a treatise written by Ana-
tolius, the third-century bishop of Laodicea. Other
important tracts are the seventh-century De ratione
computandiand Cummian’s epistle. A considerable
amount of this material survives only in manuscript.
Bede and the Anglo-Saxons drew much of their com-
putational knowledge from the Irish.Liturgical
A great mass of hymns and other liturgical pieces
survive from the earliest period up to the eleventh
century. One of the earliest manuscripts is the Antipho-
nary of Bangor, written from 680 to 691. There are
some palimpsested Continental codices and fragments
and later Irish martyrologies, missals, sacramentaries,
hymnals, and so forth. They show the eclectic range
of sources from which the Irish and Welsh churches
drew their liturgy—from Rome, Gaul, Moorish Spain,
and Antioch.Scholastic Texts
There are also some scholastic texts, including the
pseudo-grammatical treatises and letters of Virgilius
Maro, who may have been Irish, and pieces written
in an extravagant Latin style known as Hisperic, such
as the Hisperica Famina, and some amulet poems or
loricae.Charters
There are no surviving seventh-century charters, but
the evidence of the Patrician dossier, which refers to
early church and monastic foundation documents, indi-
cates that there might once have been. Unlike Francia
and Anglo-Saxon England, Ireland has only about
twelve pre-twelfth-century charters, nine of which
were copied into the Book of Kells.