Making Laws for a Christian Society: The Hibernensis and the Beginnings of Church Law in Ireland and Britain 1351267248, 9781351267243

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Manuscripts and sigla
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Hibernensis in context
Authorship and date
Recensions
Structure and contents
Chapter 2: Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis
The development of collections: a brief history
Systematic collections and the authority of collections
Canonical collections and their recensions
From the Carolingian era to the Gregorian reform
Chapter 3: Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law
The synod as a mechanism for church legislation
Direct connections between authors and compilers
Direct borrowings between texts
The intersection of texts in their manuscript transmission
Unique insular themes which may constitute a common ‘insular tradition’
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Irish vernacular law and church law
i. Perceptions of social and political structures
ii. The concept of ‘natural law’/‘the law of nature’
iii. Pastoral care
iv. Tithes
v. Burial
vi. Fathers and sons
vii. Oblates
viii. Abbatial succession
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Deploying sources
Insular material in the Hibernensis
Irish councils
Unidentified sources of likely Irish origin
A case study: the Chronicle of Pseudo-Origen
Conclusion
Chapter 6: The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law
The Bible-text of the Hibernensis
Exegesis and its applications
Exegesis, contradictions and legislation
Chapter 7: Reception and practice: Brittany as a case study
Manuscripts of the Hibernensis with Breton connections
A political dimension
Modified copies of the Hibernensis
The Hibernensis and the Breton church: a recapitulation
Conclusion
Appendix I: A Synopsis of the Hibernensis and Cop, fols. 69v–80v1
A Synopsis of the Hibernensis and Cop, fols. 69v–80v
Appendix II: Texts attributed to annales with and without additional qualifiers
Texts attributed to annales with and without additional qualifiers
Appendix III: Texts attributed to Origen (Origenes)
Texts attributed to Origen (Origenes)
Bibliography
Primary sources
Secondary literature
Manuscript Index
General Index

Citation preview

Making Laws for a Christian Society

This is the first comprehensive study of the contribution that texts from Britain and Ireland made to the development of canon law in early medieval Europe. The book concentrates on a group of insular texts of church law—chief among them the Irish Hibernensis—tracing their evolution through mutual influence, their debt to late antique traditions from around the Mediterranean, their reception (and occasional rejection) by clerics in continental Europe, their fusion with continental texts, and their eventual impact on the formation of a European canonical tradition. Canonical collections, penitentials, miscellanies of church law, and royal legislation are all shown to have been ‘living texts’, which were continually reshaped through a process of trial and error that eventually gave rise to a more stable and more coherent body of church laws. Through a meticulous text-critical study Roy Flechner argues that the growth of church law in Europe owes as much to a serendipitous ‘conversation’ between texts as it does to any deliberate plan overseen by bishops and popes. Roy Flechner is Associate Professor at University College Dublin. He has held Research Fellowships at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and at the Freie Universität in Berlin. His other books include The Hibernensis (in two volumes), and Saint Patrick Retold.

Studies in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland Series editors:

Joanna E. Story, University of Leicester, UK Roy Flechner, University College Dublin, Ireland Studies in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland illuminates the history of Britain and Ireland from the start of the fifth century to the establishment of Frenchspeaking aristocracies in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for historians, archaeologists, philologists and literary and cultural scholars. It explores the origins of British society, of communities, and political, administrative and ecclesiastical institutions. It was in the early middle ages that the English, Welsh, Scots and Irish defined and distinguished themselves in language, customs and territory and the successive conquests and settlements lent distinctive Anglo- Saxon, Scandinavian and Norman elements to the British ethnic mix. Royal dynasties were established and the landscape took a form that can still be recognised today; it was then too that Christian churches were established with lasting results for our cultural, moral, legal and intellectual horizons. Studies in Early Medieval Britain and Ireland reveals these roots and makes them accessible to a wide readership of scholars, students and lay people. Other titles in the series Making Laws for a Christian Society Roy Flechner History and Salvation in Medieval Ireland Elizabeth Boyle Bede and the Cosmos Eoghan Ahern Bede and Time Máirín MacCarron Alfred the Great Edited by Timothy Reuter Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald Edited by Stephen Baker, Catherine Karkov, Janet L. Nelson and David Pelteret Women’s Names in Old English Elisabeth Okasha Sustaining Belief Francesca Tinti The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past Edited by Martin Brett and David A. Woodman

Making Laws for a Christian Society The Hibernensis and the Beginnings of Church Law in Ireland and Britain Roy Flechner

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Roy Flechner The right of Roy Flechner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Names: Flechner, Roy, 1975- author. Title: Making laws for a Christian society : the Hibernensis and the beginnings of church law in Ireland and Britain / Roy Flechner. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series: Studies in early medieval Britain and Ireland | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020045348 (print) | LCCN 2020045349 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138577268 (hardback) | ISBN 9781351267243 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Ecclesiastical law–Great Britain–History. | Ecclesiastical law–Ireland–History. | Great Britain–Church history. | Ireland–Church history. | Canon law–History. | Canon law–Manuscripts. Classification: LCC KJC5527 .F54 2021 (print) | LCC KJC5527 (ebook) | DDC 262.9/22–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045348 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020045349 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-57726-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-72586-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-26724-3 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by SPi Global, India

Contents

Preface vi Abbreviations viii Manuscripts and sigla x Introduction

1

1 The Hibernensis in context

10

2 Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis

24

3 Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law

47

4 Irish vernacular law and church law

68

5 Deploying sources

89

6 The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law

111

7 Reception and practice: Brittany as a case study

131

Conclusion

152

Appendix I:

A synopsis of the Hibernensis and Cop, fols. 69v–80v

157

Appendix II: Texts attributed to annales with and without additional qualifiers

163

Appendix III: Texts attributed to Origen (Origenes)

166



Bibliography 170 Manuscript Index 187 General Index 189

Preface

The early development of church law on the European Continent owes much to the contribution of insular European texts. Some of these texts found their way to the Continent by familiar routes trodden by insular missionaries and church leaders, whose impact on continental religious practice and church organisation was no less pronounced. Once on the Continent, many of these texts were adapted to suit local circumstances, institutional conventions, or prevalent scholarly discourses, and some were fused with pre-existing texts to form new works, which themselves underwent changes later on. Remarkably, a number of insular canonical texts that had been modified on the Continent made their way back to Britain and Ireland, where they enjoyed a new lease of life in later periods and in different contexts from those for which they were originally intended. This process of continual re-working and adaptation of texts on the move is a defining feature of the development of church law in the early medieval period, which is why some scholars refer to early canonical works by the expression ‘living texts’. In studying them one must face up to the usual difficulties that afflict much of the normative material from the period: there is very little that can be gauged about practice, and our knowledge of the circumstances in which texts were reworked is patchy at best. As an alternative, textual criticism presents itself as a crucial tool for writing a history of church law in this period, and it helps to compensate for the deficit in other types of evidence. The present volume applies text-critical methods to investigate the dynamism of a group of insular texts, most of which can be shown to be connected with one another, directly or indirectly. The Hibernensis stands out from this group for its size, its comprehensiveness, its systematic arrangement, its thematic breadth, and its unusually rich pool of sources. It was, in fact, the most systematic and comprehensive canonical collection of its day, and—to judge by the dissemination of its manuscript copies and by the texts that were excerpted from it—it was also among the most influential. Having edited and translated the Hibernensis into English I then wanted to allow readers to be able to contextualise the text broadly in the history of the development of canonical learning in the insular region and beyond. This was how the present monograph came into being. It aims in the first place to be informative and is likely to be used primarily as a work of reference by those interested in either detail or context concerning early medieval insular canonical works and

Preface  vii their impact. Some chapters, however, are more analytical, and they explore also aspects of jurisprudence relating to contemporary canon law, a concept that is itself problematised in different places in this book. My work on this book could not have been completed without the generosity of friends and colleagues, who read draft chapters and contributed important insights as well as numerous corrections. They are: Conor O’Brien, Rob Meens, Helle Vogt, Sven Meeder, Christof Rolker, Fangzhe Qiu, Michael Elliot, and the anonymous reader who peer-reviewed the manuscript for publication. I am grateful to them all. Berlin

Abbreviations

Ancient Laws of Ireland ed. J. O’Donovan et al. 6 vols (Dublin, 1865–1901) AU Annals of Ulster, ed. S. Mac Airt and G. Mac Niocaill (Dublin, 1983) BCLL M. Lapidge and R. Sharpe, Bibliography of Celtic-Latin Literature 400–1200 (Dublin, 1985) Bede, HE Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. and tr. Bertram Colgrave and Roger Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1969) Bieler, Penitentials L. Bieler, ed. and tr., The Irish Penitentials (Dublin, 1963) CCCM Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis (Turnhout, 1966–) CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Turnhout, 1953–) CIH Corpus Iuris Hibernici, ed. D. A. Binchy, 6 vols (Dublin, 1978) CLA Codices Latini antiquiores, ed. E. A. Lowe, 12 vols (Oxford, 1934–1972) CLH Clavis Litterarum Hibernensium. Medieval Irish Books & Texts (c. 400 – c. 1600), ed. D. Ó Corráin, 3 vols (Turnhout, 2017) Córus Bésgnai Córus Bésgnai. An Old Irish Law Tract on the Church and Society, ed. and tr. L. Breatnach (Dublin, 2017), 26–47 CPL E. Dekkers and E. Gaar, Clavis Patrum Latinorum, 3rd ed. (Steenbrugge, 1995) EOMIA Ecclesiae occidentalis monumenta iuris antiquissima, ed. C. H. Turner, 2 vols (Oxford, 1899–1939) GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte (Leipzig and Berlin, 1897–) GEIL F. Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin, 1988) Hib.A, Hib.B Collectio Hibernensis (Recensions A, B) AL

Abbreviations  ix Hibernensis J3 Kenney, Sources MGH Auct. ant. MGH, Conc. MGH, Epist. PASE PRIA SLH

The Hibernensis, ed. R. Flechner, 2 vols (Washington, DC, 2019) P. Jaffé, Regesta pontificum Romanorum… editio tertia, ed. M. Schütz et al., 3 vols (Göttingen, 2016–2017) J. F. Kenney, The Sources for the Early History of Ireland: Ecclesiastical (Columbia, NY, 1929). Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Auctores antiquissimi Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Concilia Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Epistolae Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, at http://www.pase.ac.uk Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C Scriptores Latini Hiberniae (Dublin, 1955–)

Manuscripts and sigla

A B C Cop D E H I K L Lm M O O2 P Q S V W Θ

Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale, 221 (193), saec. VIII2/IX1 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 3182, saec. X/XI Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, 679 (619), AD 763×790 Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Ny. Kgl. S. 58 8°, saec. VIII1 Monte Cassino, Archivio e Biblioteca dell’Abbazia, 297, saec. XI London, British Library, Royal 5 E.XIII, saec. IX Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 42, saec. IX1–X Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 522, saec. IX Cologne, Dombibliothek, 210, saec. VIII Livorno, Biblioteca Labronica, sine numero, saec. XI/XII London, Lambeth Palace, 1231, saec. IX Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4592, saec. IX–XI London, British Library, Cotton Otho E. XIII, saec. X/XI O, fols. 128r–149v Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 12021, saec. IX Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 12444, saec. VIII–IX St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 243, saec. IX2 Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, T. XVIII, saec. X Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 279, saec. IX2 Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, Mp. th. q. 31, saec. VIII/IX

Introduction

The study of canon law and canonical collections of the post-Roman Latin West continues to contend with a number of fundamental unresolved questions: When did contemporaries begin to recognise ‘canon law’ as a concept and for what purposes? How clear a demarcation can be drawn between ‘canon law’ and ‘secular law’ in the first millennium? What texts or authoritative pronouncements may be classified as ‘canon law’ in this period? Whether and in what circumstances was ‘canon law’ binding and on whom?1 These questions are as pertinent to the collection at the heart of the present study, the Collectio Hibernensis, as they are to other normative texts discussed here, some of which have been classified as ‘canon law’ for no reason other than historical accident.2 Leaving aside for the moment the appropriateness of the use of the term ‘law’ in relation to these texts, the application of the expression ‘canon law’ (or the less technical ‘ecclesiastical law’) in contradistinction to other forms of law—especially ‘secular’—is not unproblematic. There are, nevertheless, late antique and early medieval texts that can unequivocally be labelled ‘canon law’ even by a narrow understanding of this expression. Such are, for example, the acta (decrees) of church councils, which reflect ecclesiastical opinion, which were instigated by bishops or even by popes, and which address strictly ecclesiastical matters (examples are discussed in Chapter 2). More often, however, classification is not as straightforward as this. What of a text commissioned by a Christian emperor and containing rulings regarding the church, like the sixteenth book of the Codex Theodosianus? What of Carolingian imperial capitularies that have been classified in the ninth century by Ansegis as ecclesiastical? We may be loath to call them ‘canon law’ but ‘secular law’ does not seem wholly appropriate either. Are they a hybrid form of imperial legislation with a strong religious aspect? Are they neither this nor that? And what about a text like the Hibernensis, which was written in Ireland, but in Latin, which has not been promulgated by either a secular or 1  A recent discussion is Reynolds, ‘Normative texts and practices’. For an explication of

some of these questions for non-experts, see Rennie, Medieval Canon Law.

2  Davies, ‘Isidorian texts and the Hibernensis’, 210–211, summarises the debate on clas-

sifying the Hibernensis formally.

2  Introduction an ecclesiastical authority, which is likely to have been written by clerics, which addresses several matters that are ecclesiastical but which also contains rulings on kinship, on kingship, and on several other matters that are ostensibly secular? Is it more or less ecclesiastical than a text like Córus Bésgnai (discussed in Chapter 4), which was written in Ireland, but in Old Irish, which addresses questions of the relationship between churches and laypersons but which has much in common in form and legal conceptions with texts that scholars typically classify as Irish vernacular law of the secular variety?3 There is no accepted standard by which to distinguish either text as wholly ‘ecclesiastical’ or wholly ‘secular’, nor should we be tempted to contrive an artificial standard to circumvent the problem. Rather it must be recognised that any argument for classification, however convincing it may at first seem, is bound to have an element of arbitrariness when faced with the complexities of such texts. It follows that the present study’s attempts to classify the Hibernensis and other texts cannot be entirely conclusive. These caveats notwithstanding, classification is essential for enabling a discussion, provided that that classification is problematised (as in Chapters 2, 4) with the aim of seeking refinement and of striving for a deeper understanding of the identity of the texts and their relationship with their authors and their intended audiences. To this end, instead of imposing definitions the present study seeks to infer generic and functional identities from the texts themselves, which all too often defy standard modern scholarly taxonomies. In the absence of a received definition for what constitutes ‘canon law’ in the first millennium, there is no self-evident criterion for determining which texts should be the subject of the present study. The least controversial way forward, therefore, is to open the discussion by adhering to the consensus, as inferred from scholarly practice. As a baseline index of early texts from both Ireland and Britain, which constitute ecclesiastical law of one kind or another, I offer a list that conveniently follows a classification based in the main on standard repertories: Clavis Patrum Latinorum (CPL), A Bibliography of Celtic-Latin Literature (BCLL), and Clavis Litterarum Hibernensium (CLH): 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Excerpta quedam de Libro Dauidis (BCLL §144) Sinodus Luci Victoriae (BCLL §145) Sinodus Aquilonalis Britaniae (BCLL §146) Praefatio de poenitentia [attrib. Gildas] (BCLL §147) Libellus responsionum4 (CPL §1714; J3 2970) Acta of the synods of Hertford and Hatfield5

3  See the classification in GEIL 281–283, where the primary criterion applied for distin-

guishing ‘canon law’ from ‘ecclesiastical legislation’ in ambiguous cases is linguistic: the former comprises texts in Latin and the latter in Old Irish. 4  The most recent edition is Mattaloni (ed), Rescriptum beati Gregorii papae ad Augustinum. A copy of the Libellus is incorporated into Bede, HE, 1.27, Colgrave and Mynors (ed and tr), 78–103. 5 Bede, HE, 4.5, 4.17[15], Colgrave and Mynors (ed), 348–352, 384–388.

Introduction  3 7. The Canons of Archbishop Theodore6 (CPL §1885) 8. Penitential attributed to Egbert7 (CPL §1887) 9. Poenitentiale Vinniani (CLH §580; BCLL §598) 10. Poenitentiale Cummeani (CLH §581; BCLL §601) 11. Poenitentiale Ambrosianum (CLH §581a) 12. Poenitentiale Bigotianum (CLH §582; BCLL §614) 13. Old-Irish Penitential (CLH §583) 14. Old-Irish Table of Commutations (CLH §584) 15. Collectio Hibernensis8 (CLH §615; BCLL §§612, 613) 16. Synodus Episcoporum [‘First Synod of Patrick’] (CLH §616; BCLL §599) 17. Synodus Patricii [‘Second Synod of Patrick’] (CLH §617; BCLL §600) 18. De disputatione Hibernensis synodi (CLH §§618; BCLL §602) 19. Synodus sapientium de decimis (CLH §§618; BCLL §604) 20. Synodus Hibernensis (CLH §§618; BCLL §605) 21. De iectione ecclesiae graduum (CLH §§618; BCLL §606) 22. De canibus synodus sapientium (CLH §§618; BCLL §607) 23. De arreis (CLH §§618; BCLL §603) 24. Three Irish Canons (CLH §619; BCLL §608) 25. Canones Adomnani (CLH §621; BCLL §609) These texts, which date from between the sixth and the mid eighth century, far outnumber the surviving royal legislation for the same period from Britain and Ireland.9 This imbalance is in keeping with what we can observe elsewhere in the Latin West, where texts conventionally classified as canon law collections from late antiquity and the early middle ages are more abundant than law codes issued by kings, which are commonly regarded as ‘secular’. A rough measure of the scale of surviving canon law collections from the Latin West can be obtained from the latest standard reference book, which lists approximately seventy canonical collections before the eleventh-century Gregorian Reform.10 Hence, the distinction between what may tentatively be labelled ‘ecclesiastical’ law and ‘secular’ law can also be said to be one of scale. To identify ‘ecclesiastical’ and ‘secular’ laws by distinguishing, as I did in the previous paragraph, between the instigators of legislation or codification—either kings or clerics—is of course also an arbitrary contrast, all the more so when 6  The edition used here, by P. W. Finsterwalder, is the only edition in print to consist of

(nearly) all Theodoran texts. The latest edition, published online, is by Michael Elliot, at http://individual.utoronto.ca/michaelelliot 7  The standard edition, despite its vintage, remains Wasserschleben (ed), Bussordnungen, 231–247. 8  The edition used here is Flechner, Hibernensis, which appeared after the publication of CLH and is mentioned therein as forthcoming. 9  For royal legislation in Ireland we have only two surviving cánai, but these can also be considered ecclesiastical. See Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 524. Note that the Old-Irish Penitential may date from the ninth century. 10  Kéry, Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages.

4  Introduction some kings can be shown to have legislated or codified as part of an ideological programme to promote their Christian credentials.11 In Ireland the criterion of instigation is complicated further by the fact that surviving legal texts promulgated by kings are extremely rare, and much ambiguity remains in the case of texts which were written by clerics—the majority of surviving texts—but which address predominantly secular matters (see Chapters 2, 4). Nevertheless, this arbitrary criterion has the virtue of focusing attention on the question of legitimation by authority. There are good examples of texts, mainly penitentials from both Ireland and Britain, that seek to legitimise themselves by invoking the authority of prominent clerics, some of whom can be identified historically, but others, who are referred to by pseudonyms, cannot be identified. With the exception of Cáin Adomnáin, also known as the Law of Innocents, promulgated at the Synod of Birr in 697 by a combination of leading kings and clerics, there is no definite example of a surviving text from Ireland that was explicitly sanctioned by clerics. With the absence of clerical promulgation or explicit endorsement being a normal feature of texts commonly (and loosely) classified as church law in the insular region but also beyond, questions naturally arise about the authority of such texts, whether they issued from provincial councils, from ecumenical councils, or from papal directives. In particular, one would like to know to what extent these texts were considered binding. The answer varies according to period and context but a certain trajectory towards an ever more binding status can arguably be observed, especially in relation to the role of popes and their attitude to councils. Even if it were possible to arrive at a compelling definition of ‘canon law’ then one would still be left wondering about the extent to which texts pertaining to this category would be considered to be legally binding or to possess authority to any degree. The question of the extent to which the pronouncements of early popes should be (or indeed were) regarded as law in either form or substance, has a long historiographical pedigree.12 Recently David d’Avray—developing an idea by Charles Pietri—proposed that although not all early papal pronouncements that gained legal currency can be said with certainty to have been intended as law from the outset they can nevertheless be styled jurisprudence.13 Gradually it becomes possible to observe how some such pronouncements did indeed assume the binding quality of laws, even in relation to the laity. If we were to seek an example from the insular texts listed above, then the Libellus responsionum, a papal decretal (J3 2970) by Gregory the Great (d. 604), can be seen to 11 T he classic example is Æthelberht of Kent. See Wormald, ‘Lex scripta and verbum

regis’; Lambert, Law and Order in Anglo-Saxon England, 30–34, and further bibliographical references therein. 12  For a critical review of the historiography, see d’Avray, ‘Half a century of research on the first papal decretals’; Idem, Papal Jurisprudence, 10–22. The criteria that have pervaded historiographical thinking on the matter have tended to be the legacy of Roman law, the recourse to the Bible, and the analogy with the legal practices of Roman emperors. 13  d’Avray, Papal Jurisprudence, 1, 20. Cf. Pietri, Roma christiana, 2:1477.

Introduction  5 explicitly declare canon law to be binding on the laity. In responsio §5 Gregory stipulates that even an ordinary believer would be punished by excommunication for knowingly transgressing canon law, in this case regarding marriage within forbidden degrees of consanguinity. But apart from isolated references such as this, there seems to have been no universal agreement on the force of ecclesiastical legislation in relation to the laity. However, if we concentrate more specifically on the clergy and on uniquely ecclesiastical matters then we are on firmer ground: from an early date there were clear assertions by the papacy (Siricius and Innocent) of the authority of what came to be known as papal epistolae decretales. There are a number of fifth- and sixth-century examples in which papal, but also conciliar pronouncements are held to have been binding.14 It is also in the fifth century that, according to Conrad Leyser, one may perhaps witness ‘the “activation” of canon law in the Latin West’ in the dispute over the right of the priest Appius to appeal to Rome against the bishop of Carthage who had condemned him: both sides to the debate—the Romans and the Africans—invoked conciliar canons to further their cause between 418 and 419.15 And we can turn to Gregory again for an early eloquent attempt to establish the authority of councils: this is his proclamation (J3 2099) that the first four Ecumenical councils are on a par with the four Gospels in settling major doctrinal disputes.16 At the same time, he and other bishops also recognised the value of canons from such councils as a device for ruling on routine doctrinal questions, for moderating forces within the church, for establishing hierarchies, for introducing mechanisms of dispute settlement, for regulating liturgical practice, and for safeguarding ecclesiastical property. Clearly, conciliar decisions were seen to have their own special legal utility. By contrast, texts classified as canonical collections from the early medieval period, including the Hibernensis, can rarely be shown to have been binding (this will be discussed further in Chapter 2). In form, we would be tempted to associate them—and especially the systematic among them—with codes of law, albeit rather rudimentary ones. But were canonical collections recognised by contemporaries as law in any meaningful sense? Such a recognition, according to Herbert Hart’s broad definition, would by itself be the essence of law. Hart’s ‘rule of recognition’ asserts that if a source is generally recognised by magistrates (in the broadest sense of the word) as authoritative, then the stipulations that issue from it are law.17 Whereas this rule can indeed apply to some collections, like the ‘books of canons’ invoked by church councils (Chapter 2), in most cases such evidence of recognition is lacking. The hallmark of these collections is their derivative nature, consisting of excerpts from other works, some of which, like synodal decisions, may carry authority in and of themselves, but it does not follow from this that their authority 14  Jasper and Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages, 16–18. 15  Leyser, ‘Law, memory, and priestly office’, 75. 16  But later attempts to implement this principle ended in failure. See Brett, ‘Finding

the law’, 59.

17  Hart, The Concept of Law, 97.

6  Introduction transfers to the collection as a whole. It is difficult to speculate about the extent to which the compilers of the Hibernensis believed written law to be binding and on whom, because the principal book of the Hibernensis that deals with the concept and practice of law (De lege H14 V13 [pp. 53–56]) addresses this question only in passing, by quoting Pseudo-Clemens’s Recognitiones 9.19, where it is stated that laws, both written or unwritten, are not meant to be broken easily. Did the compilers believe that ecclesiastical judges must judge according to written law? Must clerics and laypeople be judged by it? We are not told. And what can we make of the noncommittal stance that the Hibernensis takes on certain matters, and especially its willingness to admit contradictory statements (discussed in Chapter 6), a practice that would challenge both the authority and utility of a law code? Should the Hibernensis therefore be provisionally classified as ‘a law of sorts’: a half-way house between law and jurisprudence? To better understand the aim of the Hibernensis and the way it was perceived by its users, the present book will view the text in different pertinent contexts: in relation to other late antique and early medieval canonical collections, in relation to penitentials and canonical texts in Britain and Ireland, in relation to early medieval Irish vernacular law, in relation to the sources that the Hibernensis relied upon for formulating rules, and especially in relation to the Bible (and exegesis thereof), which formed the notional preamble for many a precept found in the Hibernensis. The chapters that follow draw to a certain extent on work that I published previously, and this book affords me the opportunity to modify and refine older ideas but also to add to them. In the chapter plan below I indicate which previous publications inform which chapter. Every chapter examines the Hibernensis in a different context. The first chapter highlights the significance of the Hibernensis as a normative text and the innovations that it introduced. It also establishes essential text-critical contexts: the manuscripts in which the Hibernensis has been transmitted, the principal division of the Hibernensis into two text types (the A-Recension and B-Recension), and the structure and internal division of the text. These contexts are followed by others that go beyond the text itself, like the place of compilation, authorship, and date. The chapter seeks to give readers a flavour of the historiographical debates on questions like the place of origin of the different recensions and the authorship of each recension. [This chapter corresponds, in part, to my contribution to Wilfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (ed), The History of Western Canon Law to 1000 (Forthcoming).] The second chapter is devoted entirely to placing the Hibernensis within the context of canonical collections of the first millennium. Much of the discussion describes in detail the development of church law and canonical collections before the year 1000. It examines the influence of other collections on the Hibernensis as well as the influence of the Hibernensis on contemporary and later collections. Influence is assessed by such criteria as structure, sources from which material is excerpted, types of topics covered, whether or not the collections claim authority, and who their intended audience was. [The chapter is adapted from my

Introduction  7 ‘Canonical collections’, in P. Reynolds (ed) Great Christian Jurists and Legal Collections in the First Millennium (Cambridge, 2009), 182–197.] From the general context of canonical collections in the previous chapter, the third chapter narrows the scope and asks whether it is possible to identify any such thing as a tradition of ecclesiastical law in Britain and Ireland, a tradition to which the Hibernensis might be said to belong. This chapter revisits certain hypotheses that I put forward a decade ago (Proceedings of the British Academy 157) concerning the relationship between insular normative texts, consisting of penitentials and texts commonly classified as canon law. In the course of the investigation I assess the significance of direct and indirect contacts that can be observed between the authors of such texts and between their methods. Just as important is the reception of insular normative texts in continental Europe, because nearly all the manuscripts in which they survive are continental, and nearly all the attestations that we have for the use (and active rejection) of insular normative texts are continental. Hence, the view from the European Continent offers important clues as to whether contemporaries identified an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law and, if so, what it comprised and how (and by whom) it was valued in relation to other normative traditions. In the fourth chapter the context is narrowed even further in order to examine the more immediate background to the Hibernensis in Ireland itself. The chapter makes a contribution to the ongoing debate concerning the extent to which normative texts in Latin and Irish (once believed to represent ‘ecclesiastical’ versus ‘secular’) were more similar than they were different. The Hibernensis is a pivotal text in this debate because it is the most comprehensive text from this period that can be classified as ‘ecclesiastical law’ and because some precepts found in Irish vernacular law can be shown to draw upon it. The chapter examines the differences and similarities in attitudes towards such diverse matters as social structures, tithes, pastoral care, the oversight of burial, oblates and an Irish concept of ‘natural law’. The fifth chapter shifts the focus towards the sources of the Hibernensis. The vast pool of source material upon which the Hibernensis draws sets it apart from earlier and contemporary texts classified as canonical collections. Unlike previous collections, the Hibernensis did not draw solely upon the decisions (acta) of councils and the letters of popes, but also upon the Bible, church Fathers (primarily for exegesis), saints’ Lives, histories, insular church councils, insular texts that are not attested elsewhere, and many other sources. Despite consisting primarily of derivative material as did all collections, the tendency of the Hibernensis to systematically group together texts under interpretative headings and to occasionally modify the sources, allows us a glimpse into the thought processes of contemporary ‘jurists’ at work and the manner in which they attempted to adapt different traditions for use in a legal framework. The chapter also discusses the ways in which the compilers of the Hibernensis could have acquired their sources and, more generally, the circulation of books and texts through Britain, Ireland, and continental Europe.

8  Introduction The theme of sources continues in the sixth chapter by looking more closely at the use that the Hibernensis made of the Bible and of biblical exegesis. The Hibernensis was the first canonical collection to draw on the Bible systematically and it was the first to use biblical exegesis as a means of distilling rules from the Bible. The chapter considers which biblical books the Hibernensis tapped, which Bible-texts (Vulgate or Vetus Latina) were known to its compilers, and whether they were in possession of a complete text of the Bible, including some apocrypha. It further examines the principles on which the compilers relied in order to justify their use of exegesis and the application of exegetical methods for the interpretation of laws more generally. Literal and allegorical exegesis appear in equal measure, and the chapter asks whether, in addition to the usual roster of Patristics, the Hibernensis made use of Irish exegesis and if so, of what kind and by whom. The Hibernensis also exhibits the curious practice of modifying or ostensibly ‘making up’ biblical quotations, a practice that may itself have been considered a form of exegesis. Finally, I revisit an earlier hypothesis of mine (Viator 43 [2012], 29–47) concerning the manner in which contradictions noted by biblical exegetes informed the way judges thought about contradictory judgements. The final chapter, a case study, rehearses many of the themes that were considered in previous chapters by focusing on the region in which the reception of the Hibernensis is best attested: Brittany. Brittany was a gateway into continental Europe for many a Hiberno-Latin text, including the Hibernensis. The manner in which the Hibernensis was copied by Breton ecclesiastics and interpreted by them affords us rare evidence of practice. Brittany is therefore a unique testing ground for assessing the actual impact of the Hibernensis, insofar as this can be observed through the surviving manuscripts, the ways in which they were modified and glossed, and the attempts to put the sources of the Hibernensis into practical use. The chapter also considers whether certain Breton clerics attempted to apply the Hibernensis in a political context in the cause of obtaining ecclesiastical independence. [This chapter is a revision of the following: ‘Libelli et commentarii aliorum: The Hibernensis and the Breton Bishops,’ in K. Ritari and A. Bergholm (ed), Approaches to Religion and Mythology in Celtic Studies (Newcastle, 2008), 100–119; ‘Aspects of the Breton transmission of the Hibernensis’, Pecia 12 (2008): 27–44.] As will be evident by now, the present book is, to a large extent, concerned with texts, transmission, and sources. Although social, economic, and political contexts for the Hibernensis do figure in this study and have also been considered by other historians, there is much that still remains to be done in these areas. It is hoped that the work presented in this volume will facilitate future research in pursuit of questions that extend beyond the texts themselves. The text of the Hibernensis used in this volume was edited and translated by me: The Hibernensis. Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law 17A–B, 2 vols (Washington, DC, 2019). Material from the Hibernensis is referred to in the first place according to the original authorial division of the Hibernensis as it is found in the principal manuscript on which my edition is based, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 12021, which pertains to the A-Recension and is given

Introduction  9 the siglum P. Texts from the B-Recension (and, rarely, from copies that do not correspond exactly to any recension) are referred to by the division found in the two principal manuscripts of the B-Recension: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 42, and Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, T. XVIII, which are given the sigla H and V, respectively. For convenience, and in order to minimise ambiguity, page numbers to my printed edition are also given, sometimes followed by line numbers.

1 The Hibernensis in context

The titles Hibernensis, Collectio Hibernensis, and Collectio Canonum Hibernensis (sometimes abbreviated CCH or Hib) designate a text found in complete form in seven early medieval manuscripts and in an incomplete or fragmentary form in approximately seventy additional manuscripts. Commonly classified as a canonical collection, the difficulties of identifying the text generically remain unresolved, as described in the Introduction. All surviving manuscripts are from continental Europe, although one fragmentary palimpsest copy in Irish majuscule has been argued to have been written in Ireland or at the very least in an Irish centre in continental Europe. This fragment is dated to the second half of the eighth century, and is now in Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 137/50, fols. 48r–61v.1 The four earliest manuscripts of the Hibernensis, CopΘCK, dating between the early and mid eighth century, are, likewise, incomplete or fragmentary. The two incomplete copies (CK) share the same lacuna as two manuscripts that were destroyed in World War II (Chartres, Bibl. munic. 124 [127] and Tours, Bibl. munic. 556), which is that they all end at the equivalent of Hib 37.18. The two fragmentary copies (CopΘ) may in fact be witnesses to a draft text of the Hibernensis, as described in detail later in this chapter. The seven complete early medieval copies of the Hibernensis range in date from the second half of the eighth century (A) to the tenth or eleventh centuries (OV). As early as 1753, Pietro and Girolamo Ballerini observed that there appear to be two different text-types of the Hibernensis (which they designated ‘Collectio Hibernensis’). All copies of the Hibernensis are divided into books, which in turn are divided into chapters, but the Ballerini brothers noted that the text of the Hibernensis in V, a manuscript that they dated to the tenth century, had a different division of books from BP (parts of which had been printed by the Maurists) and omitted a book titled De regionibus census.2 They also recorded a variance in the number of books: V was divided into sixty-eight books, whereas P was divided into sixty-five (recte sixty-six).3 A century later, Henry Bradshaw 1  CLA 9 §1368. To judge by the facsimile printed therein, from Hib 1.4 (p. 6 ln. 11–p. 7 ln. 6), this was an A-Recension text. 2  Ballerini and Ballerini, S. Leonis Magni opera, in PL 56:303. 3  The numbering sequence followed by the scribe of P is flawed: the books De quaestionibus mulierum and De ratione matrimonii are both numbered xliiii.

The Hibernensis in context  11 found that another copy of the Hibernensis, H, contained a longer version of the text, consisting of sixty-nine books.4 He was the first to formalise the distinction between the two text-types, which he designated ‘A-text’ and ‘B-text’, using the relative number of books as a differentiating criterion.5 The apparent transmission of the text in two text-types, nowadays referred to as the ‘A-Recension’ and ‘B-Recension’, is one of the hallmark features of the Hibernensis to which I shall return later in this chapter. Selections of material from the Hibernensis were first printed in the 1650s by scholars in London and Paris: in 1656 the Anglo-Irish antiquary James Ware transcribed a number of canons from O and O2 attributed to St Patrick and to sinodus Hibernensis. Around the same time the Maurists published a selection from the Hibernensis in Luc d’Achéry’s Spicilegium under the title ‘Canones Hibernenses’.6 Their selection, based on P and Q, included distinct Irish canons attributed to sinodus Hibernensis, Anglo-Saxon canons attributed to Archbishop Theodore, and canons attributed to non-insular synods. A second edition by the Maurists, from 1723, included additions from B. The complete text did not appear in print until 1874, when Hermann Wasserschleben, professor of law at Giessen, published an edition based on S, a somewhat defective copy of the A-Recension, with the defects compensated for by complementary readings from other manuscripts, especially P. A fire at the publisher’s warehouse, at Giessen, consumed nearly all copies of this edition, prompting Wasserschleben to undertake a second edition, with an expanded introduction and some corrections to the text, which was published in 1885. The foregoing description of the manuscript transmission of the Hibernensis and its transmission in print summarises what can be said to be the uncontroversial textual history of this collection. But there remain the equally important, though not entirely settled, questions of the text’s origin and of the circumstances that led to its early transmission in two recensions, in the sense of ‘significantly modified forms of a text’.7 These are the questions that I shall turn to now. In interrogating the text’s origin I shall concentrate on three interrelated criteria: (i) the cultural milieu in which it was compiled, (ii) authorship, and (iii) date of compilation. Beginning with the first criterion, there is a broad consensus among scholars that the text is Irish, not simply in the sense that it is the product of an intellectual circle which comprised Irishmen or in which Irish influence was strong (such circles are known in both Merovingian and Carolingian Europe), but that it was compiled in Ireland itself. Older hypotheses, which asserted a continental European origin for the text, have been thoroughly refuted, in the 4 Bradshaw, Unfinished Papers, 11. 5 Bradshaw apud Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, lxiii–lxxv: lxx. Bradshaw was familiar with both H and V. He consulted H in person but, according to his own testimony in his Unfinished Papers, 15, his familiarity with V was second hand through Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, 806, 869–870, 877. 6  For the Maurists’ text, see Luc D’Achéry, Spicilegium (Paris, 1655–1677), and the revised edition by Baluze, Martène and De la Barre, Spicilegium (Paris, 1723), 1:491–492 [editorial introduction], 492–506 [text]. I consulted the 1723 edition. 7  Firey, ‘Ghostly recensions’, 67–68.

12  The Hibernensis in context main because a great deal of new evidence has come to light which contradicts their premises.8 An Irish origin can be inferred on both internal and external evidence. The external evidence pertains to features relating to the transmission of the Hibernensis, while the internal evidence pertains to the contents of the Hibernensis. The most compelling form of external evidence is the short text, sometimes regarded as a colophon, with which the Hibernensis concludes in P. This text contains two Irish names of individuals who lived in the southernmost and northernmost limits of the eighth-century Gaelic-speaking world: Ruben of Dairinis and Cú Chuimne of Iona. Why the two should be identified as compilers is a matter to which I shall return. Further external evidence, which makes the case for compilation in an Irish circle (albeit not necessarily in Ireland) can be obtained from Irish glosses in manuscripts P and W. The glosses in P do not occur in the Hibernensis, but rather in other Hiberno-Latin texts from the same manuscript: De disputatione Hibernensis sinodi and De arreis.9 The only manuscript to feature Old Irish glosses within a text of the Hibernensis is W, whose copy of the Hibernensis is fragmentary.10 For a third type of external evidence we must turn to Irish texts that often circulated with the Hibernensis in the same manuscripts. Apart from De disputatione and De arreis these include the Canones Adomnani, canons of Irish synods, various penitential texts, and the Old Irish text known as the Cambrai Homily, found only in C.11 The transmission of the Hibernensis alongside texts of Irish origin in ABHOP is discussed in Chapter 3. The internal evidence for the Irish origin of the Hibernensis can also be divided into three types. The first consists of extensive citations from Irish sources and attributions to Irish sources, which together account for approximately one hundred and eighty texts in the Hibernensis. The second type of evidence consists of correspondence between the Hibernensis and Irish vernacular law, a topic that will be developed in Chapter 4. And the third type of evidence is linguistic, consisting of Hiberno-Latinisms, Irish proper names, and an Irish placename. I offer a few examples: in Hib 26.22 (p. 182 ln. 1) a uagus Dei is mentioned as the equivalent of the Irish legal term déorad Dé ‘exile of God’, which denoted hermits who left their own territory and lived as exiles elsewhere, enjoying a special legal status equal to that of a king or bishop.12 In Hib 33 (pp. 237–240) there are thirteen mentions of rata, the Hiberno-Latin equivalent of Old Irish ráth   8  E.g. Friedrich Loofs, Antiquae Britonum Scotorumque ecclesiae, 76, who suggested that it originated in Northumbria; Bradshaw apud Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, lxiii–lxxv, who argued that the text was compiled by an Irishman on the Continent; or August Nürnberger, ‘Über die Würzburger Handschrift’, 35–40, who believed that the text was compiled in Germany, in the circle of Boniface, perhaps by Boniface himself. For refutations, see Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, xiv; Kenney, Sources, 248 n 272; Fournier and Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques, 1:62 n 5; Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:53*–61*.   9  Edited by Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 160–166. 10  Analysed, edited and translated by Stokes and Strachan, Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, 2:xi, 38. 11  For all but the latter, see BCLL §§602, 603, 609. An edition of the Cambrai Homily (CLH §621) is in Stokes and Strachan, Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, 2:244–247. Studies include Ó Néill, ‘The background to the Cambrai Homily’; Stancliffe, ‘Red, white and blue martyrdom’. 12  Charles-Edwards, ‘The social background to Irish peregrinatio’, 53–54. GEIL, 41, 224.

The Hibernensis in context  13 ‘paying surety’.13 Finally, in Hib 40 (pp. 307–313) and Hib 47 (pp. 395–397) we find ancilla as a Latinised form of the Irish unit of value cumal (literally ‘female slave’). The Latin term is a literal translation but, like rata, retains the Old Irish technical sense.14 Also included in the third criterion are proper names and a placename: in Hib 51.6 (p. 410 ln. 5) there is the name of the legendary king of Tara, Lóegaire mac Néill, in the genitive case. The spelling varies across different manuscripts: Loigairi filii Neillis (P), Loigairi filii Neili (S), Lugeri filii Nellex (H). Another Irish name, Díchu, occurs in Hib 65.5 (p. 460 ln. 6), but only in two manuscripts: B and O. The reference is to Díchu mac Trichim, a ‘good pagan’ and Patrick’s first convert, mentioned in Muirchú’s Life of Patrick. The association with Patrick continues with an Irish placename that occurs in the same context: Armagh (Hib 65.5 [p. 460 ln. 4]).

Authorship and date In much the same way as a consensus has emerged regarding the place of origin of the Hibernensis, there is also a consensus regarding the identity of the text’s compilers, who are believed to have been Ruben and Cú Chuimne.15 Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century attempts to credit others with the authorship, from St Boniface to a certain Irish exile named Cumméne, have long been dismissed in the face of compelling contrary evidence.16 Ruben and Cú Chuimne have been identified from a corrupt inscription in P, which was restored in 1908 by Rudolf Thurneysen, who drew on previous work by Whitley Stokes, Henry Bradshaw, Bartholomew MacCarthy, and Edward Nicholson.17 The inscription, on fol. 127v immediately at the end of the copy of the Hibernensis, reads: hucvsq: nuben & cv cuiminiæ & durinis Thurneysen emended this garbled text to Hucusque Ruben & Cú Chuimine Iae & Durinis ‘Thus far Ruben of Dairinis and Cú Chuimne of Iona’. Thanks to the Irish annals, the two can be identified as Ruben (d. 725), scriba of Munster, and Cú Chuimne (d. 747), sapiens of Iona.18 As already mentioned, the two lived on either extreme of the Gaelic-speaking world: Dairinis, on the Blackwater River (Kinsalebeg, Co. Waterford), and the island of Iona, in Argyll. How they could have collaborated and what the division of labour between them was, remains a matter for 13  For the terms rata and ráth, see Thurneysen, ‘Aus dem irischen Recht V’, 368–371. An overview of Irish suretyship is GEIL, 167–173; McLeod, Early Irish Contract Law, 16–21. 14 On cumal as a unit of value, see Kelly, Farming, 592–593; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 69. 15  For examples of the long-standing scholarly consensus on Ruben and Cú Chuimne’s authorship, see e.g. Kenney, Sources, 248; Hughes, Church in Irish Society, 123; Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland, 216; Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 265; Jaski, ‘Cú Chuimne, Ruben’. 16  For a summary of the debate see Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:53*–59*. 17  Thurneysen, ‘Zur irischen Kanonensammlung’, ZCP 6 (1908) 1–5. Kenney, Sources, 248 n 273, summarises the attempts to decipher the passage. 18  AU 725.4, 747.5.

14  The Hibernensis in context speculation. That the prologue to the Hibernensis is written in the first person singular rather than in the plural does not negate the prospect of joint-authorship because, as David Howlett suggested, the prologue ‘may have issued from the mind of a single orderly legist, who described accurately what he and his late colleague had done’.19 The epithets scriba and sapiens, which are ascribed to the two, were considered by Thomas Charles-Edwards.20 He shows that both denoted intellectual pre-eminence in early medieval Ireland. In the annals and in the Hibernensis (Hib 21.1, 21.2 [p. 116 ln. 14, p. 117 ln. 3]) the title scriba appears to be exclusively ecclesiastical, and implies a high degree of learning in the law, particularly in biblical law, as well as judicial responsibilities. But the title sapiens, according to Hib 21.26 (p. 136 ln. 6), appears to have been applied also to secular learning and adjudication. It was, as Charles-Edwards suggests, ‘a more general term (including scriba) for someone with the authority to teach and to judge by virtue of his learning’.21 In addition to designating Ruben scriba, the Annals of Ulster also give a short pedigree for him: Rubin m. Connadh scriba Mumhan filiusque Broccain o Thaigh Theille qui magister bonus euangelii Christi erat ‘Ruben son of Conna scribe of Mumu and Broccán’s son from Tech Taille who was a good teacher of Christ’s Gospel…’22 About Cú Chuimne nothing else is known, besides the fact that he was a sapiens and that he was author of another text, Cantemus in omni die, which is the oldest extant hymn in Latin written in honour of the Virgin Mary.23 The poem was incorporated into the liturgy of the Célí Dé, but this does not imply that Cú Chuimne was connected with this movement of ascetic reform, which gathered force later in the eighth century.24 Another indirect connection with the Céli Dé can be posited through Ruben, whose monastery of Dairinis was associated with the movement through its abbot Fer Dá Chrích (d. 747), who was the teacher of Máel Ruain (d. 792), founder of Tallaght and a prominent leader of the Céli Dé.25 The Hibernensis itself, according to Peter O’Dwyer, was drawn upon by the reform literature of Tallaght on matters such as refusing gifts from wicked men, moderate fasting, consumption of wild deer, prohibition of fasting on Sunday, prayers for the dead, prohibition of sleeping in a church, continence among married couples, and receiving the sacrament in extremis.26 Nevertheless, there is no indication that the Hibernensis was compiled with the intention of facilitating a reform of the type that the Céli Dé initiated. On the contrary, many a chapter in the Hibernensis rejects extreme forms of asceticism and endorses more moderate practices. 19  Howlett, ‘The prologue to the Collectio’, 149. 20 Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 264–271. See also Ireland, ‘Aldfrith of Northumbria’. 21 Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 270. 22  AU 725.4. 23  BCLL §581. The latest edition and translation is Howlett, ‘Five experiments in textual reconstruction and analysis’, 19–30. 24 O’Dwyer, Célí Dé, 202. 25 O’Dwyer, Céli Dé, 29–30; Kenney, Sources, 469. 26 O’Dwyer, Céli Dé, 4. The influence of the Hibernensis was only briefly revisited in Follet’s more recent Céli Dé in Ireland, 89–96. Neither monograph considers the question of whether the Hibernensis might have been a forerunner of the Céli Dé movement or an inspiration for it.

The Hibernensis in context  15 Cú Chuimne, the longer-lived of the two presumed compilers, can also conveniently furnish the Hibernensis with a terminus ante quem, corresponding to the year of his death, 747.27 For a more secure terminus ante quem, which does not rely on the contingency of presumed authorship, one must turn to the earliest secondary witness to the Hibernensis, which is the Corbie redaction of the Vetus Gallica, conventionally dated c. 748.28 A terminus post quem for the Hibernensis may be set by the date of the latest authority cited in it, Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury, who is quoted from a collection of canonical teachings attributed to him, which was compiled, at the earliest, on Theodore’s arrival in England in 669, but more likely after his death in 690.29 Attempts by modern scholars of earlier generations to use the death year of Adomnán of Iona, 704, as a dating criterion for the Hibernensis cannot be accepted, because Adomnán is cited in a single manuscript which is contaminated by interpolations.30

Recensions The relationship between the two principal recensions of the Hibernensis has for a long time been held to have implications for the dating of the text. Early attempts to date the recensions tended to identify either recension with either compiler and to give priority to one recension over the other based on superior grammar or higher fidelity to the cited sources. Accordingly, different places of compilation were assigned to them. For example, Bradshaw believed that the A-Recension was compiled first and then revised in Brittany, culminating in what we now call the B-Recension. A counter argument by Siegmund Hellmann asserted that the B-Recension preceded the A-Recension because he found its grammar to be more correct.31 Following Hellmann, Thurneysen argued that the B-Recension, which he believed to have been the earlier recension, was compiled by Ruben, whereas the A-Recension was compiled by Cú Chuimne, who outlived his collaborator.32 Such hypotheses rest on implicit and sometimes contradictory assumptions, for example that a more recent text will improve on the grammar of an earlier text or, alternatively, that a more recent text is more likely to contain more corrupt grammar because of errors in repeated copying. Neither assumption can withstand 27  For a discussion that considers more speculative variables for dating, see Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:59*–61*. 28 Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform im Frankenreich, 86–96, 287–288; Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance, 20, 72. However, a more cautious dating range is 721×749, years that correspond, respectively, to the latest cited source (the Roman synod of 721) and the year mentioned in a dating clause of a secondary witness to the Corbie Vetus Gallica, a copy of which survives in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale lat. 10588. See Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform im Frankenreich, 86–96, 287–288. 29  On Theodore and the collections of sayings attributed to him, see Chapters 3, 5. 30  His name occurs in H, fol. 106v. The interpolations to this manuscript are discussed at length in Chapter 7. For an attempt to set a terminus post quem based on Adomnán’s death date see, for example, Hughes, Church in Early Irish Society, 123. 31 Bradshaw apud Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, lxiii–lxxv; Idem, Unfinished Papers, 11–15; Hellmann, Sedulius Scottus, 141–143. 32  Thurneysen, ‘Zur irischen Kanonensammlung’, 5; Idem, ‘Aus dem irischen Recht IV’, 186–187.

16  The Hibernensis in context empirical scrutiny. For example, contrary to Hellmann’s assumption, Luned Davies and Linda Fowler-Magerl have shown in different contexts, there is good evidence for progressive correction rather than progressive corruption in the process of copying certain canonical collections.33 Ironically, those who attempted to date the recensions or assign authorship to them were not able to distinguish formally between them. However, those who sought to draw a formal distinction between the recensions were not successful in establishing that the criteria, which they applied, actually distinguished between recensions rather than between different copies within the same recension. For example, Bradshaw (above), who drew a distinction based on a division into a different number of books, was not aware of the different number of books among different copies of the A-Recension.34 It is true that the B-Recension is longer, but the small gap in the number of books does not reveal the actual extent of the volume of additional material contained in the B-Recension. This gap can sometimes consist of single book, as between H, a B-Recension copy divided into sixty-eight books, and S, an A-Recension copy divided into sixty-seven books. Gaps in the number of books may represent an artificial rather than actual difference in content. For instance, O has turned a chapter within book 8 into a separate book titled De distantia graduum ‘Concerning the difference between the [ecclesiastical] grades’. More reliable criteria, which allow us to observe actual gaps in content, can be obtained from comparing which books and chapters occur in one recension but not in the other. Each recension has books containing material which is not found in the other recension. There are seven books that are peculiar to the B-Recension: De clerico, De Christiano, De lege, De tribu, De infantibus, De proximis placendis, and De silentio et eleuatione uocis. There are five book titles that are peculiar to the A-Recension: De locis consecratis, De regionibus census, De reliquis in deserto humatis, De mortuis in somno uisis, and De benedictionibus. The latter is a chapter heading in the B-Recension. Four out of the five book titles introduce content which occurs in both recensions. The only exception is the book De regionibus census, which, as the Ballerini brothers noted, has no counterpart in the B-Recension. As for chapters, there are 1,097 chapter headings in my edition of the Hibernensis. The A-Recension contains approximately thirty-five chapters (the number varies between manuscripts) that are peculiar to it, and the B-Recension contains approximately 290 such chapters (a few occur only in H and others only in V). The transmission of the Hibernensis in more than one recension is a common feature of canonical collections. By the time that the Hibernensis comes into view in Carolingian Europe, other canonical collections can be seen to circulate in more than one version: the Dionysiana, the Hispana, and the Vetus Gallica are the best examples, and we shall examine them and others more closely in Chapter 2. While all complete copies of the Hibernensis can be said to belong to either the 33  Davies, ‘Isidorian texts and the Hibernensis’, 245; Fowler-Magerl, ‘Fine distinctions and the transmission of texts’, 154. 34  For a summary of the historiography on the recensions, see Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:88*–111*.

The Hibernensis in context  17 A-Recension or the B-Recension, it must be acknowledged that some incomplete and fragmentary copies do not lend themselves easily to classification, mostly because of augmentation during transmission, which transformed the text. The notion of an evolving canonical collection that morphs in time into one or more recensions is premised on the assumption that a single parent manuscript copy (or Urtext) can be identified or inferred at the root. However, neither recension of the Hibernensis can be shown to exhibit features that would identify it as the parent text or would render it more faithful to a putative parent text. Nevertheless, there is both internal and external evidence to suggest that both recensions derive from a common ancestor, which may be regarded as the compilers’ fair copy, but is more likely to have been an advanced draft, material from which was distributed unevenly among the recensions, such that one recension contains material that the other does not, but ultimately both recensions have a good deal of material in common. Such drafts are known, for example, to have formed a normal part of the process through which Bede brought his own texts to completion.35 The parent text from which the recensions of the Hibernensis proceed can therefore be termed for convenience ‘undivided text’. The external evidence for the undivided text consists in the main of three secondary witnesses: Cop, W, and Θ. The first, Cop, is a manuscript from northern France, dating from the early eighth century, which has been argued to be connected with the circle of St Boniface or perhaps even copied from a manuscript written at the behest of Boniface himself.36 It is a compendium of normative material, consisting of papal decretals, insular penitential texts, Gallic conciliar texts, and the Anglo-Saxon Libellus responsionum. The manuscript and its contents are discussed at length in Chapter 2. A florilegium in the manuscript, spanning fols. 69v–80v and consisting of excerpts from the Hibernensis, was shown by Rob Meens to agree variably with either recension. This has led him to infer that its contents ‘may be excerpts from the Hibernensis, but they may just as well derive from an earlier compilation of canons that was used for the Hibernensis’.37 The second is W, a manuscript from north-west France from the second half of the ninth century, which contains the so-called Fragmenta Gildae, early Irish canonical material, the Liber ex lege Moysi (on which see Chapter 6), and two florilegia consisting of material that occurs in the Hibernensis.38 The Fragmenta (scattered across pp. 11–105), which were among the sources of the Hibernensis, have been shown by Richard Sharpe to agree sometimes with the A-Recension and sometimes with the B-Recension.39 The third, Θ, which, like Cop, has also been argued to have associations with the circle of Boniface, is formed from three 35  As Bede himself describes in the prefaces to the Prose Life of Cuthbert and the Ecclesiastical History. 36  Deanesly and Grosjean, ‘Canterbury edition’, 15; Meens, ‘The oldest manuscript witness’, 9–13. Our present understanding of Cop owes much to the pioneer work of Asbach, Das Poenitentiale Remense. 37  Meens, ‘The oldest manuscript witness’, 12. 38 James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge; Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 15; Simpson, ‘Ireland, Tours and Brittany’. 39  Sharpe, ‘Gildas’, 196 n 12.

18  The Hibernensis in context parts: the first (on fols. 1–41) contains 624 texts from the Hibernensis, the second (on fols. 42–51) contains an excerpt from the Vetus Gallica, and the third part (on fols. 52–59) contains an independent compilation of excerpts from the Hibernensis, papal decretals, patristic sources, a passage attributed to Boniface, and passages that are also found in Vatican Library, Palatinus lat. 4160, where they are attributed ex dictis S. Bonifacii.40 The latter has been given the title Sententiae Bonifatianae Wirceburgenses by Michael Glatthaar, who attributes a number of texts in it to Boniface himself.41 However, the portion that concerns us is the florilegium spanning fols. 1–41. Although the overwhelming majority of items in it concur with both the A-Recension and the B-Recension or both, some items are attested only in one or the other. There are ten texts and two headings that are peculiar to the A-Recension and thirty-three texts and twenty-nine headings that are peculiar to the B-Recension. The florilegium, therefore, can be argued to attest an undivided text that preceded the recensions. But some items in Θ are unattested in any of the surviving complete copies of the Hibernensis. Altogether, there are fifteen passages and twenty-nine headings which are peculiar to this florilegium.42 Interestingly, in four instances Θ contains texts that occur only in Cop (Appendix I §§1, 4, 6, 37). Thanks to the work of Sven Meeder we also know of Carolingian-era derivatives of the Hibernensis that arguably attest an undivided version: the Collectio Sangermanensis (in Q) and the Collection in 250 Chapters (in I and M).43 The internal evidence for an undivided text is derived primarily from the relationship between the concluding book of the Hibernensis, titled De contrariis causis, and the preceding books. The purpose of De contrariis is to highlight various discrepancies in preceding books of the Hibernensis. In the A-Recension it is the final book and in the B-Recension it is the penultimate book. Despite the identical title, these are, in fact, two distinct books that are entirely different with respect to content but not form. In the B-Recension the chapters of De contrariis do not seem to be linked by any obvious theme, whereas the chapters of the A-Recension are all concerned with adjudication. Each book comprises seven chapters, each consisting of a number of statements. In the A-Recension there are forty-eight statements altogether. In the B-Recension’s version of De contrariis there are twenty-seven statements. When we examine how these statements relate to texts that occurred in previous books of the Hibernensis, a curious fact emerges. Eighteen of the forty-eight statements in the A-Recension occur in previous books of the A-Recension, suggesting that De contrariis was (at least in part) compiled by re-using material that occurred earlier in the Hibernensis. For instance, passages from chapter 66.5 dealing with punishments for those who defend offenders, echo passages from book 26 De sceleribus et uindictis eorum 40 Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform im Frankenreich, 300–301; CLA 9 §§1439, 40; Nürnberger, ‘Über die Würzburger Handschrift’, 78–84 (§46). 41 Glatthaar, Bonifatius und das Sakrileg, 84–86, 117–163. See also Meeder, ‘Boniface and the Irish heresy of Clemens’, 262–264. 42  See Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:108*. 43  Meeder, ‘Spread and reception of Hiberno-Latin scholarship’, 108; Idem, ‘Negotiating biblical authority in early medieval canon law’.

The Hibernensis in context  19 ‘Concerning crimes and their punishments’, and passages in chapter 66.6 dealing with theft, echo passages from book 28 De furto ‘Concerning theft’. What is remarkable, however, is that forty-six statements out of the forty-eight statements of the A-Recension’s version of De contrariis occur in other books of the B-Recension.44 Hence, if De contrariis was indeed compiled by recycling earlier material, then the natural place for the A-Recension’s versions of De contrariis would appear to be at the end of the B-Recension. As for the B-Recension, only nine of its statements occur in other books of either the A- or B-Recension. To argue that the book De contrariis was torn off the B-Recension and planted at the end of the A-Recension, only to be written anew for the B-Recension, is a difficult hypothesis to sustain. What seems more plausible is that both recensions originated from an undivided text of the Hibernensis which pre-dated the transmission in two separate recensions. Hence, both the A-Recension and the B-Recension derive directly from the undivided text (which may have been a draft), but the B-Recension preserved a great deal of material from that text which the A-Recension omitted. If—as I believe—the version of De contrariis found at the end of the A-Recension drew its material directly from the undivided text, then its affinity with the B-Recension is only coincidental. The hypothesis of an undivided text is consistent with the assertion by Charles-Edwards and Meens that De contrariis and other books, some of the content of which corresponds to De contrariis, are not necessarily interdependent but might have derived their material directly or indirectly from a common origin (or origins), speculated by Meens to have been ‘an earlier compilation of canons’.45 Such an undivided text might either have been a draft of the Hibernensis or, alternatively, the compilers’ fair copy. My main reason for believing that the undivided text was a draft is that it does not survive independently. Had it been a complete and fully crystalised collection, it is odd that two of its derivatives would be copied in lieu of the core text. But one must nevertheless allow for the possibility of chance survival and loss of manuscripts. In view of the hypothesis of the undivided text, neither recension can be given priority over the other for any reason. One cannot rely on their contents or on the pattern of their continental dissemination (both are attested in Brittany, Francia, and Italy) as a convenient explanation for the emergence of different versions of the Hibernensis.46 Perhaps the compilers themselves decided—for a reason that is as yet unknown—to release two versions. The dating of the earliest copies of the two recensions does not allow for the possibility that they were made at a large interval from each other. The earliest (incomplete) copy of the A-Recension which can be dated with precision is C, copied 763×790, corresponding to the dates of the episcopacy of Albericus, bishop of Cambrai and Arras, to whom the 44 The two missing statements could have been added independently as De contrariis was compiled. 45  Charles-Edwards, ‘The construction’, 212–215, 223; Meens, ‘The oldest manuscript witness’, 12. 46  Breton copies are ABHOP; Frankish copies are CS as well as the Corbie Vetus Gallica, which is as secondary witness to the B-Recension (see below); and the Italian copies are V and DL, although the latter two are relatively late witnesses of the B-Recension (D) and the A-Recension (L).

20  The Hibernensis in context manuscript was dedicated.47 And the earliest copy of the B-Recension is attested through a secondary witness, the aforementioned Corbie version of the Vetus Gallica (c. 748).48

Structure and contents The carefully thought-out systematic division of the Hibernensis is among its most prominent features. The structure of the Hibernensis was more sophisticated than that of previous systematic canonical collections, of which few are known to have existed before the seventh century. Of these, only one systematic collection, structured in a rather rudimentary fashion, was available to the compilers of the Hibernensis: this is the fifth-century Gallic Statuta ecclesiae antiqua. The more comprehensive and elaborately structured seventh-century Roman collection by Cresconius, the Concordia canonum, was not known to them. More on these collections and their relationship with the Hibernensis in Chapter 2. The Hibernensis went further than previous collections in establishing a systematic structure that could accommodate a wider array of topics, a greater volume of material, and a more nuanced thematic division. The structure of the A-Recension and of the B-Recension is, for the most part, identical. The basic building blocks of the Hibernensis are excerpted quotations from sources such as the Bible, exegetical works (patristic and others), conciliar canons, church histories, and so on. Each excerpt serves either as a testimonium, namely a quoted text from an authoritative source, or an exemplum, namely an example of a rule being applied.49 These quotations are grouped under headings, which distil rules from the quotations and articulate them concisely. The headings are framed as either descriptive or prescriptive statements. An example of a descriptive heading is Hib 21.1 (p. 116 ln 3): De personis dignis ad iudicandum ‘Concerning the ones worthy of judging’. And Hib 18.2 (p. 105 ln. 1) is an example of a prescriptive heading: De eo quod in sepulchro paterno sepeliendum est ‘That it is necessary to be buried in the ancestral cemetery’. The exempla and testimonia that are grouped under headings of either kind form units that are termed capitula ‘chapters’ in the manuscripts. Most copies of the Hibernensis (BDHLOPSV) open with a long and detailed table of contents, which sometimes precedes and sometimes follows the preface to the Hibernensis. The preface itself states that the Hibernensis was compiled with a view to bringing order and harmony to a forest of conciliar rulings. The preface is followed by an introductory text on synods (pp. 1–4) which cites passages from Isidore’s Etymologiae, which also occur in the preface to the seventh-century 47 Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, xxx. 48 That the quotations from the Hibernensis in the Corbie Vetus Gallica are closer to the B-Recension than to the A-Recension has been argued by Flechner, ‘Paschasius Radbertus’, 413–414. However, according to Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform im Frankenreich, 52, 258, 537, there are tenth- and eleventh-century secondary witnesses to the Hibernensis which may attest a tradition that corresponds more closely to the Vetus Gallica: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Clm 4592, and Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS lat. 522. 49  Charles-Edwards, ‘The construction’, 210.

The Hibernensis in context  21 Collectio Hispana.50 However, unlike the Hispana, which paraphrased them, the Hibernensis only abridged them, but otherwise remained faithful to the wording of the Isidorian original.51 That the compilers of the Hibernensis knew the Hispana in one form or another is undeniable. One of the more curious ways in which the Hibernensis resembles the Hispana, and in particular its Gallic tradition, is by attributing canons from the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua to the fourth synod of Carthage of 398.52 Citations from the Statuta in the Hibernensis sometimes agree with the Spanish and sometimes with the Gallic tradition of that collection. Luned Davies interpreted this ambiguity as evidence that the compilers of the Hibernensis had access to both traditions or, alternatively, that they were citing canons indirectly via a ‘fused’ version.53 Although the earliest attested systematic version of the Hispana dates from the late seventh century, it is tempting to speculate that the compilers of the Hibernensis had access to an earlier version, which they drew upon as a general template for a systematic structure and for a preamble (namely the introductory text of synods). However, since the Hibernensis does not follow the exact systematic division of the Hispana, nor, as we have seen, does it follow the wording of its preamble, the Hibernensis cannot be said to be directly dependent on the Hispana. In fact, it is possible that the opening texts in the Hibernensis were chosen deliberately as a way of paying homage to the major canonical collections of its day: apart from a nod to the Hispana, the Hibernensis also cites from Dionysius Exiguus’s letter to Stephen, bishop of Salona, which was incorporated into the preface to the second redaction of the Dionysiana collection of canons.54 We see, therefore, a debt to late antique or early medieval canonical collections, which manifests itself also in the borrowing of structural elements. The preface and introductory text on synods are followed by ten books on the sacramental grades, which together comprise the longest contiguous set of books in the Hibernensis devoted to a single topic. The first seven books in this group expound the seven grades in descending hierarchical order, from bishop to doorkeeper. This order contrasts with the sequence that is normally found in what Roger Reynolds characterised as the ‘Hibernian Ordinals of Christ’. These are not arranged according to hierarchical dignity, but chronologically, according to the sayings of Christ which can be associated with each of the grades.55 The ordinal of the Hibernensis, being an exception, has been styled a hierarchical ‘Hibernian Ordinal’.56 The ordinal of the Hibernensis is peculiar in another way: it uses sacerdos as well as presbyter to denote ‘priest’, although sometimes these terms are given distinct meanings, and sacerdos can also designate bishop (Hib 1.1[p. 4 ln. 18–19]). This usage is in evidence in later Ordinals which were influenced by 50  Martínez Díez, ed., La colección Hispana, 3:43–46. 51  For a synopsis of the Isidorian and the Hispana versions, see Martínez Díez, ed., La colección Hispana, 1:264–269. 52  Reynolds, ‘Law’, 398. 53  Davies, ‘Statuta ecclesiae antiqua and the Gallic councils in the Hibernensis’, 89, 101. 54 Stickler, Historia Iuris Canonici, 47. 55 Reynolds, Ordinals of Christ, 53–61. 56  Ibid. 61–62.

22  The Hibernensis in context the Hibernensis.57 The remaining three books of this group are devoted to summing up the differences between the clerical orders, describing the acolyte and psalmist, and reviewing the rights and duties of clerics. The B-Recension adds another book in this sequence, titled De clerico. After this group of ten books, the arrangement of books does not seem to follow any systematic pattern. Although the chapters within each individual book are thematically consistent, there is no obvious thematic link that governs the order by which the books themselves were arranged. However, there are ten pairs of books which are devoted to related matters: De iudicio and De ueritate (justice), De dominatu et subiectione and De regno (lordship), De sceleribus and De ciuitatibus refugii (criminals and fugitives), De patribus et filiis and De parentibus et eorum heredibus (parents, their offspring and inheritance), De debitis et pignoribus et usuris and De fideiusoribus et ratis et stipulationibus (exchange transactions), De locis and De locis consecratis (sites for churches), De questionibus mulierum and De ratione matrimonii (women), De bestiis mitibus and De carnibus edendis (eating and other uses of animals), De uera innocentia and De infantibus (children and adolescents), and De maledictionibus and De benedictionibus. The two final books in the Hibernensis, 65 De uariis causis and 66 De contrariis causis (their order is inverted in the B-Recension), are not concerned with any specific themes. Rather, as their titles imply, one brings together a miscellany of rulings on various matters, and the other gives examples of cases where authoritative sources disagree with one another. All the contradictory texts in De contrariis are excerpted from sources that had hitherto not been used by canonical collections: the Bible and patristic exegesis. In this respect De contrariis can be said to contend with challenges that arise as a consequence of an attempt to expand the pool of authoritative sources. But the book is also redolent of an attitude encountered in previous books of the Hibernensis, many of which deliberately juxtapose contradictory rulings perhaps as a way of echoing (in writing) a debate culture which was the staple of church councils.58 Ultimately, the elaborate systematic structure of the Hibernensis was meant to accommodate the various innovations that this canonical collection introduced especially in relation to sources and themes (see Chapter 5). Its sources consist mostly of excerpted material from the Bible, Church Fathers and doctors, hagiography, church histories, and wisdom texts, in addition to sources that had long been in use by canonical collections, such as the acta of church councils and papal letters. Of special importance are insular sources, from Ireland and Britain, for which the Hibernensis is either the only or the best secondary witness (see Chapters 3, 4). The volume of sources quoted in the Hibernensis, consisting altogether of 105 different works of both insular and non-insular origin, is the best index for books that were known in Ireland at the time of its compilation, and as such is an important complement to the works of the likes of Adomnán, Boniface, and Bede in allowing us to form a sharper picture of insular learning c. 700. 57  Crehan, ‘Seven Orders of Christ’, 89. 58  On contradictions in the Hibernensis, see Chapter 6, and Flechner, ‘Problem of originality’.

The Hibernensis in context  23 The matters with which the Hibernensis deals include the staple themes of contemporary canonical collections, like the ecclesiastical hierarchy, ordination, the duties of the clergy, and the role of monks, but also unprecedented topics such as burials, legal procedure, the place of women in cloistered and lay society, marriage, kingship, offences and punishments, contracts, debts, inheritance, theft, and even fair wages to workmen. The sum total of innovations pioneered by the Hibernensis—consisting of a meticulously planned systematic structure, new sources, and new themes—renders this collection more than a mere miscellany of derivative material, but a collection in which the contextual arrangement of the material and the interpretative headings given to the books and chapters under which the material is grouped, make an important new statement about compiling normative material and engaging in adjudication.

2 Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis

Scholarship commonly upholds one major division in classifying early canonical collections: that between systematic and chronological collections.1 As these descriptive labels suggest, systematic collections observe a thematic division of their material, in which canons are separated from their original contexts and placed under thematic headings or titles, whereas chronological collections are primarily records of the acta (decisions) of church councils, copied in their entirety and placed one after the other in chronological order. In both cases, collections contain attributions, either genuine or spurious, which direct the reader to their material sources (fontes materiales), namely the original sources upon which they draw, such as early conciliar acta or papal letters. In thematic collections the attributions tend to be prefixed to individual canons, while in chronological collections each attribution precedes a large block of incorporated text, which usually consists of a complete set of acta from a council. The Hibernensis, of course, is a prime example of a systematic collection. It is difficult to imagine how a text as systematic and elaborate in regard to its application of sources as the Hibernensis could have been conceived without recourse to existing models. Yet there are no obvious precedents that compilers of the Hibernensis could have followed. The best systematic collection in existence at the time, Cresconius’s mid sixth- or seventh-century Concordia canonum, is not known to have been available to them, and the only systematic collection which is known to have been used by the compilers of the Hibernensis, the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua, is more rudimentary.2 I shall return to these later. Although the division into systematic versus chronological is the most prevalent for classifying early collections, it cannot be neatly applied to all collections. Structures were not fixed but variable and some collections can be placed under more than one category. For example, the Hispana has both a chronological and 1  General discussions of canonical collections, to which the present chapter is indebted are FowlerMagerl, Clavis Canonum; Reynolds, ‘Law, Canon’; Pennington, ‘The Growth of Church Law’; Rolker, Canon Law in the Age of Reforms. I am grateful to Professor Rolker for a preview of his excellent book prior to publication. 2  Zechiel-Eckes (ed), Die concordia canonum des Cresconius. The Concordia circulated alongside the Hibernensis in B and V, but this cannot be taken as evidence that the Concordia extant in Ireland when the Hibernensis was compiled. The criteria for dating the text are discussed by Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, 808–810.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   25 a systematic version, and Cresconius’s Concordia canonum is essentially a systematic adaptation of the chronologically ordered Dionysiana. Other variables used for classification include: sanctioning by authority (rare) versus absence of sanctioning by authority (the norm); collections drawing almost exclusively on church councils and papal decretals versus collections that are more eclectic, using sources as diverse as wisdom texts, local customary law, the pronouncements of local church leaders, or even works of history and mythology; collections attributed to named compilers versus anonymous collections; and provincial collections concentrating on material drawn from a particular place or intended to serve a particular area versus collections aiming for a ‘universal’ horizon. Local collections are not as common as collections that were intended to have a wider application. Nevertheless, the surviving examples of canonical collections (libri canonum) from Gaul show a good deal of regional variation with respect to themes and sources, sometimes even incorporating royal letters and legislation.3 The variability of canonical collections may also be regarded as part and parcel of a protracted dialectical process, which over the centuries contributed to the shaping of ecclesiastical doctrine, principles of church government, ecclesiastical administrative procedures, and protocols for dispute settlement. The most conspicuous expression of this dialectic is to be found in the debate culture of councils, the rulings from which constitute the main body of material incorporated into canonical collections. Indeed, some collections preserve for us the vestiges of debates through which the conciliar canons or papal decretals came into being. Compilers of canonical collections themselves can be seen to contribute to the process through which ecclesiastical regulation and measures of penance were formed by exercising a certain interpretative license either subtly, by choosing what to include and what not to include, or more heavy-handedly, by modifying the content. It is not uncommon to find compilers assuring readers that they did not modify any of the material that they included, but then on closer inspection to discover that their disclaimer is no more than a deprecatory trope disguising an interventionist editorial policy. As discussed further in Chapter 6 in relation to the Hibernensis, compilers tended to present themselves as curators of an ecclesiastical normative tradition or, at most, as interpreters of tradition. They would not admit to creating anything new, for the power to legislate for the church lay exclusively in the hands of councils and popes, the two indisputable sources of normative authority within the church. As the material emanating from councils and decretals accrued, so collections—both simple ones and ones which exercised more creative license—began to play a more vital role.

The development of collections: a brief history The origins of canonical collections in the Latin West are often traced to Greek texts spuriously attributed to the teachings of the Apostles, in particular the firstor early second-century Didache, a text of unknown origin consisting of sixteen 3  Mathisen, ‘Church councils and local authority’.

26  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis brief chapters that mostly address moral and liturgical issues. The Didache was included as the seventh book of the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions, the first six books of which were drawn from another pseudo-apostolic text, the third-century Syrian Didascalia apostolorum. The Didascalia dealt with themes that would become a staple of canonical collections thereafter, such as ordination, the duties of bishops, liturgical observance (broadly defined), women in the church, dispute settlement, and the distribution of church funds. Even more important to the canonical tradition in the West is the concluding text (VIII.47) of the Apostolic Constitutions. This section came to be known in the early middle ages as the Apostolic Canons. These are concerned primarily with the ordination and duties of the clergy and their moral standards. Fifty of its eighty-five canons were translated into Latin by Dionysius Exiguus in the early sixth century and incorporated into his Dionysiana, which has already been mentioned. Thereafter, the Apostolic Canons were frequently excerpted by subsequent collections that drew on the Dionysiana or on parts thereof. The Dionysiana provided a table of contents for the Apostolic Canons (as it did for all the texts that it contained). Below is an excerpt, which illustrates a typical division in this collection:4 i. De ordinatione episcopi ‘Concerning the ordination of the bishop’ ii. De ordinatione presbiteri, diaconis et ceterorum ‘Concerning the ordination of the priest, deacon and the other [clerical grades]’ iii. Nihil aliud in sacrificio praeter quod Dominus statuit offerendum ‘That nothing should be offered in sacrifice beyond that which the Lord ordained’ iv. Vt episcopus aut presbyter uxorem suam, quam debet caste regere, non relinquat ‘Let a bishop or priest not leave his wife, whom he ought to guide chastely’ v. Vt sacerdotes et ministri altaris saecularibus curis abstineant ‘Let the priests and those who minister at the altar refrain from worldly pursuits’ vi. Quo tempore pascha celebretur ‘At what time Easter ought to be celebrated’ The Dionysiana itself is seen today as a watershed in the Western canonical tradition. It constituted the first concentrated attempt to draw together both a large variety of canons from Eastern councils—among them the ecumenical councils of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), and Chalcedon (451)—and papal decretals, thereby bridging Eastern and Western teachings on ecclesiastical order and discipline and providing the church with its first substantial compendium of rules. Dionysius compiled three versions of the text, the third of which could claim papal authority because it was commissioned by Hormisdas, bishop of Rome from 514 to 523, to whom it is dedicated. Only the preface of this third version survives today. Other influential early collections are the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua (c. 475) and the (probably) late-fifth-century Quesnelliana, both of which, it has been argued, were compiled in Gaul, although it has also been suggested that the latter 4  Strewe (ed), 2.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   27 might have originated from Rome.5 The most recent editor of the Statuta, Charles Munier, believed that it was compiled by Gennadius of Marseille. This relatively short systematic collection—comprising 102 canons derived mainly from the Apostolic Canons, the Council of Nicaea (325), Innocent I, Leo I, and Gallic councils (e.g. Riez, Orange, Vaison)—is devoted primarily to matters of clerical ordination and discipline. The Statuta is the only systematic collection that can be shown to have been known to the compilers of the Hibernensis. In total, sixty canons from the Statuta are cited in both recensions of the Hibernensis. Seven of these canons are attributed to ‘a synod of Carthage’ by the B-Recension of the Hibernensis, three by the A-Recension (but only in S), and four by both recensions (including copies of the A-Recension other than S).6 The attribution of canons from the Statuta to the fourth synod of Carthage of 398 also occurs in the Collectio Hispana and in some manuscripts of the Gallic tradition of the text.7 The citations from the Statuta in the Hibernensis sometimes agree with the Spanish and sometimes with the Gallic tradition of that collection. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Luned Davies interpreted this ambiguity as evidence that either the compilers of the Hibernensis had access to both traditions or that they were citing canons indirectly via a ‘fused’ version.8 She also suggested that the attribution to Carthage would have been understood by the compilers of the Hibernensis in a specifically Irish sense, because in seventh-century Ireland the followers of St Carthach of Rathan (Co. Offaly) were known as Carthaginenses: ‘the compilers of the [the Hibernensis] may have considered the canons [of the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua], even under the heading Synodus Carthaginensis or Synodus Romana, to be those of an Irish synod or synods’.9 Of importance to the development of collections of the systematic variety, to which the Hibernensis belongs, are the Breviatio Canonum (c. 535) by Fulgentius Ferrandus, a deacon of Carthage, and Cresconius’s aforementioned Concordia canonum, compiled in the mid sixth or in the seventh century. The former is counted among the systematic collections of canons although it consists of 232 titles without the content of the corresponding canons. Taken on its own, the work might be interpreted as a summary or digest. But the canons to which the titles allude are from the councils of Nicaea, Ancyra, Neocaesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, and Constantinople—the very same councils as those of the Dionysiana. The two texts were probably intended to be used side by side, therefore, with the Breviatio serving as a reading guide or index to the Dionysiana. The two were finally merged in Cresconius’s collection. He used Fulgentius’s titles to form a skeletal structure that he fleshed out with material from the Dionysiana. Cresconius explains the purpose of his collection in the prologue: 5  Van der Speeten, ‘Le dossier de Nicée dans la Quesnelliana’. 6  The B-Recension of the Hibernensis: p. 32 ln. 14, p. 34 ln. 5, p. 45 ln. 1, p. 85 ln. 13, p. 136 ln. 8, p. 302 ln. 6, p. 353 ln. 19; the A-Recension: p. 35 ln. 12, p. 38 ln. 6, p. 40 ln. 14; both recensions: p. 41 ln. 12, p. 82 ln. 15, p. 84 ln. 7, p. 393 ln. 6. 7  Reynolds, ‘Law’, 398. 8  Davies, ‘Statuta ecclesiae antiqua and the Gallic councils in the Hibernensis’, 89, 101. 9  Davies, ‘Statuta ecclesiae antiqua and the Gallic councils in the Hibernensis’, 90.

28  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis Quod opus haec etiam Deo praestante utilitas consequitur, ut, dum unumquodque canonicum decretum, de quo questio fuerit pro tempore agitata, aequissimus iudex coram perspexerit multimode esse digestum, probabili examinatione condiscat utrum ex seueritate an ex lenitate suum animum debeat moderari. From such a work, furthermore, with God’s help, this benefit results: when an exceedingly fair judge personally ascertains that every canonical decree by which a proceeding at a given moment is conducted is applicable in various ways, he can learn by careful examination whether he ought to form his opinion according to severity or leniency.10 This suggests that Cresconius intended the collection to serve primarily as an authoritative tool for ecclesiastical judges, but we do not know exactly what kinds of tribunals or procedures Cresconius might have envisaged. A similar argument has been advanced in regard to the intended readership of the Hibernensis, based primarily on the concluding book, De contrariis causis, which is replete with examples concerning adjudication and appears to be addressed to judges.11 Another interplay between a systematic list of titles and an earlier unsystematic collection can be observed in a recension of the Hispana commonly known as the Excerpta Hispana, which dates from between 656 and 675. The Excerpta is a systematic index of canons from the Hispana, a chronological collection compiled earlier in the same century. The Excerpta was to be used in conjunction with the chronological Hispana, but for anyone who did not possess the latter a new version was compiled in the late seventh century, known as Hispana Systematica. Here, the titles of the Excerpta were coupled with corresponding canons from the chronological version. In its earliest form the Hispana drew upon the second redaction of the Dionysiana, but in the course of the seventh century it accrued additional material from Spanish councils. The latest such material in the first version is from the Fourth council of Toledo of 633; the latest in the second version is from the Twelfth council of Toledo of 681; and the latest in the most recent version of the Hispana, the so-called Vulgata, is from the Seventeenth council of Toledo of 694. The hypothesis that Bishop Isidore of Seville (d. 636) was responsible for the original compilation of the Hispana is doubtful. By the end of the seventh century, the Hispana also circulated in two modified versions in Gaul, known respectively as Hispana Gallica and Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis. None of these versions appears to have been known to the compilers of the Hibernensis, for they never cite a single Spanish council. Therefore, the process through which they arrived at a systematic structure must have been independent of the trend of matching material from a chronological collection (usually the Dionysiana) to a table of contents that was, in its original form, conceived of separately.

10  Zechiel-Eckes (ed), 2:422. Translated in Somerville and Brasington, Prefaces to Canon Law Books, 52–53. 11  Flechner, ‘Problem of originality’, 43.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   29 Nevertheless, the Hibernensis itself drew heavily on the Dionysiana. The Apostolic Canons are cited from it, seven of the eight synods from Asia Minor which the Hibernensis cites form part of the Dionysiana, four of the eight popes who issued decretals that the Hibernensis cites are quoted in the Dionysiana, and, finally, the record of early African councils, the so-called Carthaginian Council of 419, is also quoted there.12 In owing a debt to the Dionysiana the Hibernensis resembles preceding collections. It is also consistent with preceding collections in citing Gallic councils and popes. The Hibernensis cites—­apparently directly—from five Gallic councils: Arles, Orange, Vaison, Agde, and Orléans.13 The latest Gallic council in the Hibernensis, presided over by Caesarius of Arles at Marseille in 533, is not actually cited, but is echoed in a letter concerning the ejection from office of fornicating clerics, written by Caesarius as part of a correspondence between himself and Pope John II which took place following the council.14 As for popes, the Hibernensis cites from the decretals of Pseudo-Clement, Siricius, Innocent, Zosimus, Celestine, Leo the Great, Symmachus, and Gregory the Great. Of these, Siricius, Innocent, Zosimus, and Leo, are likely to have been cited via the Dionysiana. The inclusion of papal and conciliar rulings would probably have made the Hibernensis seem more familiar and less alien in the eyes of readers from continental Europe. Therefore, in terms of its use of sources, the Hibernensis can be said to have corresponded with a more universal tradition of canon law—insofar as any such thing would have been recognised by contemporaries—which influenced the Hibernensis and which the Hibernensis helped to shape by introducing new sources and especially the Bible as a direct source of canon law. Other innovations that the Hibernensis pioneered, like the systematic use of biblical exegesis or the use of new interpretative techniques (for example sic et non),15 were absorbed more slowly into the continental tradition, and it is therefore more difficult to argue that they came about as a direct result of the influence of the Hibernensis. These innovations will be discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, concerning sources and the application of the Bible and exegesis.

Systematic collections and the authority of collections The Hibernensis is the pinnacle of systematic compiling in the early medieval period. It can comfortably be fitted into the wider context of the development of canonical collections thanks to its well-charted European transmission. Although no copy from Ireland survives, the Hibernensis circulated widely in 12 A study of the Hibernensis’s use of the Dionysiana was first undertaken by Davies, ‘The Collectio’, 185–232. The analysis here is based on figures obtained from my edition. 13  The assertion by Davies, ‘Statuta ecclesiae antiqua and the Gallic councils in the Hibernensis’, 103, that the B-Recension of the Hibernensis cites from Arles II (442×506) is mistaken. Only K, which is augmented by Gallic material, cites from it. The most recent treatment of the manuscript is by Zechiel-Eckes, ‘Hibernensis-Redaktion der Kölner Domhandschrift 210’. 14 De Clercq (ed), CCSL 148A (1963), 90–96. For a complete list of councils cited in the Hibernensis, see Flechner, Hibernensis, 2: 982–1000. 15  Flechner, ‘Problem of originality’.

30  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis continental Europe, where several derivative collections were also made. It is by far the most comprehensive of the early systematic collections, and among its contributions to the field (which have been mentioned already and will be developed in later chapters) are the introduction of a diverse selection of sources and the expansion of the remit of concerns addressed by canonical collections to include matters that are ostensibly secular. The following example illustrates how a novel topic of this kind, theft, was addressed with support from a new type of source, a work of history—in this case by Orosius (Histories against the Pagans, 4.13.17–18). Hib H31.4 V30.4 (p. 192 ln. 10–15) De eo quod fur mortem non meretur sed retribuere, Orosius dicit: ‘Emergit hic paululum antiquus Romanorum ille inprobe laudis etiam de parricidis adpetitus. Nam Fabius Consorius Fabium Buteonem filium suum furti insimulatum interficit. Dignum scilicet facinus quod pater parricido plectendum duceret, quod ne leges quidem nisi multa pecunia aut summa exilii circum quemlibet hominem censuerunt’. Concerning the matter that a thief is not deserving of death, but of making restitution, Orosius says: ‘Here emerged a little of that ancient Roman appetite for excessive praise, even for kin-slaying. For Fabius Censorius slew his son Fabius Buteo, who was accused of theft. Indeed, the offence that the father deemed worthy of punishing by kin-slaying, not even the laws punished in the case of anyone, except by a large fine, or the remotest exile’. The comprehensive thematic range of the Hibernensis, considered in light of the wide variety of sources that it employs, has been interpreted variously as an attempt to create a law code for Christian society as a whole, or as a text of Christian jurisprudence designed to provide adjudicators with an all-encompassing blueprint for interpreting law, ultimately based on methods of biblical exegesis.16 Indeed, theoretical questions concerning law and its application loom large in the Hibernensis. In books titled De lege, De testimonio, De ordine inquisitionis causarum, De prouincia, De iudicio, De sceleribus et uindictis, and De contrariis causis, the compilers cite various sources (e.g. the Bible, unnamed Irish councils, Isidore) concerning legal procedure and the concepts of law and authority. Among the issues being debated are by what order should authoritative sources be consulted in dispute settlement, how should judges cope with the problem of conflicting authoritative sources, and, more fundamentally, what should be considered law, who has the power to legislate, and who ought to judge. Many of these questions are given conflicting answers and are left unresolved, suggesting that their presence in the Hibernensis was intended as a snapshot of a contemporaneous debate between clerical scholars.

16  The two are not mutually exclusive. See, respectively, Charles-Edwards, ‘Early Irish law’, at 353; and Flechner, ‘Problem of originality,’ 43.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   31 Among the collections of the Carolingian era that drew upon the Hibernensis for some of their material is the Corbie version of the Vetus Gallica (c. 748). According to its editor, Hubert Mordek, it went through a three-stage process of development, beginning in early-seventh-century Lyon—which was then gaining a reputation as a centre for canonical learning—continuing at Autun, and culminating with the Corbie redaction. Like the Hibernensis, and probably because of its influence, the Corbie Vetus Gallica also deployed a pool of sources more varied than the standard combination of conciliar acta and papal decretals.17 Its thematic scope, although not as broad as that of the Hibernensis, was nevertheless impressive, with concerns ranging from authority within the church to episcopal government, to behavioural standards expected of clerics, to liturgical matters, to pastoral care. The scope and objectives of the earliest form of the Vetus Gallica were more focused. It was first compiled as a reforming text, perhaps in response to the rising power of abbots in Gaul and the growing trend among Gallic aristocrats to patronise monasteries.18 The compiler is believed to have been either Bishop Etherius of Lyon (d. 602) or his successor, Aridius (d. 614).19 It seems to have been concerned chiefly with defending and sustaining episcopal authority and with the mechanisms of ecclesiastical government in which bishops were prominent, as is made clear in the following example: De metropolitanorum uero ordinationibus id placuit, ut metropolitanus a metropolitano omnibus, si fieri potest, praesentibus conprouintialibus ordinetur… Ipse tamen metropolitanus a conprouincialibus episcopis, sicut decreta sedis apostolicae continent, cum consensu clericorum uel ciuium elegatur, quia aequum est, sicut ipsa sedis apostolica dixit: ‘Qui praeponendus est omnibus, ab omnibus elegatur’. Concerning the ordination of metropolitans, it has been agreed that a metropolitan be ordained by a metropolitan in the presence of all fellow-provincials, if this is possible… Let the same metropolitan be elected by the fellow-provincial bishops, just as the decretals of the Apostolic See hold, with the consent of the clerics and the citizens; for this is right, just as the same Apostolic See said: ‘He who is to be placed above all others, ought to be elected by all’.20 Here, the election of a metropolitan bishop is described as a process that requires both broad consensus and legitimation by high authority. Similar questions are dealt with by the Hibernensis in its first book, De episcopo: ordination, Hib 17  On these two texts in comparison, see Meens, ‘The uses of the Old Testament in early medieval canon law’. 18  Its reforming objectives were suggested by Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform, 35, while the stress on the political context is mine. 19  For authorship, see Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform, 62–82. 20  Cited from Vetus Gallica, V.4a, Mordek (ed), 386–387. My translation, with an emendation to the Latin based on Mordek’s apparatus. The source is canon §3 of the council of Orléans in 538. The phrase ‘Apostolic See’ alludes to Pope Leo I.

32  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis 1.4–7, 1.13 (pp. 7–8, 14); eligibility, Hib 1.11, 1.12 (pp. 12, 14); and election, Hib 1.17–19 (pp. 16–17). But the question of the authority of metropolitans is never properly clarified and nowhere is metropolitan authority endorsed. For example, Book 20 of the Hibernensis expounds two distinct views on metropolitan and papal authority21 and nothing is said of metropolitans in Book 19 (p. 111), De ordine inquisitionis causarum ‘Concerning the order of invoking authoritative sources’, which is the only book devoted exclusively to causis in quibus soluendi ligandique auctoritas est ‘sources in which there is authority to loose and bind’.22 Indeed, throughout the Hibernensis metropolitans are only mentioned in passing (e.g. Hib 1.5, 20.3 [pp. 7, 117]), suggesting that the Hibernensis and the Vetus Gallica were addressed to churches that observed different models of ecclesiastical structure: one model (Vetus Gallica) was, or aspired to be, more centralised, and another model (the Hibernensis) was ostensibly more dissipated. The Vetus Gallica thus affords us the opportunity to observe differences between canonical collections, differences that may impinge on matters of religious practice, institutional procedure, and ecclesiastical organisation. But given its dependence on the Hibernensis, the Vetus Gallica also allows us to compare the treatment of specific themes across dependent collections. This can open yet another perspective for gauging differences, which may give us an insight into the thought process and priorities of the compilers of the collections. A comparison will therefore follow. I will concentrate on two themes as a measure for comparison. These are: divination and the casting of lots.23 These themes are infrequent enough in the business of early church councils and also remote enough from the core concerns (clerical discipline, jurisdiction, etc) of canonical collections so as to be a useful measure of comparison between canonical collections that addressed them, a connection that is non-generic, but specific to these collections. I shall examine how these themes were addressed in three important collections: the Dionysiana, the Hibernensis, and the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica. Only two councils cited in the Dionysiana, both from the fourth century, mention divination and superstitious practices: Ancyra (§23) and Laodicaea (§36). These topics, however, receive significantly more attention in the Hibernensis and the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica, both of which address them by drawing on a variety of sources. Let us first examine the Hibernensis. There, 21 Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 423–425. On the programme for church organisation in the Hibernensis, see Etchingham, Church Organisation, 47–63. The fact that Hib 20.5 [p. 114 ln. 16–17] advocates an appeal to the Apostolic See when quaestiones in hac insola oriantur which cannot be settled within a prouincia, does not conflict with Leo’s suspicious approach towards the foreign libelli. Even if Leo had been aware of this canon, he may nevertheless have regarded the Hibernensis as an alien work which rivalled Rome’s corpus of canonical literature, a corpus which, as we have already seen, Leo was keen to promote. 22 For causae as ‘sources’, see caussa in Thesaurus linguae Latinae. 23  What follows is based on my paper 'Divination and lot-casting in early medieval canonical collections', first presented at the ‘Mittelalterliche Rechtssammlung als Quellen mantischer Praktiken’ workshop, held on 17 April 2018 at the University of Erlangen under the auspices of the Internationales Kolleg für Geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung. I am grateful to the following for their constructive comments: Professor Ludger Körntgen, Professor Christof Rolker, and Dr Cornelia Scherer.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   33 the entirety of Book 63, titled De auguriis, is devoted to augury. It comprises eight chapters which are concerned with describing the essence of divination, with rejecting divination, and with prescribing punishments for those who either practise divination or consult diviners. The book draws on a variety of sources: four chapters quote from Caesarius of Arles’s sermons, two are based on canons from the councils of Ancyra and Agde, one on Isidore’s Etymologies, and one on the Bible. The biblical quotation, from Leviticus 20:27, is especially ruthless, condemning to death by stoning those who consult diviners. But in contrast to this disapproving attitude towards divination, Book 25 of the Hibernensis, titled De sortibus ‘Concerning lots’, broadly tolerates the casting of lots as part and parcel of the process of decision making. Ostensibly the casting of lots has something in common with divination, in that both are ways of anticipating events or guiding actions in the future by supernatural means. Nevertheless, lot-casting is tolerated while divination is condemned. Book 25 consists of five chapters concerned with the prerogative to cast lots in doubtful or uncertain cases, and with the rationale behind the use of decision-making through lot-casting. The rationale given, that divine choice determines the outcome of lot-casting, is consistent with the manner in which the Bible is sometimes interpreted as an authority that admits lots, a topic that I shall return to shortly. The sources cited in Book 25 are Augustine’s commentaries on the Psalms and on John, Jerome’s Commentary on Jonah, and a host of biblical citations: from Proverbs, I Samuel, Jonah, and the Acts of the Apostles, where verses 1:24–25 famously tell of the occasion on which lots were cast to choose between Joseph and Matthias to replace Judas in the apostolate. Conspicuously absent from this list of sources are church councils, because there was no church council that approved of the practice of lot-casting. Only one chapter in this book (Hib 25.3 [pp. 160–161]), titled De eo quod non semper sortibus credendum sed Deo ‘That lots should not always be believed, but God’, admonishes the readers about the dangers of deciding by lot, in particular since demons may sometimes intervene in the outcome of lot-casting. Turning to the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica, we observe a significant difference in attitudes. Unlike the Hibernensis, the Corbie Vetus Gallica condemns both lots and divination in its forty-fourth book titled De sortibus et auguriis. This book, consisting of ten chapters, quotes exclusively from church councils from Asia Minor, Gaul, and Spain, as well as from the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua §83 (which apparently cites the Apostolic Constitutions §7). The councils cited are Ancyra, Laodicaea, Arles (314), Agde (506), Orleans (511), and Braga (572). Two of these canons, Agde §42 and Orleans §30, condemn the casting of lots. Interestingly, the Hibernensis also cites Agde §42 in its book on divination but, conveniently, it omits the text which mentions lots. In fact, the Hibernensis has transformed this canon entirely, so that it reads (for Latin see further down): Concerning those given to auguries and magical consultation of scripture. The synod of Agde said: ‘One must not pass over in silence that which has greatly infested the faith of religion, namely that so many clerics or laymen

34  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis practise augury and predict the future by means of magical consultation of scripture. For as long as one persists in this offence, he is a stranger to the church’. Below is a comparison of the canon in three versions: from the original acta of the Council of Agde, from the Hibernensis, and from the Corbie Vetus Gallica: Agde §42 (ed. Munier, CCSL 148, p. 210) Ac ne id fortasse uideatur omissum, quod maxime fidem catholicae religionis infestat, quod aliquanti clerici siue laici student auguriis et sub nomine fictae religionis, quas sanctorum sortes uocant, diuinationis scientiam profitentur, aut quarumcumque scripturarum inspectione futura promittunt, hoc quicumque clericus uel laicus detectus fuerit uel consulere uel docere, ab ecclesia habeatur extraneus. Hib 63.4 (p. 452 ln. 1–5) De seruientibus auguriis et inspectione scripturarum. Sinodus Agatensis ait: ‘Non pretereundum est id, quod maxime fidem relegionis infestat, quod aliquanti clerici siue laici studeant augoris et inspectione scripturarum futura promitunt. Quandiu autem in hoc scelere permanserit, ab æclesia alienus est’. Corbie Vetus Gallica 44.3 (ed. Mordek, p. 522) Quod maxime fidem catholice relegionis infestat, quod aliquanti clerici siue laici student aguriis et sub nomine ficte relegionis, quas sanctorum sortis uocant, diuinationis scientiam profitentur aut quarumcumque scripturarum inspectione futura promittunt, ut quicumque clericus uel laicus detectus fuerit uel consolere uel docere, ab ecclesia habeatur extraneus. We can see here, therefore, two entirely different approaches to drawing on supernatural means: the Hibernensis condemns divination, while the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica condemns both lots and divination. In order to sustain its more lenient approach the Hibernensis, as we have seen with its quotation from Agde §42, has manipulated the text of a conciliar canon to suit its needs. Another example of a modified canon is from the Council of Ancyra in its Dionysiana transmission. The Corbie Vetus Gallica is relatively faithful to the wording in the Dionysiana, whereas the Hibernensis deviates a great deal from the original, perhaps in order to distil a concise rule from it, in line with generic conventions of insular penitentials. Ancyra §23 - Dionysiana (ed. Strewe, pp. 37–38) Qui auguria uel diuinationes secundum morem gentium subsequuntur, aut in domos suas huiusmodi homines introducunt, exquirendis aliquibus arte malifica aut ut domos suas expient, sub regula quinquenii iaceant secundum gradus paenitentiae constitutos.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   35 Hib 63.5 (p. 452 ln. 6–8) Sinodus Anchiritana: ‘Qui diuinationes expetunt more gentilium, V annos poeneteant’. Vetus Gallica 44.4a (ed. Mordek, p. 523) De his, qui diuinationes expetunt. Qui diuinationes expetunt aut more gentilium subsecuntur aut in domos suas huiuscemodi homines introducunt exquirendi aliquid arte malefica aut expiandi causa, sub regula quinquennii subiacent secundum gradus penitentiae definitos. In asking why the Hibernensis would be consistent with other collections in rejecting divination but would take a more lenient stand towards lot-casting, two explanations come to mind. The first is an affinity with Irish vernacular law, and the second is a wish to follow biblical testimonia on lot-casting. I shall take these two in turn. Irish law permits lots to be cast in cases in which there were no witnesses, or if no side to a dispute was able to overturn the other’s claim by means of an oath. An example of the latter contingency is if both parties were of equal status and therefore the oath of one was not a priori superior to the oath of another. Lots could also be cast in the case of offences committed by domestic animals, for example, if a beast killed another when their owners were herding together, lots could be cast to ascertain which animal owner should be liable to pay compensation. Lot-casting is also known to have taken place in dividing land between heirs, but this might have been exceptional.24 The Hibernensis retains the principle of dividing land between heirs by means of lots (Hib 31.8 [p. 218]) or between parties that dispute ownership over it (Hib 31.23 [p. 229]). It also allows for both a king and a princeps (sc. head) of a church to be elected by lots (Hib 24.2, 36.1 [pp. 147, 255]). Such a princeps could be either a layman or in orders. Following a biblical rationale for lot-casting, as the Hibernensis purports to be doing, may be an attempt to justify adhering to native custom rather than an end unto itself. That the Bible was not the primary impetus is suggested by two cases in which the Hibernensis appears so eager to offer biblical support for its attitude towards lot-casting, that it fabricates biblical quotations: Hib 25.1 (p. 159 ln. 11–12) Filius Serac dicit: ‘Sors inter dubia mittitur, ut Deus in uisu homini distinguat’. Hib 25.2 (p. 160 ln. 4) In Paralipiminon (sic): ‘In sorte non est electio, sed Dei uoluntas’. The first may loosely be based on Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos 30.2.2.13 (ed. Dekkers and Fraipont, p. 211 ln. 4–5), which is cited directly immediately 24  GEIL, 208–209.

36  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis after it in Hib 25.1 (p. 159 ln. 13–14). The second is a direct quotation from Enarrationes in Psalmos 30.2.2.13 (ed. Dekkers and Fraipont, p. 211 ln. 13–14). The Vulgate Latin text, which the compilers of the Hibernensis were using, contained nothing that contradicted rules advocating sortition, of the kind that the Hibernensis contrived. However, some Old Latin versions of Mosaic law adhered more literally to the Hebrew text and explicitly forbade lot-casting. The so-called Mosaicorum et Romanorum legum collatio, perhaps compiled in Rome in the fourth century, gives the following rendering of Deuteronomy 18:10: Non inueniatur in te qui lustret filium tuum aut filiam tuam, nec diuinus apud quem sortes tollas. ‘Let there not be found among you any one who purges your son or your daughter by fire, nor a diviner with whom you cast lots’.25 Lot-casting here is equated with divination and both are forbidden. Despite certain unequivocal pronouncements against the practice of sortition, such as the one in (the Hebrew version of) Deuteronomy 18:10,26 the Bible is often perceived as approving of lot-casting. But this approval is inferred from the biblical text rather than stated explicitly by it. It is inferred from certain episodes in which lots are efficaciously utilised, some of which are quoted in the Hibernensis: Proverbs 16:33 (in Hib 25.2 [p.160 ln. 5]), I Samuel 10:21, Proverbs 18:18, I Chronicles 4:10, Acts 1:26, Joshua 7:24, Jonah 1:7, Psalms 21.19, Psalms 124.3, and others (in Hib 25.4 [p. 161 ln. 6–p.162 ln. 10]). The Old Testament contains several verses in which lot-casting is practised as a means of revealing the will of God (e.g. Leviticus 16:8, Numbers 26:55, Joshua 18:6, I Samuel 14:42, Proverbs 16:33). However, in the original Hebrew of the Pentateuch, the High Priests were given sole authority over the interpretation of the message received from the officially sanctioned instruments of sortition, which are called in Hebrew the ‘urim vetumim’ (Exodus 28:38–40, Numbers 27:18–21). By implication (perhaps) it could be argued that only the priests were allowed to engage in sortition. But the Vulgate’s Latin translation omits the crucial expression, ‘urim vetumim’, from the pertinent verses. The expression ‘urim vetumim’ is also omitted from I Samuel 14:37 and I Samuel 28:6, where (according to the Hebrew Bible) God does not reply to Saul’s searching in the urim vetumim, thereby driving Saul to consult forbidden augury (I Samuel 28:8–20), which occasions inevitable retribution in the form of his downfall. The cause for Saul’s divinely meted punishment is thus lost on the Latin reader, who is unable to follow the original Hebrew text. It seems, therefore, that biblical restrictions on admitting lots were obscured from readers of the Vulgate. This allowed the compilers of the Hibernensis to opt for a reading which condemned divination but tolerated lot-casting. 25  Mosaicorum et Romanorum Legum Collatio §15, Mommsen (ed), in Fontes Iuris Romani Antejustiniani, 2:587. Compare with Vulgate: Nec inueniatur in te qui lustret filium suum, aut filiam, ducens per ignem, aut qui ariolos sciscitetur, et obseruet somnia atque auguria, nec sit maleficus. On the debate concerning the date of the Collatio and its place of compilation, see Hyamson, Mosaicorum et Romanorum Legum Collatio, xliii–xlviii, and p. 127 for his English translation of the passage. 26  The subject is considered by Jeffers, ‘Magic and divination in ancient Israel’.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   37 To conclude, in contrasting the Hibernensis with the Corbie Vetus Gallica we have observed two diametrically opposed views on lot-casting: one tolerating lot-casting and the other disapproving of it. The compilers of these collections used the same sources differently, with the Hibernensis ostensibly modifying canons from the Dionysiana and even fabricating biblical quotations, perhaps in order to conform to the stipulations of Irish vernacular law. The appeal to a biblical or quasi-biblical legacy also offers an opportunity to assess the reception and use of the Bible by a canonical collection and to examine whether the version or translation of the Bible that was available to its compilers might ultimately have inflected the way in which they formulated canonical rules. Finally, both the Hibernensis and the Vetus Gallica pay more attention to matters of divination and lot-casting than do texts containing decisions of earlier synods that we have examined—from Africa, Asia Minor, and Gaul. This is one of the most conspicuous differences that emerge from the comparison and it must therefore be stated. However, I hesitate to speculate as to the reason for this difference. We do not know whether the environments in which the Hibernensis and the Vetus Gallica (or the Corbie Vetus Gallica) were compiled experienced more divination and lot-casting. This seems impossible to measure, as does the extent to which churchmen involved in their compilation might have been stricter than their predecessors in Africa, Asia Minor, and Gaul.

Canonical collections and their recensions Both the Hibernensis and the Vetus Gallica circulated widely in Carolingian Europe in multiple versions made at different times, with no evidence that any particular version was given priority over others.27 It was not unusual for different versions of a canonical collection to continue to be copied simultaneously, so that the later version did not replace the earlier one but rather coincided with it. This could raise practical problems. Sometimes contradictions arose between earlier and later texts, without there being any established practice for giving precedence to the most recent version, even if a chronological sequence could be established. Such contradictions are attested, for example, in different recensions of an important source of the Hibernensis, the so-called Canons of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury from 669 to 690. This is a series of texts best described as a combination of primary legislation and a collection of derivative material.28 The various recensions of the collection (on which see Chapter 3) were formed on the basis of Theodore’s teachings and his responses to both canonical and penitential material. Comparison yields a number of contradictory rulings attributed to Theodore, such as those on whether a man could lawfully remarry after divorcing a fornicating wife. In three recensions of the Canons of Theodore the archbishop is said to have approved of remarriage after divorce, following the teachings of St Basil: ‘If one’s wife has committed adultery, he may expel her and take

27  Reynolds, ‘Unity and diversity’. 28  Discussed by Flechner, ‘The Making of the Canons of Theodore’.

38  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis another’.29 But two recensions forbid remarriage after a man’s divorce from a fornicating wife. Another recension is self-contradictory, both permitting and forbidding remarriage in these circumstances.30 Why there should be such variance in the judgments attributed to Theodore on this matter is unclear. Contradictions can be found in many a collection, and also in the Hibernensis. However, a crucial difference in the treatment of contradictions is that the Hibernensis incorporated contradictory rulings deliberately as part of its design. This is a topic to which I shall return in Chapter 6. The deliberate inclusion of contradictions was unique to the Hibernensis, but when we find them in other systematic collections then they can be accounted for by other explanations, the most banal of which is carelessness. There is also the possibility that, during the transmission of a collection, certain copyists manipulated the material, for example Archbishop Theodore’s sayings, to suit their own views or the views of their patrons. Or perhaps this is merely a result of corruption through copying, which is something that the Canons of Theodore warn against in one recension. One way in which a collection could stand a better chance of being transmitted in a fixed form, or of being at least temporarily immune from mutation, was by receiving papal sanction. We have already considered one such text: the third version of the Dionysiana, of which only the preface survives. But by far the best known papally sanctioned collection from the Carolingian period is the Collectio Dionysio-Hadriana, which is commonly understood to have been commissioned by Charlemagne from Pope Hadrian, and which can be found in (among others) two manuscripts of the Hibernensis: BH. It is the earliest canonical collection believed to have been endorsed by both a pope and a monarch. As its title suggests, it was based on a version of the Dionysiana, but this was augmented with—among other sources—creeds, papal decretals, and a number of letters by Pope Gregory II (r. 715–731). The Dionysio-Hadriana can boast the highest survival rate of all contemporary canonical collections, with more than ninety extant manuscript copies. The circumstances in which the collection was compiled, as well as its date, have largely been inferred from a dedicatory acrostic text, embedded in an opaque eulogising poem. This reads: ‘To the most excellent son lord Charles, the great king, from Pope Hadrian’.31 It has been argued recently, however, that the evidence of the acrostic ought not be considered conclusive, as previously thought. While the case for papal or royal involvement in the compilation has not been entirely lost, other interpretations remain to be explored.32 Although formal promulgation by diocesan bishops is not well attested, indications of direct or indirect involvement by bishops in the process of compilation are more common. I offer three examples. The first is, again, the Vetus Gallica, 29  These are recensions D, Co, and U, Finsterwalder (ed), 251, 277, 326. Cf. Basil’s Letter 188, to Amphilochus §9, Courtonne (ed), 2:128–129. For Theodore’s debt to Basil’s teachings on remarriage, see Charles-Edwards, ‘The Penitential of Theodore’, 158–159. Remarriage under other circumstances is mentioned in Theodore’s canons, Finsterwalder (ed), 247, 251, 277, 307, 327–329. 30  For details see Flechner, ‘The Making of the Canons of Theodore,’ 121–124. 31  Translation by Firey, ‘Mutating monsters’, 6. 32 Hartmann, Hadrian I, 267–272. Firey, ‘Mutating monsters’, 3–9.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   39 which, as previously mentioned, was either commissioned or compiled by an early-seventh-century bishop of Lyon, probably Etherius or Aridius. The second is the group of texts known collectively as the Canons of Theodore, discussed above. And the third is a collection for clerics compiled by Bishop Atto of Vercelli (d. 961), who embarked on a reform programme in his diocese supported by canonical precepts on clerical discipline. The attribution of a collection to a bishop would invariably endow it with authority, but later versions may omit the attribution or, as we have seen already, they may introduce revisions that are inconsistent with that bishop’s teachings. Even on the rare occasions in which canonical collections were promulgated by authority, there is no evidence that they were treated as binding, let alone enforced. In fact, there is doubt as to whether there was such a thing as binding church law during the first millennium, as discussed in the Introduction. Another means by which authority could be conferred on a collection was by association with its constituent canons, provided that these were enacted by councils or popes. But what of a collection that also included sources whose authority could not easily be determined? Such borderline sources can be found in collections such as the Hibernensis and Regino of Prüm’s Libri duo de synodalibus causis (on which more below), which applied, in addition to the usual roster of conciliar and papal rulings, material that did not appear to be ecclesiastical at all, such as Roman or vernacular law. Regino himself also drew on the Hibernensis. When the Hibernensis was put before Leo IV (847–845), the pope dismissed it as unauthoritative because of some of its dubious sources.33 Instead, as we shall see in detail in Chapter 7, he endorsed the Dionysio-Hadriana, which he referred to not by its title (for it did not have one then) but by naming the sources that it comprised: iudicia … id est apostolorum, Nicenorum, Ancyranorum, Neocesariensium, Gangrensium, Antiocensium, Laodicensium, Calcedonensium, Sardicensium, Carthaginiensium, Affricanensium, et cum illis regule Romanorum pontificum Siluestri, Siricii, Inocentii, Zosimi, Celestini, Leonis, Gelasii, Hilarii, Simachi, Simplicii, Ormisdę et Gregorii iunioris. Isti omnino sunt, et per quos iudicant episcopi et per quos episcopi et clerici simul iudicantur. the rulings [iudicia] … of the apostles, of Nicaea, of Ancyra, of Neocaesarea, of Gangra, of Antioch, of Laodicea, of Chalcedon, of Sardica, of Carthage, of Africa, and alongside these the rules [regulae] of the Roman pontiffs Sylvester, Siricius, Innocent, Zosimus, Celestine, Leo, Gelasius, Hilarius, Symmachus, Simplicius, Hormisdas, and Gregory the younger. These are the ones without exception; and bishops judge by them, and bishops and likewise clerics are judged by them.34 It would appear, therefore, that for Leo IV, at least, a collection was the sum of its parts. If the parts individually had legal or quasi-legal force, so also did the 33  Flechner, ‘Libelli et commentarii aliorum’, 100–119. 34  Ed. Hartmann, MGH, Conc. 3:189.

40  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis collection. Some compilers, sceptical of certain sources and concerned that their entire project may be tainted by them, went so far as to omit doubtful texts when they copied earlier collections. For example, the compiler of the second version of the Hispana omitted the Apostolic Canons, which (via the Dionysiana) had formed part of the first version of the Hispana. He explained in his prologue that he considered them to be both apocryphal and heretical, for their authority could not be securely established: Canones autem qui dicuntur apostolorum, seu quia eosdem nec sedis apostolica recipit nec sancti patres illis consensum prabuerunt pro eo quod ab haereticis sub nomine apostolorum compositi dinoscuntur … inter apocripha deputata. But the canons which are called ‘of the apostles’, because neither the apostolic see receives them nor the holy Fathers offered approval of them, since they are known to have been written by heretics under the name of the apostles … are to be relegated among the apocrypha.35 The preface that the compilers of the Hibernensis prefixed to their work also implies that they exercised certain selection criteria in order to sieve the large quantity of synodal material with which they were confronted. However, they do not mention an attempt to separate genuine from spurious material, or show any awareness to the hazards of dubious writings. Hib preface (p. 1) Senodicorum exemplariorum innumerositatem conspiciens ac plurimorum ex ipsis obscuritatem rudibus minus utilem prouidens, necnon ceterorum diuersitatem inconsonam destruentem magis quam edificantem prospiciens, breuem planamque ac consonam de ingenti silua scriptorum in unius uoluminis textum expossitionem degessi, plura addens, plura minuens, plura eodem tramite degens, plura sensu ad sensum neglecto uerborum tramite adserens; hoc ergo solum in omnibus contendens, ne meo iuditio que uidebantur uelud commendaticia discriberentur. Singulorum nomina singulis testimonis praescripta possui, ne uelud incertum quis quodque dicat, minus luceat. Sed hoc lectorem non fallat, ut cum ad generales titulos, quos necessaria preposuimus, recurrat, numeros diligenter obseruet; e quibus obseruatis, questionem quam uoluerit, sine ulla cunctatione reperiet. Observing the numerousness of copies of synodal texts, and foreseeing that the obscurity of a great many of them will be less useful to the uninitiated, and also anticipating that the inharmonious diversity of the rest would be destructive rather than constructive, I have provided a brief, clear and harmonious exposition in a single volume out of the great forest of authors, adding many things, reducing many things, excerpting many things wordfor-word, asserting more things following the sense with the order of the 35  Martínez Díez (ed), 3:45–46. Translated in Somerville and Brasington, Prefaces to Canon Law Books, 56–57.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   41 words disregarded; seeking this alone in all things: that the things that might appear as recommendations should not be imputed to my judgement. I have prefixed names of individuals to individual testimonies, lest whatever someone may call uncertain should shine less brightly. But let this not deceive the reader, that when he turns to the general titles, which we prefixed by necessity, he ought to observe the numbers diligently; by which numbers, when they are observed, he will find the matter that he wishes without delay.

From the Carolingian era to the Gregorian reform Many collections of the Carolingian era were no more than ad hoc compilations designed to address matters of the hour. Their interrelationships are notoriously difficult to untangle, raising further problems of text identity. More focused in their aims, but just as textually complicated, are the mid ninth-century False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore and their associated texts, which have been the subject of important recent studies.36 In what follows I shall offer an account of the development of canonical collections up until the eleventh-century Gregorian Reform, occasionally mentioning the contribution that the Hibernensis made to this development. This survey begins with the Collectio Anselmo Dedicata, a popular collection from the late ninth century, which drew upon material from both Pseudo-Isidore and the Dionysio-Hadriana. It was compiled under the aegis of Anselm, bishop of Milan from 882 to 896. It is a systematic collection in twelve books, dealing especially with the ecclesiastical hierarchy, church government, and liturgical matters. It may be contrasted with the collection of abbot Abbo of Fleury, which drew primarily on the Dionysiana and Hispana. Commonly dated 995 or 996, Abbo’s is regarded as a monastic collection because of its preoccupation with safeguarding monastic privileges and property rights from encroachment by bishops and powerful laymen.37 Abbo himself stated that his collection was meant ad defensionem monastici ordinis (‘in defense of the monastic order’). Other monastic collections, which are not as famous today but were of no little influence in their day, can be shown to have drawn on the Hibernensis, which addressed a plethora of issues relating to monks and the coenobitic life. Among these collections is the large South Italian Collection in Five Books that quotes 500 texts from the B-Recension of the Hibernensis, and a collection in Montecassino, Archivio e Biblioteca dell’Abbazia 372. Both date from the eleventh century, although there have been attempts to date the former to the late tenth century.38 Other than the Hibernensis—and perhaps taking after it—both collections also quote from the Bible and the Fathers, but interestingly the Collection in Five Books also quotes Roman, Frankish, and Lombard laws.

36 Patzold, Gefälschtes Recht; Ubl and Ziemann (ed), Fälschung als Mittel der Politik? 37  Kölzer, ‘Mönchtum und Kirchenrecht’. 38  Reynolds, ‘Further evidence for the influence of the Hibernensis in southern Italy’, 124.

42  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis The Carolingian monastic reforms of the ninth century, the subsequent reform movement that spread from Cluny, and their influence on the English reforms of the tenth century, spurred the composition or revision of monastic rules, custumals, and liturgical materials. And it is in Britain in particular that canon law figures as both a catalyst and as a product of reform texts. Four copies of the Hibernensis are known to have arrived in Britain by the eleventh century at the latest (EHOW), one of which, H, would be tapped directly by Archbishop Wulfstan (d. 1023) for his own canon law collection, on which more in Chapter 3. But already in the tenth century Archbishop Oda had drawn on the Hibernensis for his Constitutiones (942×946), especially for materials relating to the immunity of the church from taxation, a topic that formed the first chapter of the Constitutiones.39 In the ninth and early tenth centuries, one also begins to see a more pronounced presence of penitential prescriptions in canonical collections. Among the most influential collections to have incorporated penitential material extensively are the Collectio Dacheriana (c. 800), the Collectio canonum quadripartita (c. 850), and the Libri duo de synodalibus causis compiled by Regino of Prüm c. 906. Circulating widely in two recensions, the Dacheriana is based in the main on the Dionysio-Hadriana and the Hispana. It comprises three books, the first of which is devoted exclusively to penance and addressed chiefly to the laity. The Collectio Quadripartita (also known as the Quadripartitus) is an episcopal compendium of canons and penitential rulings in four books. It circulated widely in continental Europe and influenced several canonical collections, including Regino’s Libri duo. The Libri duo were, likewise, intended primarily for bishops, but secondarily for those participating in church government through councils, and for clergy dispensing pastoral care. There is indeed evidence of the Libri duo being quoted in church councils.40 Regino’s use of penitentials was of a piece with his predilection, already mentioned, for tapping sources not usually found in canonical collections, which included the Hibernensis, Frankish capitularies, and even Roman laws from the Codex Theodosianus. Like other canonical collections, most notably the ninth-century Collectio 400 Capitulorum, he cited Roman law via the Lex Romana Visigothorum or Breviary of Alaric.41 Not only did Regino draw upon new sources, but he also did not shy away from modifying the material that he cited. Penance also figures prominently in a dependent and equally influential collection compiled between 1012 and 1022, the Liber decretorum of Burchard of Worms.42 Divided into twenty books, its nineteenth book, concerning penance, achieved the greatest renown and was often copied independently. The texts on penance are elaborate, sometimes describing at length the circumstances in which 39  As observed by Whitelock et al., Councils and Synods, 67–74, esp. 68. See also Ambrose, ‘The Collectio Canonum Hibernensis and the literature of the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine reform’. 40  For example Hohenaltheim in 916: see Austin, ‘How the local council of Seligenstadt in 1023 drew upon books of church law’, 108 and nn 1, 2. 41 A study and edition of the Collectio 400 Capitulorum by Sven Meeder is forthcoming in Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series B. 42  The most comprehensive study of the Liber decretorum’s manuscript tradition is Hoffmann and Pokorny, Das Dekret des Bischofs Burchard von Worms.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   43 a sin was committed, and they treat of a great variety of sins, some pertaining to clerics alone, others to the laity at large. Burchard, like Regino, also engaged in modifying received canons. Among his reasons for doing so was his wish to harmonise discordant canons, such as the ones that he found in the Libri duo.43 He even changed the attributions of certain sources, especially when he reiterated material from derivative sources that cited lesser-known authorities. For example, ‘Ferrandus the Deacon’ became ‘Augustine’.44 He also used spurious attributions to cover his tracks when drawing upon secular sources or citing secular forms of punishment, such as fines paid to secular lords or incarceration. Like Regino, again, there is direct evidence for the use of Burchard’s Liber decretorum in councils, and the dissemination of its manuscript copies shows that it was widely diffused.45 Approximately eighty copies survive, making it the second best attested collection after the Dionysio-Hadriana. Its sources were varied, and most notably it drew on a good number of previous collections, including, in addition to Regino’s Libri duo, the Hibernensis and the Anselmo Dedicata, and even Roman law. His debt to the Hibernensis was substantial, with at least sixty-three texts drawn from the A-Recension alone.46 By drawing on Roman law, it resembles Regino’s collection and the Collection in Five Books; and by tapping earlier collections for material, it resembles the Anselmo Dedicata. The Anselmo Dedicata and Burchard’s Liber decretorum are among compilations that used formal sources (fontes formales, i.e., other collections, which served as secondary, intermediate sources) as well as material sources. As we have seen, there were precedents for this practice from as early as Cresconius’s Concordia canonum, but it is more in evidence from the eighth century onwards. A very partial roster of collections that drew material from prior collections includes the Hibernensis (which drew upon the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua and the Dionysiana), the Dacheriana (Dionysiana and Hispana), and the early tenth-century Collectio IV librorum (Regino’s Libri duo and Cresconius’s Concordia canonum). It would appear that as the store of canonical collections increased over time, so the fontes formales gained as much currency as the fontes materiales in the formation of new collections. Does the growth of the genre of canonical collections attest to a rise in their influence? Outside the realm of intertextual connections between various collections, it is difficult to assess the impact that canonical collections actually had on, say, dispute settlement, judicial proceedings, clerical discipline, or, more broadly, on the conduct of Christians. But some evidence of impact is nevertheless forthcoming. Friedrich Maassen drew attention to the fact that before 555 43 Austin, Shaping Church Law, 141. 44 Austin, Shaping Church Law, 114. 45  But note that recently Austin argued that the council of Seligenstadt in 1023 quoted not only from the Liber decretorum but also from a collection in Munich, Bayerisch Staatsbibliothek, Clm 27246. For literature asserting the conventional view and the revision, see Austin ‘How the local council of Seligenstadt in 1023 drew upon books of church law’. 46  Hoffmann and Pokorny, Das Dekret des Bischofs Burchard von Worms, 250–251.

44  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis Cassiodorus claimed that the Roman church regularly used Dionysius’s translations of conciliar material, and there is indeed evidence of both Pope John II and Pope Vigilius quoting from the collection in the sixth century.47 Apart from testimonies such as this, most of our direct evidence for the use of canonical collections—as we have seen in connection with Regino and Burchard—comes from identifying quotations from collections in decisions of church councils or the invocation of ‘books of canons’ at church councils, such as the Council of Carthage in 525 (which refers to a ‘liber canonum’), the Council of Tours in 567 (‘canonici libri’), the Council of Clichy in 626/7 (‘diuersi canonum libri’), or the Council of Hertford in 672 (‘liber canonum’).48 Sometimes we have more specific information about both text and context. For example: the testimony of Gregory of Tours that a canon from the Apostolic Canons was quoted through a liber canonum in the deposition of Bishop Praetextatus of Rouen (d. 586); the citations from the Hibernensis in a letter (c. 801) by Alcuin, in which he defends his decision to give shelter at Tours to a delinquent monk; further citations from the Hibernensis concerning marriage in the acta of the Council of Tribur in 895; and the eleventh- and twelfth-century testimonies to the use of Burchard’s collection by councils (in addition to other examples already discussed).49 The extensive copying and broad dissemination of certain collections is often regarded as evidence for use, which is reasonable, but the circumstances in which this use occurred are often obscure, especially when clauses from canonical texts were copied and interpreted by compilers of law books, who appear to have been ignorant of the origin of the canonical collections they were reading. The incorporation of canons from the Hibernensis into the Laws of Hywel Dda is a case in point.50 It is common for excerpts from canonical collections to occur in manuscripts of legal flavour or in composite manuscripts whose codicological make-up includes a legal aspect. We can find excerpts from the Hibernensis, some quite substantial, in seventy-one manuscripts.51 Among them are an abridgement of the Hibernensis in the Carolingian Collectio Sangermanensis (in Q), consisting of liturgical and legal prescriptions, which itself became a frequent source for excerpting material. There is another abridgement known as the Collection in 250 Chapters (in I and M), in which the texts from the Hibernensis belong to a version that emanated from northern France, excerpts from which Mordek believed 47 Cassiodorus, Institutiones §23, Mynors (ed), 63. Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, 437. 48  See, respectively, CCSL 149, p. 263; CCSL 148A, p. 187; CCSL 148A, p. 291; Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, 3:119. 49  Gregory of Tours, Histories, 5.18, Krusch and Levison (ed), 222. The canon (§25) is not in the first recension of the Dionysiana but may have been known through another Latin translation of the Greek text, such as the Sanblasiana. On Alcuin, see his Letter 245, Dümmler (ed), 396, lines 8–12; and Wallach, Alcuin and Charlemagne, 129–130. Citations from Hib 45.30 (p. 373 ln. 15–18), attributed ‘Synodus Romana’, and Hib 45.36 (p. 377 ln. 3–4), attributed (pseudo-) ‘Hieronimus’, can be found, respectively, in the acta of the Council of Tribur §§39, 41, Boretius and Krause (ed), 236, 237. On Burchard, see the notes by Eberhardt of Constance (d. 1046) in a copy of the Liber and the De scriptoribus by Sigebert of Gembloux (d. 1112) §142. Austin discusses both in Shaping Church Law, 26, 30, 42. 50  Pryce, ‘Early Irish canons’. 51 Kéry, Canonical Collections of the Early Middle Ages, 74–77.

Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis   45 to have identified in the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica. There is also a separate transmission of a selection of excerpts from the Hibernensis concerning marriage, from book 45 De ratione matrimonii.52 Significantly, the usage of canonical collections can also occur outside a juridical context. Three illustrative examples are a miscellany in Θ of (mostly) Patristic quotations derived from the Hibernensis, Archbishop Theodore’s (and Abbot Hadrian’s) drawing upon a canonical collection for quarrying material towards the compilation of a glossary, and Amalarius (d. c. 850) of Metz’s influential work on Christian worship, the Liber Officialis. In the case of Θ, we find a derivative (perhaps from a draft, as discussed in Chapter 1) of the Hibernensis on fols. 1–41, which contains 624 short texts, of which the majority are attributed to Jerome, Augustine and Gregory the Great, while a small number is attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus (four), Lex (one), Isidore (one), Ambrose (two), Sinodus Romana (one), and Sinodus (one). The compiler of this florilegium appears to have been interested in putting together a compendium of Patristic sayings rather than in any juridical objective. As for Theodore, his interest in canon law is manifested in the Leiden Glossary (Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. Q. 69, 20r–36r; copied at St Gall, c. 800), which comprises forty-eight chapters, derived from notes taken in the course of classroom teaching in Canterbury by Theodore (and Abbot Hadrian). The Glossary, which consists in the main of Latin words but also of 250 Anglo-Saxon words, cites from a canonical collection that contained the Apostolic Canons, as well as decrees from the Councils of Nicaea, Ancyra, Gangra, Antioch, Laodicea, Constantinople, Chalcedon, Sardica, Carthage, together with collections of decretals by Popes Innocent, Leo, and Gelasius.53 The collection cannot be identified exactly with any known surviving collection, although it is close to the Dionysiana (some lemmata occur in the so-called uersio antiqua Isidori) and the sixth- or seventh-century Sanblasiana, which is another collection that is extensively reliant on the Dionysiana (but the Glossary cites from the Council of Laodicea which the Sanblasiana omits).54 Finally Amalarius’s Liber Officialis in expounding the ecclesiastical grades can be shown to have followed the Hiberno-Gallican Hierarchical Ordinal, which was influenced by the Hibernensis.55 A canonical collection is here seen to inform, albeit indirectly, a work concerned primarily with liturgy, but also with the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The frequent copying of collections in the same manuscripts alongside other canonical material may also suggest another kind of use, namely, jurisprudential learning, although most canonical collections of the first millennium do not treat issues of jurisprudence explicitly. The exception is the Hibernensis, which, as we have seen, includes discussions of questions such as ‘What is law?’ and ‘What purpose does it serve?’ Its material is organised in such a way as deliberately to 52 Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform, 259; Reynolds, ‘Unity and diversity’, 115–116. 53  Lapidge, ‘School of Theodore’, p. 63. The sources for the canonical portion of the Glossary are identified in Glogger, Das Leidener Glossar, 1–5. 54  Lapidge, ‘School of Theodore’, p. 66. 55  Reynolds, ‘Unity and diversity’, 109.

46  Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis draw attention to the perennial problem of contradictions between legal authorities. The next text to take such a deep interest in contradictions and ecclesiastical jurisprudence will be Gratian’s Decretum in the mid-twelfth century. This rendered nearly all previous collections obsolete, although they have found a new life today as valuable historical documents.

3 Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law

Insular penitentials and texts commonly classified as canon law have been shown to exhibit a plethora of connections and similarities. In the present chapter I consider these under five categories: (i) the synod as a mechanism for church legislation, (ii) direct connections between authors of penitentials and compilers of canonical texts, (iii) direct borrowings between texts, (iv) the intersection of texts in their manuscript transmission, and (v) some unique insular themes and concerns which may constitute a common ‘insular tradition’. I will not be asking whether Latin normative texts show a preference for insular over non-insular sources, because this has already been settled: recent studies have conclusively shown that, contrary to older scholarly opinion, insular normative texts were not parochial in their choice of source material, but endeavoured to incorporate non-insular material of various kinds, such as African councils, Gallic councils, and Patristic works.1 Ultimately what this chapter aims to achieve is to bring us closer to establishing whether certain connections and similarities between texts as well as between legal institutions and concepts, allow us to confirm or deny the existence of a normative ecclesiastical tradition spanning Britain and Ireland.

The synod as a mechanism for church legislation In seeking correspondences that are indicative of an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law, one faces an asymmetry in the survival of evidence regarding the processes through which texts of ecclesiastical law were formed in different places. One such process, and an important one at that, was the church council as an instrument of church government and legislation. Church councils are better attested in Anglo-Saxon England than in Ireland. Between the Council of Whitby in 664 and the Council of London in 845, there were fifty-three councils held in England whose dates and (in most cases) places are known.2 The acta of most of 1  Some contributions to this debate are: Davies, ‘Isidorian texts and the Hibernensis’; Eadem, ‘Statuta ecclesiae antiqua and the Gallic councils in the Hibernensis’; Eadem, ‘The “mouth of gold”’; Elliot, ‘Canon Law Collections in England ca 600–1066’; Idem, ‘New evidence for the influence of Gallic canon law in Anglo-Saxon England’; Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:73*–76*, 2:982–1000. And see also Chapter 2 in this volume. 2  Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, 19, 22–23, 247–295.

48  Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law these do not survive, but they are attested in charters, in works of history, and in hagiography. The relatively high frequency of councils in Britain may owe something to the church’s episcopal structure, in imitation of Roman or Frankish models. Roman influence can be detected from as early as the first council in Anglo-Saxon England, convoked by Augustine, Pope Gregory’s emissary.3 Roman influence is also manifest at the Council of Hatfield in 672, which was overseen by a papal legate. And Frankish influence is clearly in evidence at the Council of Clofesho in 747, which was convoked by Archbishop Cuthbert at the request of Archbishop Boniface of Mainz, and re-enacted canons from Frankish councils held in 742/3 and 747.4 In contrast, councils in Ireland are not as well attested, and those about which we are informed appear to have been rather different affairs from the AngloSaxon councils that took their cue from Rome and Francia. The absence of a division into metropolitan provinces in Ireland also suggests a rather different scope for the business of councils and for the authority that they might have exuded. However, given the central place that church councils occupy in the Hibernensis, we may wish to ask whether councils were indeed a routine part of church life. Altogether there are four pre-eighth-century Irish councils whose circumstances are known: Tailtiu, Mag Léna, Mag nAilbe, and the council at Birr of 697.5 The Council of Tailtiu, held in 562, is the earliest datable Irish council. Among the central items on its agenda was the condemnation of Columba. It was not an ecclesiastical or even a Christian gathering in the strict sense, since it was held under the auspices of a king, Diarmait.6 Tailtiu was the site of an annual fair, óenach, held at the beginning of each August for peoples under the rule of the Southern Uí Néill. Daniel Binchy argued that the fair was a meeting of nobles, but also of ecclesiastics, who began to attend the assembly in Columba’s time,

3  Mentioned in two of Boniface’s letters: §§ 50, 80. In his provisional list of early church councils, Simon Keynes dated it c. 605. See Fryde et al. (ed.), Handbook of British Chronology, 587. For the authenticity of the council, see Flechner, ‘St Boniface as historian’, esp. 41–2, 47–52. 4  Keynes, The Councils of Clofesho, 5–6. Cubitt, Councils,102–7. Patent verbal and thematic parallels between the Frankish decrees and the proceedings of Clofesho (Canon §5 of Frankish council of 742/3; §6 of Frankish Council of 747; §3 of Clofesho of 747) provide irrefutable evidence that the two are not independent of each other. It must have been the Frankish council that influenced the English council, because one of the 747 Frankish canons occurs almost verbatim in a council that Boniface held in 742/3 and in the proceedings of Clofesho. The canon could therefore not have originated at Clofesho, but must have predated it. See also Cubitt, Councils, 103. The possibility that Clofesho drew directly upon the Frankish council of 742/3 and the Frankish council of 747 drew upon Clofesho, seems to me too intricate to be true. It is much more likely that one Frankish council was directly influenced by the other, rather than influenced by it via an intermediary Anglo-Saxon council. 5  For examples of councils’ routine items of business, see Etchingham, Church Organisation, 206–207. 6  Adomnán, Vita Columbae, 3.3, Anderson and Anderson (ed), Adomnán’s Life of Columba, 184– 187. For the council of Tailtiu, its circumstances and dating, see Sharpe, Life of St Columba, 13–14, n 355; Herbert, Iona, Kells and Derry, 27–28.

Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law  49 when the kingship was not fully Christianised.7 As early as the time in which Vita I S. Brigitae was composed (no later than the middle of the seventh century) Tailtiu was already known as a site where periodical episcopal councils were held, councils that also functioned as judicial assemblies, like the one that judged Columba.8 The text of the Vita I places the council in Brigit’s lifetime, but meetings were still taking place there in the late ninth century.9 The meeting at Tailtiu reported in the Life of St Columba is not unique in its being attended by both laymen and clerics. Other assemblies with a secular presence are mentioned in the eighth-century Life of St Fintán,10 and secular dignitaries were also present at the meeting at Birr, where the Cáin Adomnáin, also known as the Law of Innocents, was promulgated. However, the promulgations of cánai have sometimes been regarded as unusual events, distinct from the normal business of councils.11 Incidentally, the council of Birr is referred to in the Schaffhausen copy of the Life of Columba as Synodus Euerniensis, but in British Library, MS Additional 35110, it is styled Synodus Hiberniensis [sic]. However, no parallels can be found between the surviving records of this council and canons attributed to sinodus Hibernensis or any other councils in the Hibernensis. Likewise, no citation attributed to an Irish council in the Hibernensis can be identified with any council mentioned in saints’ Lives or in the chronicles. (The possibility that the Hibernensis quotes from an early council at Ferns is discussed in Chapter 5). Despite the gap in the surviving record of councils and in the role that councils might have played in Anglo-Saxon and Irish church government, there is nevertheless a good deal of evidence to suggest that the pronouncements of councils and of certain individuals, who are likely to have participated in them, were transmitted from either shore of the Irish sea to the other. The evidence for this is to be found in the discussion of the second criterion in our comparison, namely direct connections and mutual influence between compilers of canonical material in either place.

Direct connections between authors and compilers The penitential and canonical texts of Britain and Ireland afford us an unusually good opportunity for mapping direct and indirect international connections between Irish, British, and Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical scholars. The earliest such 7  Binchy, ‘The fair of Tailtiu and the feast of Tara’. Annual assemblies in Tailtiu are well attested in the annals, which stress that meetings took place there ab antiquis temporibus: e.g. AU 723.5, AU 873.6. On the óenach more generally and doubts about its actual significance, see Etchingham, The Irish ‘Monastic Town’: Is This A Valid Concept? 8  Vita I S. Brigitae §39, Colgan (ed), 531. The story tells how Brigit exonerated one of Patrick’s bishops, Broon, who was accused of impregnating a young lady. A terminus ante quem for Vita I is provided by its earliest secondary witness, Cogitosus. See Sharpe, ‘Vitae S. Brigitae: the oldest texts’, 102. 9  AU 873.6. 10  Life of Fintán (Vita S. Munnu) §§29–30, Heist (ed), 207. For date see Sharpe, Medieval Irish Saints’ Lives, 334–338. 11  Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 281.

50  Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law connection, from the mid sixth century, is attested in a letter written by the British cleric-scholar Gildas in response to questions sent to him by the sixth-century cleric Vinnian of Clonard (Co. Meath) or Movilla (Co. Down).12 Vinnian sought advice on the matter of monks who quit their monastery to seek a harsher form of asceticism. Their correspondence is mentioned in Columbanus’s letter to Pope Gregory the Great,13 and survives independently only in fragments in a florilegium that served as a source for the Hibernensis.14 Columbanus tells the pope that: Tertio interrogationis loco responde adhuc, quaeso, si non molestum est, quid faciendum est de monachis illis, qui pro Dei intuitu et uitae perfectioris desiderio accensi, contra uota uenientes primae conuersionis loca relinquunt, et inuitis abbatibus, feruore monachorum cogente, aut laxantur aut deserta fugiunt. Vennianus auctor Gildam de his interrogauit, et elegantissime ille rescripsit… In the third part of my inquiry, please tell me now, if it is not troublesome, what is to be done about those monks who, for the sake of God, and inflamed by the desire of a more perfect life, impugn their vows, leave the places of their first profession, and against their abbots’ will, impelled by monastic fervour, either relapse or flee to the deserts. Vinnian the writer questioned Gildas about them, and he sent a most polished reply… Similar such contacts between intellectuals from either side of the Irish Sea are recorded in other texts. Among the better known examples is Aldhelm’s depiction, in a letter to the priest Heahfrith, of throngs of English students crossing the Irish Sea to study with Irish masters and of Irish students flocking to study with Theodore and Hadrian in Canterbury.15 In typical colourful language Aldhelm is reminding Heahfrith—and revealing to us—that Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian were conduits for Greek and Roman learning, which included learning in legal matters, of the kind that spawned the Canons of Theodore.16 Of these, the most elaborate is the collection of Theodoran sayings on matters of ecclesiastical discipline and penance compiled by the Discipulus Umbrensium, sometimes interpreted as the ‘Northumbrian Disciple’.17 The Disciple corroborates the Irish connection at Canterbury: twice he mentions a certain Libellus Scottorum ‘Little 12  This episode is discussed by Sharpe, ‘Gildas as a father of the Church’. 13  Columbanus, Letter 1 §7, to Pope Gregory, Walker (ed and tr), 8/9. 14  Fragmenta Gildae: BCLL §28. 15  Aldhelm, Letter 5, Lapidge and Herren (tr), 163. 16  On the Canterbury School see Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries; Lapidge, ‘The career of Archbishop Theodore’. 17  The text by the Discipulus is edited by Finsterwalder, Canones Theodori, 285–334. For the translation of umbrensium as ‘of the Northumbrians’, see Charles-Edwards, ‘Penitential of Theodore’, 141 n 4. For the designation umbrenses, see Whitby text of the Life of Gregory §12, Colgrave (ed and tr), 94; Bede, HE, 4.17 [15], Colgrave and Mynors (ed and tr), 384. For identifying the Discipulus with Archbishop Egbert (d. 766) of York, see Michael Elliot, ‘Ecgberht, Theodore, Boniface, Bede, and the beginning of the penitential genre’.

Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law  51 Book of the Irish’, commonly identified as the Penitential of Cumméne, which Theodore became acquainted with through questions that were addressed to him about it by a priest named Eoda, of whom nothing else is known. The name Eoda only occurs three times in the Prospography of Anglo-Saxon England, with the first occurrence (in Willibrord’s Calendar) and the second (in the Disciple’s text) likely pointing to the same person.18 Given the rarity of the name in Anglo-Saxon sources, it cannot be ruled out that the priest in question might have been Irish, perhaps rendered Áed in the vernacular. The Libellus is therefore a text that connected two authorities on penance: Cumméne and Theodore. I shall return to the Libellus when we come to examine direct borrowings between insular texts. Bede’s reflection on the career of the priest Egbert (d. 729) in the context of the aftermath of the plague of 664 is another valuable source for highlighting the importance of Ireland as a magnet for English students, including Egbert himself.19 Egbert would eventually reach Iona, where he is attributed by Bede with reforming the liturgical calendar by introducing a new reckoning of the date of Easter.20 Iona is, of course, the monastery of Cú Chuimne, the presumed joint-compiler of the Hibernensis. Being contemporaries, they might well have known one another. This Iona-connection is no proof that either scholar instructed the other on matters of church law or penitential discipline, but it bears witness to an important link between scholars of the highest calibre, a link which—to judge by Aldhelm’s and Bede’s accounts of the movements of insular scholars—would not have been unusual. Such a link would have facilitated exchanges of ideas, as well as of manuscripts and texts like the Libellus Scottorum, and perhaps other canonical and penitential works.

Direct borrowings between texts The teachings of Archbishop Theodore (d. 690) of Canterbury on ecclesiastical discipline and penance survive in at least seven recensions, four of which have been edited by Paul Finsterwalder and are commonly referred to by the shorthand D, G, Co, and U.21 Another recension, known as B, was first edited by Franz Asbach.22 More recent editions by Michael Elliot of all five—D, G, Co, U, B— are available online on Open Access.23 There remain two unedited recensions: Kol,24 and another recension, attested only in a fragment in Q, which contains excerpts from the second book of U, as described by Finsterwalder.25 As I have argued previously, Kol exhibits the same rhetoric in relation to the ‘Celtic’ Easter 18  Charles-Edwards, ‘Penitential of Theodore’, 152; Flechner, ‘The making of the Canons of Theodore’, 128–30, 128 n 31. The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England is at http://www. pase.ac.uk 19  Bede, HE, 3.27, Colgrave and Mynors (ed and tr), 312. 20  Bede, HE, 5.22, Colgrave and Mynors (ed and tr), 554. 21  See, respectively, Finsterwalder, Die Canones Theodori, 239–252, 253–270, 271–284, 285–334. 22  Asbach, Das Poenitentiale Remense und der sogen. Excarpsus Cummeani, 80–89. 23  At http://individual.utoronto.ca/michaelelliot 24  Cologne, Dombibliothek, 210, fols. 122r –151r. 25  Finsterwalder, Die Canones Theodori, 76.

52  Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law as the rhetoric which Clare Stancliffe observed in G, in U, in Stephen’s Life of St Wilfrid and in Aldhelm’s letter to king Geraint of Dumnonia. Canons displaying this rhetoric were deemed by Stancliffe to comprise genuine Theodoran rulings.26 No recension purports to have been penned by the archbishop himself. At best, they represent his oral sayings as recorded by his disciples, one of whom is the aforesaid Discipulus Umbrensium. Taking the Canons of Theodore as a point of departure for tracing the interdependence between insular texts concerned in whole or in part with penance or penitential living, the following pattern emerges: prescriptions from our earliest Anglo-Saxon text of canon law—the re-worked correspondence between Pope Gregory (d. 604) and the missionary Augustine, known as the Libellus responsionum27—are addressed in the Canons of Theodore, and so are prescriptions from its near-contemporary Irish Penitential of Cumméne (but there are no verbatim quotations).28 The Canons of Theodore and Cumméne are both drawn upon by two Irish texts: the Bigotian Penitential and the Old-Irish Penitential.29 The Hibernensis cites Theodore and both Synodus episcoporum (the ‘First Synod of St Patrick’) and Synodus Patricii (the ‘Second Synod of St Patrick’), as well as the Penitential of Vinnian.30 Theodore is also cited in Synodus Patricii and in the penitential attributed to Egbert. The Hibernensis is itself cited by the early eleventh-century canon law collection of Archbishop Wulfstan (but it can also be found quoted in secular law, most notably in the Welsh laws attributed to Hywel Dda, whose earliest manuscript copies date from the thirteenth century).31 The debt of Vinnian to Gildas has already been mentioned, and we can find Gildas cited also in the Hibernensis, albeit not from his penitential but from his so-called Fragmenta (BCLL §28), consisting of various aphorisms, some relating to penance and forms of abstinence. From the first half of the eighth century at least, rulings by Theodore and Cumméne circulated side by side in recensions of the so-called Canons of Theodore. By 749, citations from such texts featured in the two most comprehensive and systematic canonical collections of the time: the Hibernensis and the Corbie recension of the Collectio Vetus Gallica (discussed in Chapter 2). No later than the end of that century they could be found together in a number of penitentials from the European Continent; the most influential and most widely disseminated 26  Stancliffe, Bede, Wilfrid, and the Irish, Jarrow Lecture for 2003: Appendix; Flechner, ‘The making of the Canons of Theodore’, 124–125. 27  J3 2970; Bede, HE, 1.27, Colgrave and Mynors (ed and tr), 78–103. The most recent edition of the Libellus, which also circulated independently of Bede’s HE, is Mattaloni (ed), Rescriptum beati Gregorii papae ad Augustinum. On defining the Libellus as a text of canon law see Helmholz, The Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction from 597 to the 1040s, 4: ‘stating the principles of canon law as they were then understood by a great pope’. 28  CLH §544 (BCLL §289). 29  CLH §582 (BCLL §614), CLH §583. 30  For Vinnian’s penitential and the so-called First and Second Synods see, respectively, CLH §§580, 617, 618 (BCLL §§598–600). 31  Wulfstan’s collection was edited by Cross and Hamer, Wulfstan’s Canon Law Collection. The collection was recently renamed Collectio Wigorniensis by Michael Elliot, ‘New evidence for the influence of Gallic canon law’, 702 n 4, in order to stress its Worcester connection. On the debt of the Laws of Hywel Dda to the Hibernensis, see Pryce, ‘Early Irish canons’.

Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law  53 among them is the so-called Excarpsus Cummeani, compiled at Corbie in the second quarter of the eighth century.32 It combines material from Frankish penitentials, ultimately based on Columbanus’s Penitential, with texts from the penitential teachings of Theodore and Cumméne. Although it cites Theodore and Cumméne extensively, it does not appear to cite Cumméne by name, while Theodore’s name is mentioned a dozen times.33 Other continental penitentials that quote both Theodore and Cumméne are the so-called Poenitentiale Remense, Poenitentiale XXXV Capitulorum, the Sangallense Tripartitum, the Vindobonense B, and the Merseburgense A.34

The intersection of texts in their manuscript transmission The pattern of influence between texts across the Irish Sea is discernible also by tracing the survival of actual manuscripts. The manuscript evidence falls into two categories. The first, and smallest category, consists of two collections whose fontes formales (sc. the immediate direct sources that served their compilers) can be identified. This allows us to observe direct connections between the Hibernensis and a florilegium in which sayings of Gildas were transmitted, as well as between the Hibernensis and Wulfstan’s collection. The first collection consists of texts from Gildas’s Fragmenta in W; this collection was a direct source for the Hibernensis.35 The second collection, by Wulfstan, drew directly on H, a manuscript that was in Worcester Cathedral by the early eleventh century (as were two other copies of the Hibernensis). Wulfstan annotated it and excerpted passages from it into his own collection.36 But the second and largest category of manuscript evidence consists of insular normative texts being transmitted alongside one another in the same manuscripts. Here I shall concentrate on texts from Ireland which were transmitted together with texts from Britain, rather than on Irish texts that were transmitted together 32  Körntgen, ‘Der Excarpsus Cummeani, ein Bussbuch aus Corbie?’ An edition is by Schmitz, Bussbücher, 597–644. 33  The name ‘Cummean’ only appears to be associated with the preface to the Excarpsus in a single manuscript: St Gall, Stiftsbibl. 550. See Schmitz, Die Bussbücher, 589, and 599 n 6; and for mentions of Theodore by name, see 604 (§1), 608 (§1), 613 (§8), 614 (§§13, 15, 17, 19, 20), 615 (§24), 619 (§1), 620 (§10), 623 (§4). See also Asbach, Das Poenitentiale Remense, 6. 34  Poenitentiale Remense, Wasserschleben (ed), Bussordnungen, 494–504; Poenitentiale Remense, Asbach (ed), Poenitentiale Remense, Anhang 4–77; Poenitentiale XXXV Capitulorum, Wasserschleben (ed), Bussordnungen, 505–526; [Poenitentiale XXXV Capitulorum renamed Capitula Iudiciorum], Meens (ed), Het tripartite boeteboek, 434–484; Poenitentiale Sangalense Tripartitum, Schmitz (ed), Die Bussbücher, 177–189; Poenitentiale Sangalense Tripartitum, Meens (ed), Het tripartite boeteboek, 326–352; Paenitentiale Vindobonenese B, Meens (ed), Het tripartite boeteboek, 356–432. To the best of my knowledge there is no edition of the Merseburgense A, on which see ibid, 242–243, 316–319. 35  Sharpe, ‘Gildas as a father of the Church’, esp. the appendix on 202–205. 36  Flechner, ‘Paschasius Radbertus’, 412. Wulfstan’s notes in the manuscript were examined by Ker, ‘The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan’, 328–329. The manuscript evidence for Wulfstan’s use of the Hibernensis is discussed by Wormald, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan’, 196–203. A more recent consideration of the influence of the Hibernensis on the collection is Ambrose, ‘The Collectio Canonum Hibernensis and the literature of the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine reform’.

54  Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law with other Irish texts, of which there are numerous examples. More specifically, I shall examine three distinct groups: (a) Irish material transmitted together with the Canons of Theodore, (b) Irish material transmitted together with the Libellus responsionum, and (c) Irish material transmitted together with both the Canons of Theodore and the Libellus.37 (a) Irish material transmitted together with the Canons of Theodore The first group consists of seven manuscripts:38 a.1. Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek HB VI. 112 (saec. X, from Weingarten) fols. 68v–70v: Synodus Patricii fols. 81r–85v: Canons of Theodore, Recension U a.2. Vatican Library, Palatinus lat. 485 (saec. IX, from Lorsch) fols. 101r–107v: Penitential of Cumméne fols. 73r–113r: Canons of Theodore, Recension U a.3. H (saec. IX2, associated with Brittany) fols. 1–130r: Hibernensis, Recension B fols. 132v–133v: Canones Adomnani fols. 133v–134r: fragments from the Hibernensis fol. 142r: fragment from the Canons of Theodore, Recension D a.4. K (saec. VIII2, North France) fols. 2r–121v: Hibernensis, Recension A, up to Hib 37.18 fols. 122r–151r: Canons of Theodore, Recension D a.5. Cologne 91 (saec. VIII–IX, perhaps from Burgundy)39 fols. 54r–57v: Synodus episcoporum fols. 84r–90v, 112v: Canons of Theodore, Recension U fols. 97v–112r: Excarpsus Cummeani

37 In Chapter 5 I show that the Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum (known as Canones Wallici) are not—as previously believed—British sources of the Hibernensis. They are therefore not counted as British material for the purpose of this survey. 38  For dates I generally follow Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 12–16, unless otherwise stated. For further discussion of dating and origin, see the description of manuscripts in my edition of the Hibernensis. 39  CLA 8 §1155.

Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law  55 a.6. O (saec. X, associated with Brittany) fols. 11v–127v: Hibernensis, Recension A, augmented with material from the B-Recension fol. 151r–v: fragment from the Canons of Theodore, Recension D fol. 132v: Paragraph attributed to Libri Patricii, corresponding closely to the Book of Armagh, fol. 8vb (Bieler, Patrician Texts, 122, 124) fols. 133r–135v: Miscellany of texts from the B-Recension of the Hibernensis fol. 136r: Preface to the Hibernensis followed by chapter De nomine sinodi fols. 137r–139r: Miscellany of texts from the B-Recension of the Hibernensis fols. 141v–143v: Canones Adomnani fols. 143r–146r: Miscellany of texts from the B-Recension of the Hibernensis a.7. P (saec. IX/X, from Corbie with Breton associations) fols. 33r–127v: Hibernensis, Recension A fols. 127v–132v: Canons of Theodore, Recension D fols. 132v–133v: Canones Adomnani fols. 134v–135r: Extracts from the Penitential of Vinnian fols. 138r–139r: De disputatione Hibernensis sinodi, De arreis (b) Irish material transmitted together with the Libellus responsionum This group consists of a single manuscript: b.1. Cop (saec. VIII1, North France)40 fol. 1r: Excerpts from papal decretals by Leo and Galasius fols. 1v–34r: Excarpsus Cummeani (part 1) fols. 35r–32r: Council of Auxerre (585×592) fols. 42r–44r: Texts that occur in the Hibernensis and in the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua fols. 44v–52r: Excarpsus Cummeani (part 2) fols. 52r–69v: Excerpts from Epitome Hispana fols. 69v–80v: Texts that occur in the Hibernensis fols. 81r–86v: Inquisitio Hieronymi de penitentia fols. 86v–117v: Libellus responsionum (c) Irish material transmitted together with both the Canons of Theodore and the Libellus responsionum The third group consists of four manuscripts: c.1. B (saec. X1, possibly from Brittany) pp. 19–160: Hibernensis, Recension A pp. 165–173: Canons of Theodore, Recension D 40  Description of contents from Meens, ‘The oldest manuscript witness’, 8.

56  Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law p. 164 (and p. 283): fragment from Canones Adomnani pp. 176–7: extracts from the Penitential of Vinnian p. 177: De disputatione Hibernensis sinodi et Grigori Nasaseni (title only) pp. 177–178: De arreis pp. 279–80: Synodus sapientium de decimis p. 265: extract from Libellus responsionum c.2. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 2233 (c. 800, perhaps from Salzburg)41 A manuscript of 93 folios consisting of the Paenitentiale Vindobonense B (written probably at Salzburg in the late eighth or early ninth century),42 which contains texts from Recension U of the Canons of Theodore; the Penitential of Vinnian; the Libellus responsionum, consisting of interrogationes 3, 4, 10; and the Excarpsus Cummeani. The manuscript also has copies of the penitentials attributed to Bede (fols. 17r–21r) and Egbert (fols. 77r–87v). The only other manuscript to contain a (nearly) complete copy of the Penitential of Vinnian is a portion of the composite St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 150, pp. 323–384, which Sven Meeder labels ‘150d’.43 c.3. Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS 10127–44 (saec. VIIIex, copied from a manuscript in Irish script, provenance Saint-Pierre, Ghent) fols. 45v–48r: Synodus Patricii fols. 48r–57r: Libellus responsionum fols. 58r–65r: Canons of Theodore, Recension U c.4. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. 572, part II: fols. 51–106 (saec. IX1, Mainz)44 fols. 51r–70r: Excarpsus Cummeani fols. 70r–76v: has parallels in Cop, fols. 35r–43r fols. 73r–74v: has parallels in the Vetus Gallica 24.4, 6; 26.2–3; 46.2; 45.3 fol. 74v: extracts from Libellus responsionum fol. 75v: extract from the Canons of Theodore, recension U, with parallels in the Vetus Gallica

41  Description based primarily on Tabulae codicum manu scriptorum in Bibliotheca Palatina Vindobonensis, 2:36–37; Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 15; Frantzen, ‘The penitentials attributed to Bede’, 581; Meens, ‘The Penitential of Finnian and the textual witness of the Paenitentiale Vindobonense “B”’. 42  Meens, ‘Kanonisches Recht in Salzburg’, 13–34; Meeder, Irish Scholarly Presence, 104. 43  Meeder, Irish Scholarly Presence, 102. 44  Description from: Hunt, et al., A Summary Catalogue, 2:170–174 §2026. Updated in 2018 by Matthew Holford for the online catalogue: https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/ manuscript_1591

Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law  57 fols. 75v–76v: extracts from the Hibernensis with parallels in the Vetus Gallica fols. 86r–88r: Libellus responsionum To judge by these twelve manuscripts it would appear that the Libellus responsionum and the Canons of Theodore were often packaged together with Irish normative sources, such that in places in which these manuscripts circulated readers might have regarded normative sources from Britain and Ireland as forming a set menu. The origin that I noted for most manuscripts in the three categories—a, b, and c, above—is tentative and cannot be established with certainty. It would therefore be unsafe to talk about patterns of dissemination and the manner in which they reflect insular connections. Even if the origins as noted above were certain, the pattern of dissemination would simply suggest that the manuscripts with their insular texts cover much of Latin Europe, with the exception of Italy and Spain. Nine of the twelve manuscripts contain texts of a penitential hue in addition to the Canons of Theodore (the exceptions are a.3, 4, 6). Four manuscripts—Cologne 91; Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 2233; Cop; and Bodley MS. 572—contain also the Excarpsus Cummeani. With the exception of the Penitential of Bishop Halitgar of Cambrai (817–831), which survives in sixty-eight manuscripts, the Excarpsus is the most widely disseminated penitential of the early middle ages, with twenty-eight surviving copies.45 But the codicological context of Halitgar’s penitential is entirely different from the Excarpsus, in that it appears never to have been transmitted with the Canons of Theodore, with Irish penitentials, or with the Hibernensis. In sum, if there is one firm conclusion that can be drawn from categories a, b, and c above, it is that insular material on the continent circulated in a manifestly penitential codicological context. One would therefore wonder whether for some copyists and readers ‘insular’ and ‘penitential’ might have been regarded as interchangeable. But was this indeed the case? The continental reactions to Irish and Anglo-Saxon penitential material can be (and have been) interpreted in different ways. It is common to identify such material as being among those penitentials that were condemned by the reforming councils of Chalon-sur-Saôn (813) and Paris (829).46 The popularity of the Excarpsus shows that Irish penitential prescriptions did make an impact in Francia, but the omission of attributions to Cumméne suggests either that continental clerics were not consciously adopting insular teachings or that they were wary of a backlash for admitting uncertain authorities (Theodore, by contrast, was an archbishop and hence indisputably an acknowledged authority). Authors like Cumméne may have been among the authors of ‘texts called penitentials, whose errors are certain and whose authors are uncertain’ (quos paenitentiales uocant, quorum sunt certi errores, incerti auctores), in the punning language of

45  Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, 229–230, 234–237. 46  Pierce, ‘The “Frankish” penitentials’, 32–35; Kottje, ‘Busspraxis’, 372–88; Frantzen, The Literature of Penance, 94–121.

58  Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law the Council of Chalon.47 A first-hand account of the response to the reception of insular canon law—a letter by Pope Leo IV discussed at length in Chapter 7—shows more clearly how some insular canonical material (in particular the Hibernensis) could be rejected on account of its foreign character. But this might have been the exception. Despite the reform councils’ suspicion towards some penitentials, their disapproving decisions do not mark a break with the usual Carolingian policy of advocating the adoption of penitentials as tools in the dispensation of pastoral care. This policy may be observed, for example, in Charlemagne’s Capitula a sacerdotibus proposita, in the Interrogationes examinationis from 802×803, in the statutes by the bishops of Liège, Freising, Vesoul, and Basel between c. 800 and 823, and in stipulations found in Ansegis’s collection of capitularies from 827.48 Rather, as noted by Allen Frantzen, the reform councils ‘made no specific allowance for the handbooks of penance, but neither did they attack them or seek to eradicate them’.49 Whereas specific penitentials may have been targeted, the penitential genre as a whole was not rejected. As reflected in Rob Meens’s important survey, the injunctions of the reforming councils can be seen as part and parcel of a mixed response to penitentials, which consisted also of the composition and promotion of ‘reform penitentials’. Even as early as 813 the Council of Tours debated which penitential to pronounce as authoritative, until in the 820s we witness the compilation of the influential Penitential of Halitgar at the behest of Archbishop Ebo of Reims, who despaired of the inconsistent rulings found in other penitentials.50 Although Halitgar remained faithful to the ‘safer’ sources of church law, such as church councils, he nevertheless incorporated an earlier penitential into his work (which became Halitgar’s Book VI), and that penitential contained material from Cumméne, but omitted Theodore.51 Why, for Halitgar’s source, could Cumméne’s teachings survive the censure of the reform agenda while Theodore’s did not? Ludger Körntgen speculates that this may be due to ignorance on the compiler’s part, but he does not rule out a deliberate rejection, whose causes cannot be ascertained.52 A further ambiguity can be seen in the two penitentials compiled by Hrabanus Maurus. The first, Paenitentiale ad Otgarium, from c. 841, shows a preference for older and irreproachable sources, like the Bible, Church Fathers, and conciliar acta, while the second, from c. 853, employs also more recent penitential rulings by Theodore and Egbert.53 By the tenth century we witness Regino (d. 915), abbot of Prüm, using material by Theodore (and Pseudo-Bede) for compiling his own penitential, but he never mentions

47  Canon 38, in MGH, Conc. 2.1:281. 48  Gaudemet, ‘Les statuts épiscopaux de la première décade du IXe siecle’, 320–331; McKitterick, Frankish Church, 49–52, 70–72. 49  Frantzen, The Literature of Penance, 99. 50  Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, 130–139. 51  Körntgen, Studien zu den Quellen, 87–90. 52  Körntgen, Studien zu den Quellen, 87. 53  Meens, Penance in Medieval Europe, 133–135.

Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law  59 Cumméne by name (although he does cite from the Excarpsus).54 Disappointingly, the inconsistency shown by Frankish compilers in their choice of which insular authorities to cite or whether to cite any at all, may not tell us much about their position vis-à-vis insular learning on normative matters. Rather, it may simply be a reflection of an arbitrary selection process, not at all informed by any cogent agenda regarding the inclusion or exclusion of insular material. Apart from collections of penitentials, the second most prominent codicological context for the combined transmission of Irish and Anglo-Saxon normative material, is transmission alongside the Hibernensis. Of the manuscripts in groups ‘a’ and ‘c’, manuscripts BOP, which contain the Hibernensis, have Breton connections and derive from a common exemplar. These as well as a fourth manuscript of the Hibernensis, H, which also exhibits Breton connections, will be dealt with in extenso in Chapter 7. For present purposes it is noteworthy that all four Breton-related manuscripts (BHOP) contain copies of Recension D of the Canons of Theodore. This recension was never transmitted without the Hibernensis, suggesting that it might represent a form of the Canons of Theodore that was known in Ireland, where the Hibernensis was compiled, or in Brittany, where the exemplar for some of the manuscripts may derive from.55 Complete or incomplete copies of the Hibernensis are present altogether in seven manuscripts of all three groups (a, b, and c). A manuscript of special significance to the textual history of both the Hibernensis and the Excarpsus Cummeani is Cop, which may contain the earliest witness to both an undivided text of the Hibernensis (see the Introduction) and the earliest copy of the Excarpsus.56 It also contains a copy of the Libellus responsionum. The manuscript has been argued by Meens to have been copied from an insular exemplar which the scribe had difficulty reading and therefore made a good number of errors in copying.57 But the manuscript itself, written entirely in Uncial script, has been convincingly shown to have originated in northern France in the first half of the eighth century. It may be associated with the circle of St Boniface, or even be a copy of a manuscript written at the instigation of the saint himself.58 Another manuscript of the Libellus, Bodley MS. 572 (c.4), can also be linked to Mainz, Boniface’s see, albeit copied a generation after his death. Boniface indeed sought a copy of the Libellus, as is attested by his correspondence from 735 with Nothelm, then already Archbishop of Canterbury.59 Boniface was hoping to resolve the ambiguity surrounding the question of papal rulings on forbidden degrees of consanguinity with the help of the Libellus, which contains a series of questions posed by

54  Regino, Libri duo de synodalibus causis, Inquisitio 96, Wasserschleben (ed), 26. On the request for material, see Meens, ‘The historiography of early medieval penance’, 77. 55  Flechner, ‘The making of the Canons of Theodore’, 132. 56  The manuscript has been transcribed by Michael Elliot: http://ccl.rch.uky.edu/aboutKob58 [accessed 26 April 2018] and there is an edition by Meens, ‘The oldest manuscript witness’, 14–19, of fols. 42r–44r, 69v–80v, which contain texts that occur in the Hibernensis. 57  Meens, ‘The oldest manuscript witness’, 5. 58  Deanesly and Grosjean, ‘Canterbury edition’, 15; Meens, ‘The oldest manuscript witness’, 9–13. 59  Letter 33, Tangl (ed), 56–58.

60  Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law Augustine of Canterbury to Gregory the Great and Gregory’s replies.60 Boniface asked Nothelm to send him a copy of the Libellus from the Canterbury archives, because he suspected that his own copy might be corrupt. Nothelm had already supplied Bede with a copy of the Libellus, which was incorporated in full into the Ecclesiastical History 1.27.61 The possibility of a connection with Boniface is reinforced by the fact that, among the texts it has in common with the Hibernensis, Cop contains four texts that occur only in Θ, a miscellany of canons that occur in the Hibernensis (Appendix I §§1, 4, 6, 37). The Boniface link has prompted speculation about a possible missionary context for the making of Cop: ‘…the contents of the manuscript seems to suggest that it was used in the grey zone between pastoral care and judicial authority, which might reflect that it functioned in an early phase of the process of Christianization’.62 The contents of the manuscript are also of interest for the insular dimension of three of its texts—the Excarpsus, the Hibernensis, and the Libellus—but it appears as though this dimension was not highlighted by the compilers of this manuscript. Only one text from the Hibernensis (Appendix I §17) preserves an Irish attribution (Patricius) while Theodore is mentioned indirectly through the Excarpsus, and Cumméne not at all. Therefore, labelling this combination of texts insular is perhaps more of a scholarly convenience than it is a genuine reflection of a contemporary perspective.

Unique insular themes which may constitute a common ‘insular tradition’ In attempting to make the case for an ‘insular tradition of ecclesiastical law’ in an earlier article, I set out to show that canonical and penitential material on both sides of the Irish Sea can be said to have partaken of such a tradition thanks to shared concerns and approaches.63 The argument then rested on much the same data that were rehearsed earlier in the present chapter concerning direct and conscious contacts between authors, interdependence between texts, the explicit interest that Theodore took in Irish penitential teachings as he commented on the Penitential of Cumméne (which he called the Libellus Scottorum), the almost unprecedented systematic division of the Hibernensis and of the collection of Theodoran sayings compiled by the Discipulus Umbrensium, the admission of novel sources by both Theodore and the Hibernensis, the awareness that Theodore and the Hibernensis show of the problem of conflicting sources, the similar solutions that Theodore and the Hibernensis offer to addressing the problem of conflicting sources, and, finally, the historical perspective adopted by both the Hibernensis and the Canons of Theodore in their harking back to texts that 60  On the treatment of incest in the Libellus, see Ubl, Inzestverbot und Gesetzgebung, 220–227; Elliot, ‘Boniface, incest, and the earliest extant version of Pope Gregory I’s Libellus responsionum’, esp. 87–88. 61  Bede, HE, praefatio, Colgrave and Mynors (ed and tr), 4/5. 62  Meens, ‘The oldest manuscript witness’, 13. 63  Flechner, ‘An insular tradition of ecclesiastical law’.

Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law  61 were believed to be the earliest manifestations of canonical discipline in Ireland and Britain: the Synodus episcoporum (attributed to St Patrick) and the Libellus responsionum, respectively. Here I shall adopt a different and simpler approach to the question of common concerns and methods, although I will revisit, and occasionally revise, some of my earlier thoughts on the matter. In particular, I will be asking whether there are unique insular-wide concerns that vexed authors in Britain in Ireland, whether there are issues that authors sought to clarify by drawing on the experience of another insular culture, whether there are normative precepts that were conceived as a response to the customs or practices of an insular culture other than one’s own, and whether there are instances in which canonical precepts that gained currency outside the insular region were adapted to suit non-insular circumstances. In asking about common concerns in texts compiled in Ireland and in Britain, one would like to be able to distinguish between similarities that are likely to be random and others that are likely to be deliberate. Distinguishing the two is rarely possible with absolute certainty, unless direct influence can unequivocally be observed: influence of the kind that we have already seen, for example, in the correspondence between Gildas and Vinnian or the pattern of interconnectivity between insular canonical and penitential texts that borrowed from one another and circulated alongside one another. The penitential genre itself may be seen as constituting a self-evident pillar of an ‘insular tradition of ecclesiastical law’. How else to describe the almost simultaneous emergence of penitential texts in both Britain and Ireland at a time when we have good attestations of contacts both between authors and texts from either place? The earliest penitentials to survive, from the sixth or early seventh century, are all from Britain, and they appear to have been authored by British rather than Anglo-Saxon authors and intended for British rather than Anglo-Saxon communities. There are four such texts, all relatively short, which are known as (i) the Excerpts from a Book of David (ii) the Synod of the Grove of Victory (iii) the Synod of North Britain, and (iv) the Preface of Gildas on Penance.64 All four texts are cited and alluded to by later Irish penitentials.65 Normative texts other than penitentials are more difficult to compare. The Canons of Theodore and the Hibernensis are both systematic collections, with the former exercising a direct and incontrovertible influence on the latter. However, the clear penitential character of the second part of the Canons of Theodore (sc. of recension U.II) sets it apart from the Hibernensis, which eschews penitential material almost entirely. We seem, therefore, not to be comparing like with like, but texts that may only be superficially similar. Likewise, the Canons of Theodore contrast with the Hibernensis in their rallying around a single authority, Theodore, even though the material that they contain was assembled from diverse sources, especially conciliar acta, which are the staple of late antique and early medieval collections. Of these, the ones that can be identified are the so-called Apostolic Canons, as well as the councils of Ancyra, Neocaesarea, 64  BCLL §§144–147. 65  Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 285–287.

62  Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law Antioch, Laodicea, and Carthage.66 No doubt the compilers of the Hibernensis regarded the Canons of Theodore as authoritative, because they drew upon them. To say that both the Hibernensis and the Canons of Theodore took an interest in the foundation of churches, monastic living, offences committed by clerics, excommunication, and so on, will surprise no one, because these are all very typical topics found in many a canonical collection or synodal text. But in addition to these, there are concerns which—at that period—seem to have been rather unique to insular texts. First and foremost among them was ritual purity, and in particular dietary restrictions. Regulations on ritual purity concerning food are the principal theme of the Canones Adomnani and are treated at length in the Canons of Theodore as well as in the Hibernensis’s book De carnibus, which frequently cites Theodore. One can regard the theme of dietary restrictions as yet another aspect in an expanding list of variables which—when added to one another—suggest a particular kind of insular identity for these texts. Alternatively, one may reject the insular label as too arbitrary: in other words, these texts may be acknowledged to share certain themes and approaches, but it does not follow that these have an inherently insular quality. The only aspect shared by these texts which seems to be unequivocally insular is the condemnation of the Britons (and in Theodore’s case, also of the Irish) for their Easter observance.67 That authors from Ireland drew on texts by authors from Britain and vice versa has repeatedly been noted. But can this be considered a conscious and deliberate borrowing from another culture which was chosen for its geographical proximity, or is this simply another way by which compilers of canonical collections and authors of penitentials sought to maximise the material for their texts? Thankfully we do have examples of what conscious cross-cultural borrowing looked like in an insular setting and we also have examples of cases in which practices of different cultures were deliberately contrasted as part and parcel of the process of establishing church norms. The earliest canonical text in which insular authorities coincide—in this case as antagonistic—is the Libellus responsionum. In the seventh clause Augustine asked Gregory how best to deal with Gallic and British bishops.68 Gregory replied that Augustine and the Gallic bishops ought to reciprocally correct one another, but that Augustine is to have full authority over the British bishops who must follow his precepts and not vice versa. What applied to the Gauls clearly did not apply to the Britons. A better expression of cross-cultural comparisons is found in the Canons of Theodore, which record the observations that Theodore made of various rites and customs he encountered throughout his life as a native of Tarsus in Cilicia, as a student in Syria, and as an inmate of an oriental monastic community in Rome.69 His familiarity with traditions in Greek- and Latin-speaking Christian provinces 66  Finsterwalder (ed), 204–205. 67  Theodore, U.II.9, Finsterwalder (ed), 323–324; Hib 51.6 (p. 409 ln. 17–p. 410 ln. 1). 68  Bede, HE 1.27, Colgrave and Mynors (ed and tr), 78–103. 69  Lapidge, ‘The career of Archbishop Theodore’.

Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law  63 was the source for several descriptive canons concerning Greci and Romani (Christians who identified with either Byzantine or Roman rites70), canons whose practical application can be difficult to assess. For instance, the following passage provides two distinct rules on marriage within the kin: In tertia propinquitate carnis licet nubere secundum Grecos, sicut in lege scriptum est; in quinta secundum Romanos. According to the Greci, marriage is permitted in the third degree, as it is written in the law; according to the Romani, in the fifth.71 Theodore might not have meant for these remarks to be anything more than non-binding observations. However, once they had been recorded in writing and transmitted in canonical collections that bore his name, they were elevated to canonical status. All recensions of Theodore’s canons contain descriptions of customs practised by Greci and Romani, some of which are contradictory. However, the Disciple’s work is the only recension in which much of this material can be found grouped together in a single chapter, titled De moribus Graecorum et Romanorum ‘On the customs of Greci and Romani’, comprising eight clauses.72 Similar clauses on Greci and Romani are spread throughout his work. Issues on which Greci and Romani differed were the authority of presbyters, women’s entitlement to make offerings, ownership of slaves in monasteries, observance of Sunday, and marriage within the kin.73 Occasionally, Theodore gave examples of practices on which Greci and Romani were said to have been in agreement: Greci and Romani both abstain from sexual intercourse at similar times, they sail and ride horses on Sunday, and both provide their slaves with clothing.74 It is noteworthy that Theodore did not explicitly side with either Romani or Greci. The Disciple maintained this neutrality by retaining the discrepancies rather than suppressing them. Theodore, as a teacher of canon law, and the Disciple, as the editor of a canonical compilation, were not the only insular authors who conducted a ‘comparative study’ of the customs of Romani and other groups. Their near contemporaries, Cú Chuimne and Ruben, engaged in a similar exercise by citing fifty-three canons attributed to Romani and ninety-one attributed to another group, the

70  For this interpretation, see Ullmann, ‘On the use of the term Romani in the sources of the earlier middle ages’, 155, 157: ‘This counterpart of the Romans, the Graeci, too, had primarily no territorial or national meaning, but a religious or ideological one... It is not, however, in the strictly historical accounts only that the term Romani is given its religious meaning, but also in such sources as Penitentials, for instance, in the one ascribed to Theodore of Canterbury, that the ideological conception of Romani is contrasted with that of the Greeks’. 71  Finsterwalder (ed), 329. 72  Finsterwalder (ed), 322–23. 73  Finsterwalder (ed), 316, 322, 323, 329. 74  Finsterwalder (ed), 305, 322, 323.

64  Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law Hibernenses.75 These expressions are believed to have designated two factions within the seventh-century Irish church, each of which is thought to have held separate councils. Romani are perceived as reformers who promoted the introduction of the Roman Easter and the Petrine tonsure to Ireland, and Hibernenses as conservatives who advocated the old rites.76 Despite the different geo-political settings, the Romani mentioned in the Hibernensis were essentially not that far removed from those on which Theodore commented, in that both groups acknowledged the primatial status of the Roman Apostolic See, and looked to it for guidance on spiritual matters.77 However, there is a fundamental difference to be noted in the manner in which Romani were portrayed in Theodoran canons and in the Hibernensis. Theodore contrasted their customs with those of Greci and the Disciple’s text retained Theodore’s comments without eliminating the contrast. On the other hand, in the Hibernensis, canons attributed to Romani and Hibernenses do not overtly conflict with one another.78 This runs contrary to expectation, since one would assume that some disagreements would be inevitable between two ostensibly distinct groups within the Irish church, each of which appears to have issued (or re-enacted) separate canons. Hence, the fact that no contradictions can be found in the Hibernensis between canons attributed to Romani and Hibernenses suggests that the compilers chose to eliminate them, rather than that contradictions did not exist.79 In striving 75  See Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:151*–155*. Mention of Hibernenses in early medieval insular sources other than the Hibernensis is scant. It occurs in the ascriptions of two penitentials: De disputatione Hibernensis and Sinodus Hibernensis (Bieler [ed], 160, 170). On the other hand, occurrences of Romani in insular texts are rife: Patrick, Epistola ad milites Corotici §§2, 14, Hood (ed), 35, 37; Canones Adomnani §16, Bieler (ed), 178; Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum §18, Bieler (ed), 136; Sinodus episcoporum §6, Bieler (ed), 54; Synodus Patricii §30, Bieler (ed), 196. Romani have been credited with having had their own exegetical views, due to three attributions to them in an insular commentary on the Psalms (tentatively dated to the eighth century) in Vatican Library, Palatinus lat. 68. See McNamara, Glossa in Psalmos, 108, 114, 116 [in the headings]. 76  Since the publication of Wasserschleben’s first edition of the Hibernensis, references to councils attributed to Romani and Hibernenses have been enlisted in the cause of the ‘two party’ theory. See, for instance, Bradshaw, The Early Collection of Canons, 7; Bury, Life of Patrick, 237–239. Perhaps the best known views on the matter are those of Hughes, The Church in Early Irish Society, 103–142, esp. 123–133. Hughes argued that the parties not only differed on Easter and the tonsure, but that each party promoted its own distinct legislation and was subject to different forms of Church government. Sharpe, ‘Armagh and Rome’, 68, suggested a broader definition, which considers the main aspect of the designation Romani, as distinct from Hibernenses, to be ‘the assertion of a belief in the oneness of Latin Christendom, with its hierarchy culminating in the papal primacy of the Bishop of Rome’. 77  Once more, in my interpretation of Romani, I follow Ullmann, ‘The term Romani’, 156, and Sharpe, ‘Armagh and Rome’, 68. 78  The only exception―canons on excommunication, Hib 39.1 (p. 298 ln. 16–17, p. 299 ln. 1–3)― does not contain a straight-forward contradiction. Rather, the Hibernenses are said to have practised a more comprehensive form of excommunication, which included all the aspects of excommunication practised by Romani. 79  There are indications that the two might have adhered to different models of ecclesiastical authority, but the Hibernensis does not draw a clear contrast between Romani and Hibernenses on this issue. See Etchingham, Church Organisation, 57.

Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law  65 to portray the rulings of both groups, Romani and Hibernenses, as harmonious, the compilers may be argued to have been contributing to a reconciliation in the aftermath of the Easter controversy, following Iona’s acceptance of the Roman rite in 716. From that time Irish clergy would have had an incentive to overlook their differences rather than intensify them. In searching for distinct insular characteristics, we may turn our attention to cases in which local concerns are addressed by means of applying ‘universal’ canonical precepts, but only after these have been adapted to suit the local circumstances. Such modifications tend to be very place-specific and apply to either Britain or Ireland rather than to both. Nevertheless, some cases of adaptation are significant in their own right and deserve mention. I note three examples. The first example is the famous instance in which Pope Gregory the Great allowed for certain exceptions to be made to canonical rules on consanguinity. In responsio §5 of the Libellus responsionum Augustine was instructed by Gregory to excommunicate any Christian who married contrary to the canonical rules, but he was permitted to make an exception in the case of newly-converted Christians, who had observed local marriage customs and consequently violated the rules unknowingly before their conversion.80 The second example, also relating to Anglo-Saxon England, is from the Disciple’s recension of the Canons of Theodore. In a clause that appears in two different versions in different copies of the Disciple’s text, we read the following: Apud Grecos non est consuetudo uiris feminas habere monachas, neque feminis uiros, tamen consuetudinem istius prouinciae non distruamus. Among the Greeks it is not customary for men to have women [as] nuns, nor for women [to have] men, nevertheless we should not undo the custom of this province. Non licet uiris feminas habere monachas, neque feminis uiros, tamen nos non distruamus illud quae consuetudo est in hac terra. Men are not permitted to have women [as] nuns, nor are women [permitted to have] men, nevertheless we should not undo that which is customary in this land.81 The clause clearly acknowledges a unique local custom prevalent in ista prouincia/haec terra which Theodore ordered to be upheld even though it contravenes the custom of the Greci (in one version) or a custom that is not ethnically-specific (in the other version). However, the precise meaning of the clause is debatable: Does the clause deal with double (male/female) monasteries and the dominant gender of their inmates? Does it concern the implications to a married couple

80  Bede, HE, 1.27, Colgrave and Mynors (ed and tr), 84–86. For recent discussions of this episode, see Ubl, Inzestverbot und Gesetzgebung, 220–227; Elliot, ‘Boniface, incest, and the earliest extant version of Pope Gregory I’s Libellus responsionum’, esp. 87–88. 81  Theodore, U II.6.8a, 8b, Finsterwalder (ed), 320.

66  Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law who submits to the monastic life (and presumably comits to living in chastity thereafter)?82 The exact nature of the local custom remains obscure. The third example, from the Irish side, is a unique case of adaptation in the context of suretyship, an institution that was central to maintaining social order and upholding reciprocal agreements by ensuring that parties who entered into a contract brought sureties to vouch on their behalf.83 In Synodus episcoporum §8 we read: Clericus si pro gentili homine fideiusor fuerit in quacumque quantitate et si contigerit, quod mirum non potest, per astutiam aliquam gentilis ille clerico fallat, rebus suis clericus ille soluat debitum. Nam si armis conpugnauerit cum illo, merito extra ecclesiam conputetur. If a cleric has given surety for a pagan in whatsoever amount, and it so happens—as well it might—that the pagan by some ruse defaults upon the cleric, the cleric must pay the debt from his own means; should he contend with him in arms, let him be reckoned to be outside the church, as he deserves.84 This text may be seen as a refinement of Canones apostolorum §20 which forbids a cleric from going surety altogether. Its title reads clericum fideiussorem esse non posse ‘a cleric may not go surety’, and the actual canon reads clericus fideiussionibus inseruiens deponatur ‘a cleric who commits himself to acts of surety, should be deposed’.85 The purpose of Synodus episcoporum §8 might have been to prevent a cleric from acting as naidm, an enforcing surety who would do violence or threaten violence to coerce the defaulting party, but to enable him to act as ráth, a surety who would pay the debt on behalf of the defaulting party.86

Conclusion There is clear evidence, of which scholars have been aware for a long time, that ecclesiastical law (broadly defined) written on either side of the Irish Sea was mutually influential. The manuscript tradition of texts of ecclesiastical law shows that they often circulated together. It is also common to find excerpts from insular texts side by side in continental penitentials and in a continental canonical collection, the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica.

82  Theodore's position on this matter is difficult to interpret because pertinent rulings do not cover all contingencies. Thus, U I.14.5 (Finsterwalder [ed], 307) allows either a man or woman, who has taken a vow of chastity but married nevertheless, to stay married so long as s/he does penance. But U II.12.13 (Finsterwalder [ed], 328) allows a married couple to separate by mutual consent if only one of them wants to join a monastery. 83  On the different types of sureties and their social and legal obligations, see GEIL, 167–73. 84  Bieler (ed and tr), 54/55. 85  Canones apostolorum, Strewe (ed), 2, 6. That some connection (or even dependence) between the two canons―Canones apostolorum §20 and Synodus episcoporum §8―was made already from the late seventh or early eighth century, is evidenced by the fact that they are placed one after the other in chapter 33.2 (p. 238 ln. 1–6) of the Hibernensis. 86  Cf. Stacey, Road to Judgment, 39.

Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law  67 Nevertheless, the themes that insular authors and compilers of normative texts were addressing were more universal than local, although some unique local concerns can be observed and, likewise, there is evidence for an awareness of the value of contrasting local customs with customs observed elsewhere in Christendom. However, none of this amounts to a compelling case for a discrete ‘insular tradition’ that acknowledged its distinctiveness and sought to set itself apart from a dominant normative current outside the insular region. Likewise, there is no unequivocal indication that continental clergy (with the possible exception of Leo IV, discussed in Chapter 7) were aware of the existence of a discrete insular tradition of church law. There was of course an awareness of the fact that certain texts were of insular origin, but they appear to have been quarried mainly as treasure troves from which to cherry-pick excerpts, not for any added ‘insular’ value. Nevertheless, some continental authors, who were doing the cherry-picking, seem to have had their own preferences: for example, some (Halitgar or Halitgar’s source) preferred sentences by Cumméne rather than Theodore, while others (Regino) had the opposite preference. But the reasons for this remain unexplained and may not have had much to do with Cumméne’s or Theodore’s ethnic identity or their insular abodes, but with other criteria that presently elude us. The ostensible lack of awareness, or simply indifference, of the insular origins of certain texts, can be contrasted with the fact that, at the same time, Irish and Anglo-Saxon normative texts continued to be copied side by side into the same continental manuscripts. There are at least twelve such manuscripts, which testify to a salient codicological coherence in the continental transmission of insular texts of ecclesiastical law. Therefore, the reception of insular material on the Continent can be interpreted differently, depending on whether we examine it by looking at the continental transmission of complete insular texts or of excerpts from insular texts. The transmission of complete texts suggests that an insular identity did matter (to the manuscripts’ copyists at least) while the transmission of excerpts does not lend itself to any compelling conclusions.

4 Irish vernacular law and church law

The opposition between ‘secular law’ and ‘ecclesiastical law’ has long been shown to be a false dichotomy: clerics were often the authors both of texts that are classified in scholarship as ‘secular’ law and of texts classified as ‘ecclesiastical’ law. Furthermore, texts of either type are not concerned exclusively with matters that are wholly religious or wholly secular, but with matters that cross categories and are sometimes mutually dependent. A case in point is the text Bretha Nemed.1 Already in 1984 Liam Breatnach drew attention to close correspondences between Bretha Nemed §22 and Hib 41.3 (p. 314 ln. 13–14), which quotes the Council of Vaison (AD 442) §4, as well as between Bretha Nemed §10 and Hib H44.1 V43.1 (p. 313 ln. 6–10), which quotes Isidore’s Etymologiae 8.1.1.2 These anecdotal correspondences testify to a particular form of dependence, namely that of one text (Bretha Nemed), commonly classified as ‘secular’, borrowing directly from another (the Hibernensis), commonly classified as ‘ecclesiastical’. Comparisons with other texts yield further examples of dependence of other kinds, which I shall examine later. Correspondences across texts such as Bretha Nemed and the Hibernensis may demonstrate that ‘secular law’ and ‘ecclesiastical law’ were indeed separate categories that sometimes exercised fruitful interplay between them, or that the two were not regarded as distinct at all. Either conclusion may be supported by Breatnach’s proposed identification of the authors of Bretha Nemed as siblings of the Munster Uí Búirechtain, who held a combination of both ecclesiastical and secular professions: the bishop Forannán, the poet Máel Tuili, and the judge Báethgalach. The identity of the authors of law texts is a topic that received much scholarly attention, which will indeed be considered in the present chapter, as will the difficulty of distinguishing securely between different types of normative texts, whether we choose to categorise them as ‘secular’, ‘ecclesiastical’, or any other type. Such difficulties notwithstanding, I shall occasionally apply both ‘ecclesiastical law’ and ‘secular law’ as working definitions to facilitate the discussion. I shall be using also the expression ‘vernacular law’ to designate normative texts in Old Irish (some of which have an ecclesiastical dimension of one kind or another: 1  Breatnach, ‘Canon law and secular law’. 2  Bretha Nemed Toísech, Breatnach (ed and tr), 12/13, 16/17. Breatnach notes the dependence on the Isidorian passage but the identification of the text in the B-Recension is my own.

Irish vernacular law and church law  69 e.g. clauses addressed to clergy) but also legal institutions that are independent of the church and may be cautiously regarded as ‘local’/’Irish’. None of these definitions is precise and I use them with full awareness of their ambiguous nature and of the potential circularity in equating vernacular language with vernacular legal institutions. Indeed, these expressions and the concepts that they stand for will be problematised repeatedly in both the present chapter and in other chapters. However, in seeking to maintain consistency with current scholarly parlance, I found it impossible to avoid entirely expressions like ‘secular’, ‘ecclesiastical’, ‘vernacular’, and so on, which have for a long time been a staple of historiographical discourse. The alternative of applying more ‘neutral’ terminology would have resulted in such anodyne expressions that would have rendered the discussion incomprehensible. At the core of the present chapter is a comparison between the Hibernensis and a vernacular text that deals almost exclusively with ecclesiastical matters, Córus Bésgnai, which is among the fifty or so texts included in the great collection of Irish normative material, the Senchas Már.3 To enable a comparison I shall look beyond obvious differences, the most conspicuous of which are their language (the Hibernensis is written in Latin and Córus Bésgnai is written entirely in the vernacular) and the widely derivative nature of the Hibernensis in contrast with Córus Bésgnai, whose handful of identified sources are all of Irish origin. In comparing the two I shall be focusing instead on matters of substance and asking whether it is possible to observe certain significant traits that are unique to either text. I will then be asking whether any such trait may suggest that vernacular law texts and Latin ‘canonical’ (yet another imprecise adjective) texts from Ireland pertained to distinct normative traditions even when they were both predominantly concerned with ecclesiastical matters. The discussion will begin, however, with an essential introduction to the historiography concerning what is commonly termed ‘Irish vernacular law’ and the salient correspondences between vernacular law and the Hibernensis. In one of the best recent discussions of the state of the art concerning Irish vernacular law, Robin Chapman Stacey identifies the nativist/revisionist debate as continuing to form a major fault line in the historiography, even though its current manifestation is different from its past iterations.4 Instead of debating across a divide that posits, on the one hand, a law that draws almost exclusively on native principles transmitted orally from a pagan past and even from a common Indo-European heritage, and, on the other hand, another kind of law that draws on a Latinate tradition acquired through ecclesiastical education, there is at present widespread acknowledgement of the clerical element across all laws. Consequently, the debate is no longer on the question of whether or not ‘vernacular law’ was influenced by the church, but on the degree to which it was. As 3  On the Senchas Már and its contents see Breatnach, ‘On the original extent of the Senchas Már’; Idem, Companion, 268–314; GEIL, 264–280. 4  On the nativist debate see Herbert, ‘The world, the text, and the critic’; Johnston, ‘Early Irish history: the state of the art’; Karl and Stifter, The Celtic World, 1:155–310; Stacey, Dark Speech, 57–60, 217–224.

70  Irish vernacular law and church law Stacey puts it, this is a debate on ‘the number and significance of the texts that can be shown to have originated in a Latin ecclesiastical environment, and on the question of education and whether the authors of the law tracts were necessarily clerics’.5 The acceptance of the clerical element in the laws does not negate the notion that aspects of vernacular law can be traced to a common Indo-European origin.6 The consensus on this matter draws on patent similarities between institutions in different parts of the Indo-European sphere, such as horse sacrifices, sick maintenance, distraint, and fasting as a form of applying pressure on resistant debtors. Closer parallels have been argued to exist between Celtic-speaking cultures, where legal knowledge, which was originally transmitted orally, can be shown in the historical era to share corresponding terminology, most notably in Irish and Welsh law, going back to a common origin.7 Apart from the nativist/revisionist divide with its sometimes ideological undertones, a second methodological contrast in current scholarship can be identified: between a dominant positivist historiographical strand, which has its roots ultimately in comparative philology of the nineteenth century, and a more recent strand, which countenances a theoretically informed and more literary-driven approach to the normative texts. Put crudely, the two strands—in their strongest manifestation—may be placed at either end of a spectrum which comprises the realism of the laws on one extreme and their idealism on the other. Contesting the realism of the laws can be as subtle as to simply point out that the authors were selective in what they chose to depict and what they chose to omit, or as radical as to suggest that—on certain occasions—the authors deliberately departed from the reality around them and offered an alternative view, which was not merely exaggerated but sometimes improbable.8 It is commonplace to divide Irish vernacular law by the subject matter of the various law tracts. One such influential division can be found in Fergus Kelly’s textbook on Irish law: rank and status, professional groups (e.g. clergy, poets, etc.), categories of person (e.g. foster-children, tenants, etc.), injury, land and farming, contracts, loans and deposits, pledges, sureties and hostages, distraint,

5  Stacey, ‘Ancient Irish law revisited’, 100. 6  On the clerical element in the laws see, for example, Mac Niocaill, ‘Christian influences in early Irish law’; GEIL, 231–241; Charles-Edwards, ‘Early Irish law’; Ó Corráin, Breatnach and Breen, ‘The laws of the Irish’; Breatnach, ‘Canon law and secular law in early Ireland: the significance of Bretha Nemed’; McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present, 84–106; Breatnach, ‘The ecclesiastical element in the Old-Irish legal tract Cáin Fhuithirbe’; Breatnach, ‘Lawyers in early Ireland’; Ó Corráin, ‘Irish law and canon law’; Ó Corráin, ‘Irish vernacular law and the Old Testament’. 7 Binchy, ‘Bretha Nemed’; 5–6, Mac Cana, ‘The three languages and the three laws’, 66–72; GEIL, 47–49, 231–238; Charles-Edwards, ‘Early Irish law’; Breatnach, ‘Lawyers in early Ireland’, 3–5; Stacey, Road to Judgment, 18–19; Owen, ‘The Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum and Welsh law’. 8  Examples of the former approach, which Stacey, ‘Ancient Irish law revisited’ quotes, include two articles by Charles-Edwards: ‘Críth Gablach and the law of status’ and ‘A contract between king and people’. An example of the bolder approach is Stacey’s own chapter, ‘Ancient Irish law revisited’, in which she discusses the unrealistic way in which women’s role in society is sometimes depicted, or the absence of any depictions of women altogether.

Irish vernacular law and church law  71 procedure, and ecclesiastical legislation.9 Some law texts, like Córus Bésgnai, which Kelly classifies as a tract pertaining to ‘professional groups’ (in this case the clergy), can be argued to correspond to other categories as well, like ‘ecclesiastical legislation’. Only rarely is it possible to identify the authors of individual law tracts. However, from the internal evidence of the tracts themselves, one may infer the existence of at least three seventh- and eighth-century law-schools. These are the Senchas Már school, which is believed to be connected to Armagh, the Nemed school, which may be associated with Munster, and a third school, perhaps in Meath or south Ulster, which was responsible for the important tract on status, Críth Gablach.10 There is an unequivocal ecclesiastical strain in texts from all three schools, with the Senchas Már famously going so far as to describe the origin of Irish law as the product of an interplay between native and Christian precepts, on which more below.11 The evidence from Bretha Nemed has been argued to provide firm support ‘for the integration of the churches into Irish society as a whole, the involvement of churchmen in the law, and their close family connections with the secular learned orders’.12 Stacey draws a contrast between the professional context in which Irish law flourished and the clear royal context in which laws in the Barbarian successor kingdoms emerged. Although certain Irish tracts, like Urraicecht Becc, arguably exhibit a certain royal connection (to the king of Munster), in most cases the law seems to have been transmitted and expounded upon by professional jurists.13 Donnchadh Ó Corráin, in what has become a well-known hypothesis, has argued on the evidence of correspondences between vernacular laws and laws in Latin, which are commonly regarded as ‘ecclesiastical’, that ‘the law tracts, in Latin and in the vernacular, are the work of a single class of learned men who were versed in scripture as in the legal lore of their ancestors and founded their laws on a conscious and sophisticated compromise between the two’.14 He and others have taken to referring to this class in terms of a ‘mandarin’ class, comprising the clergy, poets and jurists, whose members placed their skills

9  GEIL, 266–283. It appears that the principal criterion distinguishing his final category, ‘canon law’, from ‘ecclesiastical legislation’ is language: Latin and Old Irish, respectively. 10  GEIL, 242–246. 11  Ó Corráin, Breatnach and Breen, ‘Laws of the Irish’, 384–385. For an edition and translation see Carey, ‘An edition of the Pseudo-Historical Prologue’, 11–13, 17–19. 12  Breatnach, ‘Canon law and secular law’, 459. 13 Stacey, Road to Judgment, 22. But the overall aim of Urraicecht Becc might have been to serve as a legal primer for those who were not experts in the law. See Qiu, ‘Manuscript contexts of early Irish law tracts: a case study on “Uraicecht Becc”’. 14  Ó Corráin, Breatnach and Breen, ‘Laws of the Irish’, 343.

72  Irish vernacular law and church law at the service of kings.15 Bart Jaski maintains that this class of literati was responsible for introducing provisions on kingship of the kind found in the Hibernensis and in the seventh-century De duodecim abusiuis saeculi.16 These texts rely on biblical paradigms as a means of reconciling native institutions with Christian ideas about law and justice. The dating of the law tracts ranges broadly from the mid seventh to the late eighth century and the early ninth century. For present purposes, the question of dating is significant only as a way of placing vernacular law in relation to the Hibernensis. Some law tracts, like Bretha Nemed above, can in fact be dated with reference to the Hibernensis, which was among their sources. The Senchas Már, early medieval Ireland’s foremost collection of vernacular law tracts, is widely accepted to date from the late seventh or early eighth century, although there have been attempts to narrow the dating bracket.17 Until the question of the dating of Senchas Már is definitively settled, one must withhold judgement about the direction of influence between the Hibernensis and texts of the Senchas Már. (Possibly, correspondences between the two may themselves hold the key to dating the Senchas Már more compellingly, but such an exercise is outside the scope of the present inquiry). A landmark article published in 1984 by Ó Corráin, Breatnach and Breen identifies a number of areas in which vernacular law appears to have borrowed from the Hibernensis: offerings and grants to the church, administration of justice, sanctuaries for fugitives, theft, and excommunication.18 It has also been shown by Peter O’Dwyer that the reform literature of the Célí Dé made ample use of 15  Ó Corráin, ‘Nationality and kingship in pre-Norman Ireland’, 19. A reassessment of this view was undertaken by Charles-Edwards, ‘The context and uses of literacy in early Christian Ireland’, 70–74. He preferred to speak of a ‘complex aristocracy’ rather than a distinct ‘mandarin’ class. For a more recent challenge to the hypothesis of a mandarin class, see Johnston, Literacy and Identity, 22–23. 16  Jaski, ‘Early medieval Irish kingship and the Old Testament’, 343–344. An edition of De duodecim abusiuis saeculi [BCLL §339] is by Hellmann, Pseudo-Cyprianus. De XII abusivis saeculi. For background, see Breen, ‘De XII Abusiuis: text and transmission’. On the text’s provisions on kingship, see Meens, ‘Politics, mirrors of princes’, 349–357. 17 Breatnach, The Early Irish Law Text Senchas Már and the Question of its Date, 42, argued that it is a product of Armagh and proposed to re-date it to 660×680, approximately half a century earlier than the date previously accepted. More recently, in his Córus Bésgnai, 1, he quoted this hypothesis as fact: ‘internal textual evidence allows us to date it more precisely to some time between 660 and 680 AD, and to locate the place of writing as Armagh’. The Senchas Már may indeed be of the date and provenance that Breatnach proposes, but these cannot be upheld definitively on the evidence that he provides. His argument hinges on certain affinities with Patrician literature and propaganda during what he refers to as the period of Armagh’s ‘aggrandisement’ (p. 42) in the second half of the seventh century. However, the Hibernensis too contains a good deal of material that can be interpreted as Armagh rhetoric, some exactly of the same kind as that Breatnach finds in the Senchas Már. Yet in ‘Canon law and secular law’, 459, Breatnach himself has argued for ‘a definite Munster connection’ for the Hibernensis rather than an Armagh connection. For further doubts on the date and provenance as proposed by Breatnach, see the otherwise glowing review by Charles-Edwards in Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 67 (2020), 175 n 2. 18  Ó Corráin, Breatnach and Breen, ‘Laws of the Irish’, 396–399, 413–415, 418.

Irish vernacular law and church law  73 the Hibernensis (discussed in Chapter 1).19 The Hibernensis itself can be seen to draw on vernacular legal institutions and precepts, which are known from surviving texts. The compilers of the Hibernensis sometimes admitted native elements without altering them, but sometimes went to great lengths to reconcile them with Christian precepts. I offer a number of examples. The first is the strained biblical rationale for maintaining that female eye-witness testimony was inadmissible, in the same manner that the oath of a woman (bannoíll) was, with some exceptions, inadmissible in vernacular law.20 In Hib 16.3 (p. 85 ln. 10–11) the text justifies the rejection of women’s testimony on the grounds that the apostles themselves disbelieved the women who brought news of Christ’s resurrection. This is an allusion to Luke 24:1–11, where, in fact, the apostles are said to have been wrong to doubt the women. There is no reason to assume that the compilers did not know the biblical story. However, here as elsewhere in their text, they were applying acontextual literal exegesis in order to give biblical censure to existing Irish laws (on the use of the Bible, see Chapter 6). The Hibernensis assimilated also the important social institution of suretyship, which is the focus of Book 33 (p. 237).21 Sureties vouched on behalf of parties who entered into a contract, and as such they played an important part in contributing to the maintenance of social order. The compilers of the Hibernensis used Latin nouns to render the Irish technical terms for the different types of sureties: rata for Irish ráth ‘paying surety’ and stipulator for Irish naidm ‘enforcing surety’. The Classical Latin word for surety, fideiussor, can also be found in the Hibernensis, but only as a general term for denoting surety/guarantor. Suretyship is a good measure for comparing attitudes across different kinds of Irish normative texts. By adding clerics to the list of those prevented from going surety (Hib 33.2 [p. 238 ln. 1–6]), the Hibernensis shows itself to be stricter than another Irish text, Synodus episcoporum, which, as observed by Daniel Binchy, merely forbade a member of the clergy from acting as naidm ‘enforcing surety’, a duty which involved applying force or threatening to do so (full text quoted in Chapter 2).22 It can be argued that Synodus episcoporum was in fact paving the way for the church as an institution to assume suretyship roles, as may be inferred from the following: Christianus qui fraudat debitum cuiuslibet ritu gentilium excommonis sit donec soluat debitum ‘a Christian who, acting like a pagan, fails to pay a debt shall be excommunicated until he pays the debt’.23 Here, the church is arguably putting pressure on a debtor, who is one of its members, not by applying force, but by imposing excommunication. Unlike Synodus episcoporum, the Hibernensis 19 O’Dwyer, Célí Dé, 4. A more recent discussion is Follet, Célí Dé in Ireland, 89–96. 20  GEIL, 202, 207–208. 21  On suretyship in early medieval Ireland, see Thurneysen, ‘Aus dem irischen Recht V’, 368–371; Sheehy, ‘Influences of ancient Irish law’; Hughes, Church in Irish Society, 46–47; Binchy, ‘Celtic suretyship, a fossilized Indo-European institution?’; GEIL, 167–176; McLeod, Early Irish Contract Law, 16–21; Stacey, Road to Judgment, 27–111. 22  Binchy, ‘St Patrick’s “First Synod”’, 52. For a discussion of the Irish canonists’ view on the institution of suretyship, see Sheehy, ‘Influences of ancient Irish law on the Collectio canonum Hibernensis’, 34–38. 23  Synodus episcoporum §20, Bieler (ed and tr), 56/7.

74  Irish vernacular law and church law can be said to be more consistent with Canones apostolorum §20, known in Ireland through Dionysius Exiguus’s collection, which forbade the clergy from going surety altogether (also quoted in Chapter 2).24 In the context of suretyship, therefore, the Hibernensis is in closer agreement with a text of non-insular origin than it is with Synodus episcoporum. Clerics are singled out in other instances, in which the rules that apply to them are different from those that apply to laypeople. I offer three further examples. In Hib 41.18 (p. 324 ln. 15–p. 325 ln. 9) an existing procedure for partitioning land is re-configured in order to adapt it to the needs of the church. Instead of following native custom by allowing the more junior party to make the division and the remaining parties to choose in order of their status,25 the Hibernensis gives the senior bishop the right to divide a parochia while the lesser bishop gets to choose first. Thomas Charles-Edwards interpreted this as a case in which rivalry between Christian normative conceptions and the Senchas Már worked as an incentive for formulating new procedures.26 Other texts that single out clerics are found in Hib 21.29 (p. 137 ln. 9–17), which prohibits clerics from bringing cases before secular courts, and in the B-Recension’s version of Hib 65.5 (apparatus p. 460 ln. 2), where laymen are forbidden from litigating against clerics directly, but only through an intermediary who is himself a cleric: ut in iuditio cum inter clericum et laicum orta fuerit contentio, quaerat laicus clericum, qui cum clerico contendat. that in judgement, when a dispute arises between a cleric and a layman, the layman should seek a cleric, who may dispute with the cleric. In more general matters of judicial procedure, such as prescribing who should sit on the judicial panel of a court, we also find that the Hibernensis makes a clear distinction between ‘secular’ and ‘ecclesiastical’, by endorsing separate and distinct panels in causis ecclesiasticis and in negotiis saecularibus (Hib 21.1 [p. 116 ln. 13–21]). For a time in which clerics were themselves sometimes responsible for committing vernacular law to writing, a clear-cut distinction between church law and ‘secular law’ may, as already noted, seem artificial. Nevertheless, we have just seen that in matters of defining certain judicial instances and procedures for clerics and others for laypersons, such distinctions could occur. As for the process of legislating itself, or—to put it less technically—the process of formulating rules, we can see in clauses of the Hibernensis concerning inheritance and suretyship an apparent attempt to respond to traditions that were conceived independently of the Bible, traditions that might have been native. The alternative that the Hibernensis offered can, at the very least, be said to bear testimony to a conflict between existing legal conceptions (be their origin ‘native’ or otherwise) 24  Canones apostolorum, Strewe (ed), 2, 6. 25  As in CIH 4:1289, ln. 11. Cited in GEIL, 102. 26  Charles-Edwards, ‘Early Irish law’, 365. As an example he cited a different passage from the Hibernensis which states the same principle.

Irish vernacular law and church law  75 and ideas that were current in the intellectual circle represented by the compilers of the Hibernensis, which was informed by the reading of scripture. The tension between the two is portrayed by some sources in terms of a dialectic between the normative legacy of scripture and a normative system that is described as pagan and local. Two such sources are the Pseudo-Historical Prologue to the Senchas Már and the short canonical text known as Synodus sapientium de decimis.27 The Pseudo-Historical Prologue speaks of achieving harmony between an earlier law, which prevailed in Ireland prior to the conversion of the legendary king Lóegaire, and a more recent law, the ‘law of the letter’, which was introduced by Patrick: Ní didiu nád tudchaid fri bréthir nDé i recht litre 7 núḟiadnaise 7 fri cuibse na crésion, conairged i n-ord brethemnachta la Pátraic 7 ecailsi 7 flaithi Érenn do neoch. Roba dír recht aicnid uile inge cretem… Whatever [in the ‘law of nature’, sc. pre-scriptural law] did not go against God’s word in the law of the letter and in the New Testament, or against the consciences of the faithful, was fixed in the system of judgement by Patrick and the churches and the princes of Ireland severally. The whole law of nature was acceptable, save (in what concerns) the faith…28 A similar harmony is depicted in the concluding text of Synodus sapientium de decimis, which also enjoins its readers to follow any precept in pre-Christian law as long as it does not conflict with scripture. This is justified by a biblical rationale: Vbi sunt in lege praecepta, quae Deus non praecipit? Iethro socer Moysi elegere lxx principes, qui iudicarent populum cum Moysi, et hoc iudicium est, quia si inuenerimus iudicia gentium bona, que natura bona illis docet, et Deo non displicet, seruabimus. Where are there precepts in the [Mosaic] law which God did not command? Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses, told Moses to choose seventy principes who should judge the people with Moses, and this is a judgement [i.e. a precedent for the view] that if we find the law of the gentes good, which their good nature teaches them, and it is not displeasing to God, we shall keep it.29 In order to further explore this dialectic and to examine more closely the question of distinct normative traditions in Ireland (be they ‘Christian’, ‘secular’, or the 27 See, respectively, Carey (ed and tr), ‘An edition of the Pseudo-Historical Prologue’, 11–13, 17–19; Bieler (ed and tr), Irish Penitentials, 166–169. 28  Senchas Már, Pseudo-Historical Prologue §7, Carey (ed and tr), 12, 18–19 (this is a version of Córus Bésgnai §37). In order to maintain terminological consistency throughout the present chapter I replaced ‘law of scripture’ in Carey’s original translation with the more literal ‘law of the letter’. I also added a gloss in square brackets. 29  Synodus sapientium de decimis, Bieler (ed), Irish Penitentials, 168. The translation is by Donnchadh Ó Corráin, from his contribution to ‘The laws of the Irish’ (co-authored with Breatnach and Breen), 392.

76  Irish vernacular law and church law proverbial ‘other’), I have chosen to compare the Hibernensis not with a text of patently ‘secular’ flavour (this would have been a facile comparison) but with another major text concerned in the main with the church, Córus Bésgnai, a title interpreted by the text’s latest editor, Breatnach, as ‘the arrangement of discipline’.30 This text, which forms part of the Senchas Már, is found in a continuous but incomplete form in a single manuscript from the fourteenth century: Trinity College Dublin, MS 1316 (H 2. 15A), pp. 59b–66b. Adaptations of the text, fragments consisting of additional material, glosses, and so on are found both elsewhere in the same manuscript and in other manuscripts. A summary of the principal concerns of Córus Bésgnai is given by Breatnach as ‘the temporalities of the Church and the orderly functioning of churches, within the broader context of the relationship of the Church with lay society and the orderly functioning of society as a whole’.31 By examining comparable rulings in both texts, I will be asking to what extent superficial differences in the formulation of law may allow us to gauge a deeper division between different normative traditions. Unlike Bretha Nemed, which we encountered at the beginning of the chapter, there is no evidence of interdependence between the Hibernensis and Córus Bésgnai. Nevertheless, there are a number of themes shared by both texts which invite comparison. Such themes, at the very least, bring to the fore the texts’ respective understandings of the role of the church in Irish society, but they may also reveal something about the relationship between notions of ‘secular’ and ‘ecclesiastical’ more generally. The comparable themes that I shall examine will be treated one by one, by the order in which they appear in Córus Bésgnai. They are: (i) perceptions of social and political structures (Córus Bésgnai §§13–29), (ii) the concept of ‘natural law’/‘the law of nature’ (§§30–37), (iii) pastoral care (§38), (iv) tithes (§§26, 42–45), (v) burial (§§46–47); (vi) fathers and sons (§§61–65, 70–72); (vii) oblates (§§79–82), and (viii) abbatial succession (§92–101). The comparison commences.

i. Perceptions of social and political structures The relationship between the members of the three spheres that were understood to have formed the totality of Irish society—kings, ecclesiastics, and laypeople— is more cogently articulated in Córus Bésgnai than in the Hibernensis. It can also be argued that Córus Bésgnai is more in line with descriptions of Irish society and its institutions found in other contemporary vernacular normative sources, such as Críth Gablach, Uraicecht Becc, and Míadṡlechta.32 Thus, we find explicit mention of flatha ‘lords’, aicill(n)e ‘base clientship’, túatha ‘kingdoms’/’petty kingdoms’, fine ‘kin’, othrus ‘sick-maintenance’, and éric ‘compensation’ (which can also mean ‘wergeld’). Obligations towards the church are framed in terms that are analogous to obligations towards lords (§24), and the lords are said to oversee the collection of dues for the church (§26). By contrast, the Hibernensis contains no 30 Breatnach, Córus Bésgnai §1. 31 Breatnach, Córus Bésgnai, 2. 32  See, respectively, Breatnach, Companion, 241–244, 315–318, 264–265.

Irish vernacular law and church law  77 references to such typical Irish institutions as sick-maintenance or base clientship, while honour-price is mentioned only once in passing (‘pretium animae suae’: Hib 28.5 [p. 194]),33 and the relationship between lords and their subordinates (and in particular between masters and slaves) is addressed only in a short book consisting exclusively of biblical aphorisms (Hib 23 [pp. 143–145]). The Hibernensis does, however, put forward its own vision for a reciprocal relationship between the church, king, and kin. It does so throughout, but most notably in chapters belonging to the book De prouincia ‘Concerning the province/kingdom’ and De ecclesia et mundo ‘Concerning the church and the world’ (Hib 41 [p. 313 ln. 5]). These are based almost entirely on derivative material, primarily from the Bible, the Fathers, and Isidore. The lord-client paradigm is entirely absent from them. Insofar as we do find in them a more discernible perspective on rank, status, or the interrelationship between different social strands, it tends to be general and schematic, but not necessarily divorced from contemporary reality. For example, it has been argued that the division of the leadership of a prouincia into a chief king and three lesser kings, as well as into a senior bishop and three lesser ones (Hib 20.2 [p.112 ln. 5–11]), corresponds to Críth Gablach’s description of a ‘mesne kingdom’ ruled by an overking (ed. Binchy §32; tr. MacNeill §117). That this scheme might have been grounded in practice is a possibility that Charles-Edwards probes by drawing attention to the fact that the territory of the Cruithni of modern County Antrim and the western parts of County Down had more than one kingdom and one bishopric.34 The Hibernensis does dwell on the question of the reciprocal relationship between church and laypeople, but it does so by using a pastoral idiom instead of the language of social obligation determined by rank. For example, in Hib 41.23 (p. 327 ln. 9–10) it describes dues owed to the church as collections sub nomine misericordiae ‘in the name of mercy’. A theme that is addressed frequently and systematically in the Hibernensis but only rarely and incidentally in Córus Bésgnai (§§39, 83) is penance and penitents. The Hibernensis even devotes an entire book to this subject (Hib 46 [p. 380]).35 It must be stressed that even though the Hibernensis engaged with the topic of penance, the Hibernensis itself is not a penitential, unlike many texts that we have encountered in previous chapters (especially in Chapter 3), most of which are in Latin, but some in the vernacular. There are, nevertheless, occasional correspondences between texts found in penitentials and in the Hibernensis. For an example of a correspondence between the Hibernensis and a vernacular penitential, we may draw attention to a text that appears with significant variants in both the A- and B-Recensions (Hib 45.11 [p. 365 ln. 1–9]). This text has a very close parallel in clause 36 of the Old-Irish Penitential, which is associated with the Céli Dé. Written c. 800, it is almost entirely in Old Irish. The texts in the Hibernensis and the Old-Irish Penitential may be interdependent (in which case the latter drew on the former) or go back to a common source. 33  There is a doublet of this clause with this expression on p. 198 line 6. Another possible exception is the word ‘us(s)sura’ in 28.6 (p. 196), which Charles-Edwards, ‘The construction’, 228, interprets as perhaps meaning honour-price. 34 Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 423. 35  For other examples see, e.g. Hib 41.1, 41.12, 41.14, 41.16, 41.25 (pp. 313, 320, 322, 323, 328).

78  Irish vernacular law and church law For a time in which penance was being used to frame the relationship between individuals and communities (as in the literature of the Céli Dé), to define the legal status of individuals (as in the case of penitents who become servile), and to form the identity of communities (like the penitential communities on the Hebridean islands Tiree and Hinba), the rare mention of penance by Córus Bésgnai is a curious thing. Nevertheless, Córus Bésgnai describes certain manaig as penitents (§39), suggesting that it was aware of penance as a social institution, typically comprising what Colmán Etchingham styles ‘paramonastics’.36 Penance is, of course, also crucial to questions of retribution and restitution: Córus Bésgnai, in general, tends to prescribe compensation in kind (measured in different ways), whereas the Hibernensis, which rarely prescribes punishment or recompense for specific offences, can be seen to allow both penance and compensation in kind. Once more, there is an exception in Córus Bésgnai, in its acknowledgement of exile as a form of penance prescribed by an anmcharae ‘confessor’ (§83), which is evocative of Céli Dé terminology.

ii. The concept of ‘natural law’/‘the law of nature’ Occasionally Irish vernacular law, as well as other kinds of early Irish texts, can be seen to contrast between a recht aicnid ‘law of nature’ and a recht litre ‘law of the letter’ or recht fáide ‘law of the prophets’.37 The best examples from vernacular law are the Pseudo-Historical Prologue to the Senchas Már §7,38 which we have already encountered, and Córus Bésgnai §§30–37. Both texts make the point that the ‘law of nature’, the vernacular law that held sway in pre-Christian Ireland, was not wholly incompatible with the Christian ‘law of the letter’, which was said to have been introduced into Ireland by St Patrick. Rather, as Charles-Edwards puts it, according to the Pseudo-Historical Prologue, ‘the law of nature written on men’s hearts since Adam dug and Eve span had taken an Irish form in their vernacular law and had been purified of any taint of paganism by the collaboration between St Patrick and the filid’.39 We may now compare the vernacular uses of ‘law of nature’ and ‘law of the letter’ with the manner in which the Hibernensis uses the Latin equivalents of these expressions. I quote five representative examples: (1) Hib 2.5 (p. 21 ln. 7–17) De causis quibus immolabant sacerdotes legis nature, quorum primus Melchisedech.

36 Etchingham, Church Organisation, 290–318. 37  A good discussion is Carey, ‘The two laws in Dubthach’s judgment’, 8–13. For a threefold division of the service of the Mass, corresponding to three laws, see McCone, ‘Dubthach maccu Lugair’, 11 n 28. The most recent discussion is Watson, ‘A law beyond grace in the prologue to Senchas Már’. 38  Senchas Már, Pseudo-Historical Prologue, Carey (ed), 12, 18. And for an alternative interpretations of certain passages, see Scowcroft, ‘Recht fáide and its gloss’. 39  Charles-Edwards, ‘Celtic kings’, 67.

Irish vernacular law and church law  79 Concerning the things for which the sacerdotes of the law of nature, the first of whom was Melchisedech, were offering. [cf. Gen. 14:18–20] (2) Hib 2.6 (p. 22 ln. 1–4) De causis quibus immolabant sacerdotes legis litere, quorum primus Aaron. Concerning the things for which the sacerdotes of the law of the letter, the first of whom was Aaron, were offering. [cf. Exod. 28 for the first mention of Aaron’s priesthood] (3) Hib 2.7 (p. 22 ln. 5–18) De IIII generibus oblationum legis litere figurantibus Christum. Isidorus: In exordio Leuitici IIII genera principalium oblationum discribuntur … Concerning the four kinds of offerings in the law of the letter that prefigure Christ. Isidore: Four principal kinds of offerings are described at the beginning of Leviticus… (4) Hib H14.10 V13.10 (p. 56 ln. 14–16) De quinque legibus. Apostolus ait: ‘Lex naturae, lex littere, lex prophetarum, lex sequentium autorum usque ad Christum, lex noua’. Concerning the five laws. The apostle said: ‘The law of nature, the law of the letter, the law of the prophets, the law of successive authors up to Christ, the new law’. (5) Hib 31.18 (p. 225 ln. 19–p. 226 ln. 7) De eo quod filia diuisionem hereditatis non consequetur cum fratribus natura. Non ad Euam dicitur, ‘maledicta terra in opere tuo’, sed Adæ. That, according to [the law of] nature, a daughter does not receive a share in the division of the inheritance along with her brothers. It is not said to Eve, ‘Cursed is the earth in your work’, but to Adam. [cf. Gen. 3:17] In the first and fifth examples ‘law of nature’ alludes to the Book of Genesis, but the identification of ‘law of nature’ with the Old Testament is refined in the fourth example, where a rather elaborate scheme is given for delineating a trajectory of progress through different kinds of law. This scheme, which has a nearly exact parallel in an eighth-century Irish biblical commentary, the Reference Bible, is also found in the B-Recension, where it is spuriously attributed to an apostle.40 In the Reference Bible we read of a fourfold scheme: 40 Further on this passage, see McNamara, ‘Plan and source analysis of Das Bibelwerk’, 89; ‘Scowcroft, ‘Recht fáide and its gloss’, 148. On interpretations of the relationship between the old and new law in the Reference Bible, see Carella, ‘Divine Law in the Pauline Commentary’.

80  Irish vernacular law and church law Quot sunt leges principales, et unde incipit et finit una quaeque de eis? Leges quattuor sunt principales: lex naturae, et lex littere, lex prophetiae, et lex euangelii.41 How many of the principal laws are there, and where does each of them begin and end? There are four principal laws: the law of nature, the law of the letter, the law of the prophets, and the law of the Gospels. The configuration of the first three elements in the trajectory set out by both the Reference Bible and the Hibernensis—the law of nature, the law of the letter, and the law of the prophets—is superficially reminiscent of the manner in which these three elements relate to each other in Córus Bésgnai. The remaining elements in the quotation from the B-Recension of the Hibernensis—the law of successive authors up to Christ and the new law—can be interpreted in light of the second and third examples above, where the ‘law of the letter’ appears to be a reference to the law handed down to the Israelites under Moses (Aaron is mentioned as priest only after the law was first given in Sinai according to Exodus 24, and the Book of Leviticus of course follows the Book of Exodus). The expression ‘law of the letter’ is thus distinguished from the ‘law of nature’, which is the Old Testament law that prevailed before Moses (as in the first and fifth examples, which allude to Genesis). By association we can now add the ‘law of the prophets’, ‘the law of successive authors up to Christ’, and ‘the new law’ (namely the New Testament) to this clear sequence of chronological progress. I lay it out below (Table 4.1) in the form of a table, for comparison with the Pseudo-Historical Prologue to the Senchas Már and with Córus Bésgnai. Table 4.1  Comparison between the Hibernensis and the Pseudo-Historical Prologue to the Senchas Már and Córus Bésgnai The Hibernensis

Pseudo-Historical Prologue to the Senchas Már and Córus Bésgnai

Law of nature Law of the letter: Mosaic law Law of the prophets Law of successive authors up to Christ New law

recht aicnid: Irish law in the pre-Patrician period recht litre: Irish law after the arrival of Patrick recht fáide: Law of the prophets

If the Pseudo-Historical Prologue to the Senchas Már and Córus Bésgnai were conceptualising the ‘law of nature’ and the ‘law of the letter’ in the same manner as the Hibernensis was, then an interesting analogy emerges between the Israelites before their reception of the law at Sinai and the Irish in the pre-Patrician period, as well between the Israelites of the Old Testament law and the Irish after the arrival of Patrick. The identification of Patrick with Moses as national 41  The Reference Bible §53, MacGinty (ed), 25.

Irish vernacular law and church law  81 lawgiver is thus made all the more poignant, and is of a piece with a similar such identification in seventh-century Patrician hagiography from Armagh.42

iii. Pastoral care Pastoral care is a topic that the Hibernensis approaches from different angles and in a number of different books. In the Hibernensis, aspects of pastoral care— which I shall define here broadly as things owed by the church to the faithful, sometimes as part of a reciprocal relationship—are entitlement to baptism, the mass, the eucharist, communion, excommunication, penance, almsgiving, tithes, and burials. Of these, the latter two will be discussed separately in Sections iv and v below. As mentioned above in Section i, Córus Bésgnai only treats the topic of penance incidentally, whereas in the Hibernensis it receives a great deal of attention, with the main discussion taking place in Book 46 De penitentia. Nowhere does the Hibernensis give a concise description of the various elements that contemporaries would have recognised as constituting pastoral care. One is left to infer such elements from sporadic references like Hib 11.2 (p. 50 ln. 13–16), where a certain Augustine (perhaps a pseudonym for an Irish sage) is quoted as saying that qui sub gradu cecidit, post poenitentiam contentus fiat babtizare, communionem dare infirmis et altari ministrare ‘he who lapsed from his grade, let him be content after his penance to administer baptism, to give communion to the infirm, and to minister at the altar’. This offers indirect testimony on what appear to be typical pastoral duties that a priest would have been expected to discharge. In contrast, Córus Bésgnai is unequivocal about that which pastoral care constitutes (§39): baithes 7 commnae 7 immain anmae 7 oifrend ó cach eclais do chách iárna creitme coïr, co n-aisnéis bréithre Dé do chách inda-túaisi 7 noda comallnathar. baptism, and communion, and hymns for the soul, and mass from every church to all, by virtue of the rightness of their faith, together with expounding the word of God to all who listen to it and fulfil it. The text continues with listing what parishioners owe in return for pastoral provision: idbarta ‘offerings’, dechmada ‘tithes’, prímiti ‘firstfruits’, prímgeine ‘firstborn’ (a child, rather than an animal, according to §43), and imnae ‘bequests’ (or in a narrower sense ‘burial charges’). The theme of dues from the laity is developed in §§42–45 (see below, Section iv). Similarly, the Hibernensis also addresses these dues: almsgiving in Hib 13 (p. 69); tithes in Hib H20.11–12, V19.11–12 (p. 96 ln. 13–p. 97 ln. 14); firstfruits in Hib 1.8 (p. 10 ln. 19), 2.11 (p. 24 ln. 9–14), H20.11–12, V19.11–12 (p. 96 ln. 13–p. 97 ln. 14), 24.9 (p. 150 ln. 14), 36.9 (p. 260 ln. 9); and bequests in Hib 40 (pp. 307–313). The firstborn of animals are also mentioned (e.g. Hib 2.11 [p. 24 ln. 9–14]) but not of humans. Unlike Córus Bésgnai §26, there is no provision in the Hibernensis that a flaith ‘lord’ oversee the collection of dues for the church. 42  The best examples are Muirchú I 2 and Tírechán 38 (Bieler [ed.], Patrician Texts, 68, 152).

82  Irish vernacular law and church law The language of mutual contractual obligation, which permeates Córus Bésgnai, is also evident in the clauses concerning pastoral care. The text observes a certain degree of symmetry. For example, Córus Bésgnai §38 opens by stating Dliged túaithe i n-eclais ‘The entitlement of the laity in relation to the church’ and §42 opens Coïr ecalso ó thúaith ‘The just due of the church from the laity’. The Hibernensis does not explicitly use contractual terms, but a reciprocity is implied, as noted above in relation to the dues that the church requires of laypersons in return for pastoral care.

iv. Tithes The main discussion of tithes in Córus Bésgnai is in §§42–45, where the rationale of firstfruits and firstborn is expounded. The crucial text for the subsequent comparison is from §§42–43: Coïr ecalso ó thúaith: dechmada 7 prímiti 7 prímgeine dliged ecalso dia memmraib. Caité téchtae prímgeine? Cach prímgeinit .i. cach céttuistiu cacha lánamno dóendae, .i. cach fermacc ara-oslaici broinn a máthar íar cétmuinter coïr cona coibsenaib réir a n-anmcharat dechmo lesaigedar eclais, 7 anmandae, .i. cach fermíl danó olchenae ara-oslaici broinn a máthar do chethraib licaib. The just due of the church from the laity: tithes and firstfruits and firstlings are the entitlements of a church from its members. What is a suitable firstling? Every firstborn, that is, every first progeny of every human couple, that is, every male child who opens his mother’s womb in accordance with the just due of spouses, with their consciences under the direction of their confessor, who best looks after the church, and of [every] animal [couple] that is, every male animal belonging to the clean livestock which opens its mother’s womb as well. The reference to the opening of the mother’s womb is an allusion to Exodus 13:2 and underscores the biblical premise for the stipulation concerning the handing over of the firstborn child: Sanctifica mihi omne primogenitum, quod aperit uuluam in filiis Israel, tam de hominibus quam de iumentis; mea sunt enim omnia. Consecrate to Me all the firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and beast; for they are all Mine. Quotations from the Bible, either verbatim or in paraphrase, are rare in Córus Bésgnai but rife in the Hibernensis (see Chapter 6). The Hibernensis makes no reference to handing over firstborn children to the church. In fact, when quoting the opening text from Synodus sapientium de decimis, the Hibernensis (H20.12 V19.12 [p. 97 ln. 12–14]) omits the final sentence, which says decimas de uitalibus et mortalibus Deo demus ‘let us offer tithes of both animals and human

Irish vernacular law and church law  83 beings’.43 That tithes comprise not only animals but also human beings is restated in Synodus sapientium §3.44 The subject of making contributions to the church is developed in Córus Bésgnai with clauses on bequests and inheritance (§§49–60). Of these, two clauses (§§54–55) are concerned with safeguarding the property of the kin to prevent unbridled alienation to the church. The issue of alienating land outside the kin is considered in the Hibernensis, but in other contexts, especially in regard to a person who dies having no heirs or in regard to marriage with outsiders (e.g. Hib 31.9, 31.20 [p. 219 ln. 1–6; p. 227 ln. 15–p. 228 ln. 7]). Unlike Córus Bésgnai, the Hibernensis does not seem to attempt to curb acts of excess generosity towards the church.

v. Burial The principal references in our texts to burials, payment for burials, and bequests, are found in Córus Bésgnai §§46–52, and in Hib 2.14–16 (p. 26 ln. 7–11: on a payment called sedatium communis or communionis), Hib 18 (p. 104: De iure sepulturae), and Hib 40 (p. 307: De commendationibus mortuorum). There is a sharp contrast between Córus Bésgnai and the Hibernensis in relation to the allocation of different charges for burial in church ground, a form of burial that appears to have been the preserve of social elites, who could afford it. In Córus Bésgnai the rates of imnae ‘bequest’ for adnacul ‘burial’ correspond to the deceased manach’s or layperson’s díre, an Old Irish word usually translated as ‘honour-price’, which was roughly the Irish equivalent of wergeld (in the context of compensation). I quote from Córus Bésgnai §§46–47: Cach n-adnacal cona airthéchtu imnai do eclais cháich íarna míad. Cair, caité téchtae cach adnacail ó thúaith, do cach grád íarna míad do eclais? Imnae n-ócairech trí séoit nó a lóg. Imnae mbóairech cóic ṡéoit nó a lóg. Imnae n-airech déso deich séoit nó a lóg. Imnae n-airech aird cóic ṡéoit deac nó a lóg. Imnae n-airech tuíseo fiche sét nó a lóg. Imnae n-airech forgill trícha sét nó a lóg. Imnae ríg secht cumala nó a lóg. Every burial with its appropriate prior bequest to every person’s church in accordance with his rank. What is appropriate for every burial from the laity, from every grade in accordance with his rank, [as a fee] to the church? The bequest of an ócaire is three séts or their equivalent. The bequest of a bóaire is five séts or their equivalent. The bequest of an aire déso is ten séts or their equivalent. The bequest of an aire ard is fifteen séts or their equivalent. The bequest of an aire tuíseo is twenty séts or their equivalent. The bequest of an aire forgill is thirty séts or their equivalent. The bequest of a king is seven cumals or their equivalent.

43  Synodus sapientium §1, Bieler (ed), 166. My translation. 44  Ibid.

84  Irish vernacular law and church law The expressions ócaire, bóaire, aire déso, and so on, represent the typical social-economic hierarchy which one finds in contemporary tracts on rank and status, for example in Críth Gablach. But the Hibernensis, unlike Córus Bésgnai, does not link burial charges with honour-price. In fact, the Hibernensis does not appear to address the laity at all in the context of burial, but only the manaig, who are to be understood (in this context) as peasant dependants of ecclesiastical settlements. The Hibernensis does not differentiate between manaig on the basis of honour-price. It does, however (Hib 18.6 [p. 107 ln. 8–17]), prescribe different rates of sedatium to property-owning manaig solely on the basis of their relative wealth.45 This is consistent with the preference of the Hibernensis never to mention honour-price in any shape or form, thereby sidestepping an important Irish institution, which permeates the vernacular law tracts.46 Authors of Irish normative texts themselves distinguished between laws that pay heed to honour price and others, sometimes associated with the church, that did not.47 Another notable difference is that Hib 40, which deals with bequests, is concerned primarily with bequests made by principes (heads of churches who may or may not be in orders) and monachi (both monks in the strict sense and peasant dependants). The only exceptions are chapters concerning the circumstances in which bequests that were made by women or children may be accepted.

vi. Fathers and sons The subject of fathers and sons, covered in Córus Bésgnai §§61–65, 70–72, is treated in the Hibernensis in two consecutive books: Hib 30 De patribus et filiis and Hib 31 De parentibus et eorum heredibus et filiis (pp. 204–230). The central themes in Córus Bésgnai are: distinguishing between a dutiful and undutiful son, evaluating the position of either with respect to contracts, neglecting to care for one’s father, committing the offence of coming between a father and his son, harbouring hatred towards a son, disinheriting a son, and handing over a son to the church or to a lay lord as a slave. In the Hibernensis the range of topics covered is much wider, occupying over forty chapters in both books. Here I shall merely draw attention to comparable topics reflected in the titles of pertinent chapters. Hib 30.8 (p. 208 ln. 2) De ueritate patris filium malum non adiuuante. That the truth of the father does not help a wicked son. Hib 30.9 (p. 209 ln. 1) De eo quod iusticia patris honorificat heredem bonum. 45  For a hypothesis concerning the possible reasons for the omission of honour price and wergeld from the Hibernensis, see Flechner, ‘Identifying monks’, 814. 46  For an exception, see above n 33. 47  The crucial passage concerning this distinction, Bretha Crólige §5 (Binchy [ed], 8) is ambiguous. See discussion in Flechner, ‘Identifying monks’, 814–815.

Irish vernacular law and church law  85 That the justice of the father confers honour on a good heir. Hib 30.10 (p. 209 ln. 5–6) De eo quod maledicta sit progenies ipsa, que degenerauit a patribus bonis. That the descendants are cursed for lapsing from their good fathers. Hib 30.13 (p. 210 ln. 10) De pietate filiorum parentibus suis. Concerning the sons’ dutifulness towards their parents. Hib 30.14 (p. 211 ln. 6) De inpietate filiorum in parentes suos. Concerning sons who are undutiful towards their parents. Hib 31.1 (p. 215 ln. 7–8) De pietate parentibus heredes in hereditate in perpetuum conseruante. That dutifulness towards the parents protects their heirs in the kin land in perpetuity. Hib 31.7 (p. 218 ln. 9–11) De eo quod priuantur alii filii hereditate pro dilecto filio. Simeon et Leui iuramentum patris sui transeuntes, hereditate in diuissione terrae repromissionis priuati sunt. That other sons are deprived of an inheritance for the beloved son’s sake. Simeon and Levi, transgressing their father’s oath, were deprived of their share in the promised land. [cf. Gen. 49: 7] The titles above show that the question of dutiful and undutiful sons was of some consequence for the compilers of the Hibernensis, as was the more general question of the relationship between fathers and sons. These topics are hardly conventional for early medieval normative texts, and one may therefore wonder whether they reflect aspects of a contemporary local debate on the topic, which the Hibernensis typically cast in a biblical idiom. A case in point is the final chapter quoted, Hib 31.7. Its significance is that it resonates with Córus Bésgnai §56, which permits the disowning of an undutiful son.48 In the Hibernensis this principle is given a biblical rationale: it is said that Jacob disowned his sons Simon and Levi for contravening his oath (iuramentum patris sui transeuntes). This is an allusion to Genesis 49:7, where Jacob shuns the two for slaying the Sichemites (Genesis 34). Like Hib 31.7, the rationale for the rules expounded in the titles of the preceding chapters is usually biblical, with the chapters themselves consisting—for the most part—of quotations from or allusions to the Bible, sometimes followed by biblical exegesis. 48  As noted by McCone, Pagan Past and Christian Present, 103.

86  Irish vernacular law and church law Among the circumstances for filial undutifulness the Hibernensis also lists one which is uniquely Christian. Thus, the title of Hib 30.15 (p. 212 ln. 1–2) reads: De eo quod non neglegendi sunt parentes etiam cultus diuini gratia ‘That parents must not be neglected, even on account of divine worship’. The chapter then goes on to rebuke those whose commitment to religion comes at the expense of caring for their elders. This is evocative of the episode in Adomnán’s Life of Columba, in which Librán formally freed himself from the duty of caring for a relative and for his parents before he was allowed to take monastic vows (he had previously neglected these duties when he lived as a penitent for seven years).49

vii. Oblates Both Córus Bésgnai (§§79–82) and the Hibernensis (41.13–15, 21–22 [pp. 322–323, 326]) stipulate on the handing over of children to the church, either as oblates to be reared by it, or as slaves. None of the sources which the Hibernensis cites in this context can be identified. Some clauses are attributed to a certain sinodus Hibernensis, others spuriously to the Council of Nicaea, a Council of Narbonne, Jerome, Augustine (both may be pseudonyms of Irish scholars, on which see Chapter 5), and other unidentifiable authorities. This increases the likelihood that the stipulations offered on oblates originate from a background that is distinctively Irish. Both texts make provisions for the child’s education, including the mention of payment to the church, which the Hibernensis frames in terms of a payment that a family would make when it gives a child to be fostered by another family. When money is paid towards a child’s upbringing, then the child will not submit entirely to the jurisdiction of the church, but will remain the responsibility of the parents (41.22 [p. 326 ln. 21–p. 327 ln. 1]). On the rate of payment Córus Bésgnai §80 is more specific: unge ḟorcetail déodai ‘an ounce [of silver] for godly instruction’. At the same time (§79) it expects the child to submit entirely to the church: is díles dond eclais dia curther ‘he is forfeit to the church community to which he is handed over’. But what is to happen to the children after they are admitted? Neither text gives a sufficiently detailed description of what exactly is to happen and how exactly the responsibility over them is to be divided between the parents and the church. The only exception is in the case of oblation as a form of servitude, which receives attention only from the Hibernensis: Hib 41.22 (p. 326 ln. 17–18) De infantibus in æclesia proiectis. Eadem ait: ‘Filius adlatus seruus est eiusdem nisi depretiatur’. Concerning young children being abandoned in a church. The same [sc. an Irish synod] said: ‘A child who has been brought [to the church] is its slave, unless he is redeemed through payment’.

49 Adomnán, Vita Columbae, 2.39, Anderson and Anderson (ed), Adomnán’s Life of Columba, 154–162.

Irish vernacular law and church law  87 Like the topic of fathers and sons, enslavement of children by the church is also a rather unusual topic among contemporary normative European texts, be they royal legislation or synodal acta. Perhaps this reflects a local Irish concern, or perhaps the Hibernensis is being explicit about this topic in a manner that the authors of other normative texts chose not to be.

viii. Abbatial succession Abbatial succession is considered in Córus Bésgnai in three clauses (§§92–93, 101) and in the Hibernensis in ten chapters (some only in the B-Recension) of Book 36 De principatu (p. 255). In Córus Bésgnai more attention is paid to securing a line of succession from the kin of the patron saint or the kin of the founding aristocrat, who endowed the monastery with land. Priority is given to the former. The text assumes that the two will not be one and the same, but in practice they must often have been. In §101 we learn that an alternative mode of succession is by rotation between branches of a kindred. The Hibernensis approaches the topic in an entirely different fashion. Not only does it sidestep the questions of patron saint versus founding aristocrat, but in a manner typical to the Hibernensis it gives a number of different and sometimes contradictory paths towards ordination and succession. Hence, we find that the princeps may be chosen by lot (Hib 36.1 [p. 255 ln. 7–13]), that succession to the abbacy ought to have recourse to four different biblical models (Hib 36.2 [p. 255 ln. 14–p. 256 ln. 10]), that a princeps ought to appoint an heir in his lifetime (Hib H39.17 V38.18, 36.18–19 [p. 260 ln. 12–p. 261 ln. 3, p. 265 ln. 4–12]), that an heir must not be appointed until after the princeps’s death (Hib H39.19 V38.20 [p. 261 ln. 8–21]), that the populus has to consent to the princeps’s choice of a successor (Hib 36.20 [p. 265 ln.13–p. 266 ln. 7]), that the princeps alone ordains his successor (Hib H39.21 V38.22 [p. 266 ln. 8–13]), and so on. Ostensibly, therefore, the Hibernensis treats abbatial succession in a more theoretical way.

Conclusion I return to the question of the validity of the binary ‘secular’/‘ecclesiastical’ with which this chapter opened. Some laws, as we have seen, recognise a division into discrete ‘secular’ and ‘ecclesiastical’ spheres, but they do so in very specific circumstances, for example in regulating procedures for litigation. When it comes to normative (or more narrowly: legal) texts, no clear-cut distinction between ‘secular’ and ‘ecclesiastical’ can be observed. But we can infer it by judiciously examining, for example, such criteria as which texts show an unequivocal preference for drawing on the Bible as a preamble or as a means for justifying rules. The Hibernensis is one such text, but also Córus Bésgnai, although to a much lesser extent and less systematically. One would not find, for example, exegetical methods being applied there. To the extent to which the two texts—the Hibernensis and Córus Bésgnai—may be said to belong to distinct normative traditions, this distinction cannot be made along a simple ‘secular’/‘ecclesiastical’ fault-line. Here is why.

88  Irish vernacular law and church law Both espouse similar ideas regarding the development of law, fathers and sons, and oblates. But there are clear differences when it comes to penance (the topic is almost entirely absent from Córus Bésgnai) or abbatial succession (a family’s stake in the land and the position of the founding aristocrat do not receive much attention in the Hibernensis). There are also differences in the idiom that is used to frame social order: the language of social obligation as determined by contractual commitment and rank (as well as wergeld for the purpose of compensation) is prevalent in Córus Bésgnai, while the Hibernensis adopts a more pastoral idiom for expressing the relationship between churches and the people associated with them, especially the manaig. What can we make of this? The idiom used by either text can be applied as a strong criterion for identifying two distinct traditions. It is strange to call one tradition ‘secular’ and the other ‘ecclesiastical’ when dealing with two texts that are predominantly concerned with the church and meant to serve the church (but not only the church). Rather, what we may be seeing—and I offer this idea tentatively—is that one text, Córus Bésgnai, is more concerned with securing the rights of kin groups vis-à-vis churches and safeguarding the status of individuals within them, while the other text, the Hibernensis, is more concerned with the peasant dependants of churches and with others, whose association with churches or with ‘the church’ may have superseded (or was expected to supersede) their association with the kin.

5 Deploying sources

The present chapter, which is largely descriptive, is intended to serve as a general guide to the types of sources that the Hibernensis deploys.1 It will examine, with the help of a case study, the relationship between the manuscript transmission of the Hibernensis and that of its sources. The choices that the compilers themselves made in regard to which sources to cite and how to obtain these sources will be discussed with reference to insular sources in particular, concluding with another case study. The diversity of sources which the Hibernensis cites is without precedent in the history of canon law collections, which had previously drawn almost exclusively upon conciliar decisions (acta) and papal decretals.2 Both these types of sources can indeed be found in abundance in the Hibernensis, but our collection broke new ground by drawing on an array of previously untapped source material. The most frequently cited source in the Hibernensis is the Bible, comprising both the Old and New Testaments as well as books which are considered apocryphal according to certain traditions (see Chapter 6). Besides the Bible the Hibernensis quotes Greek and Latin Church Fathers, such as Basil, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine; Christian historians, such as Eusebius and Orosius; monastic authors, such as Cassian and Benedict; popes, such as Innocent, Leo, and Gregory; gnomic literature, such as the Prouerbia Grecorum; hagiography, such as the Vitas Patrum and the Life of Patrick by Muirchú; works of biblical exegesis, such as Pelagius’s commentary on the Pauline Epistles, Iunilius’s Instituta regularia diuinae legis, and the Irish Augustine’s De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae; late antique ‘best selling’ Christian authors, such as Caesarius of Arles and Isidore; a host of British (Vinnian, Gildas), Anglo-Saxon (Aldhelm, Theodore), and Irish (Adomnán, Cumméne, Muirchú) authors; and several other types of texts, some with known authors, others anonymous. Altogether, the Hibernensis quotes 105 texts by forty-one authors, who can be identified. It also quotes from twenty-nine texts that can be considered anonymous, either because the authors to which 1  For a complete list of sources, see Flechner, Hibernensis, 2: 982–1000. 2  The most recent studies of the sources of the Hibernensis are Davies, ‘The Collectio’; Eadem, ‘The biblical text of the Collectio’; Eadem, ‘Isidorian texts and the Hibernensis’; Eadem, ‘Statuta ecclesiae antiqua and the Gallic councils in the Hibernensis’; Eadem, ‘The “mouth of gold”’; Gorman, ‘Patristic and Pseudo-Patristic citations’.

90  Deploying sources they were originally attributed are not known or because these texts were never attributed to specific authors, for example like most acta of church councils. This inventory represents what is known in the canonical jargon as fontes materiales, namely the original or the primary sources for legislation. We are also able to identify some fontes formales, namely the immediate sources of the Hibernensis, sources which served as conduits for quotations from the fontes materiales. For example, quotations from the Synod of Antioch of 341 or from the Synod of Carthage of 419 constitute fontes materiales, but owing to the work of Luned Davies it is now evident that they reached the Hibernensis because they were included in the Collectio Dionysiana (although the Hibernensis does occasionally modify the language of the canons).3 The Dionysiana is therefore a fons formalis, which was drawn upon directly by the compilers of the Hibernensis. Other fontes formales (of which there are surviving copies) are the Collectio Hispana,4 the Statuta ecclesiae antiqua,5 and a florilegium in W, pp. 11–105, which contains extracts from Eusebius, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Eucherius of Lyon, Gildas, Gregory the Great, Isidore, and an unidentified author with the pseudonym Origen, but it also contains some biblical quotations and conciliar canons.6 This florilegium accounts for some, but by no means all of the texts that the Hibernensis quotes from works by these authors. By contrast, the conciliar acta that are reproduced in the Dionysiana, Hispana, and the Statuta, together comprise most of the conciliar material in the Hibernensis. Nevertheless, the material which the Hibernensis derives from fontes formales that have been identified constitutes a small proportion of its overall contents. A telling contrast can be drawn with Gratian’s Decretum, which has been shown to derive most of its contents from five fontes formales.7 This is not to say that most of the contents of the Hibernensis are cited directly from fontes materiales, but that further fontes formales, namely the actual texts or collections of texts resting on the desks of the compilers, have yet to be identified. The question of the extent to which the compilers had access to complete works from which they cited or depended on miscellanies (like W) as fontes formales, from which to draw their material, is one to which there is no simple answer. The fact that the Hibernensis never cites any of its sources in its entirety (nor was there any reason why it should have) makes it impossible to determine with certainty when its compilers were in possession of complete texts of the sources they used.8 Intriguingly, eight sources from which the Hibernensis cites also appear to have circulated as satellite texts in the same manuscripts as the Hibernensis. For example, the Hibernensis contains quotations from the Canons of Theodore, and 3  Davies, ‘The Collectio’. 4 Reynolds, ‘Law’, 398; Davies, ‘Statuta ecclesiae antiqua and the Gallic councils in the Hibernensis’, 89, 101. 5  Davies, ‘Statuta ecclesiae antiqua and the Gallic councils in the Hibernensis’. 6  This is Richard Sharpe’s C1, on which see his ‘Gildas as a father of the church’, 202–205. 7 Peter Landau, ‘Die Rezension C der Sammlung des Anselm von Lucca’; Idem, ‘Erweiterte Fassungen der Kanonessammlung des Anselm von Lucca’; Winroth, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum, 15–18. 8  This point was reiterated by Gorman, ‘Patristic and Pseudo-Patristic citations’.

Deploying sources  91 at the same time complete copies of the Canons of Theodore circulate alongside the Hibernensis in manuscripts BKP. The full list of satellite texts that are also quoted in the Hibernensis is given below: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Canones Wallici, in manuscripts ABHOP Canones Adomnani, in manuscripts ABCHOP The Penitential of Vinnian, in manuscripts BCPS Canones Hibernenses, in manuscripts BP Canons of Theodore, in manuscripts BKP, and as a fragment in H Canons §§10, 14, 15, 19, 20 from the Council of Ancyra 314, in manuscripts BP 7. Canon §2 from the Council of Neocaesarea 315, in manuscripts BP 8. Dionysiana (Dionysio-Hadriana version), in manuscripts BH The circulation of a source as a satellite text in the same manuscript as the collection which cites that source, raises the possibility that the collection quotes directly from that very satellite text. For clarity, this proposition may be rephrased as a question: did the Hibernensis quote certain sources directly from the satellite texts in the above manuscripts? The same question can be asked in relation to other canonical collections and their satellite texts. Pursuing this question opens a window onto the choices that determined what texts were eventually included in manuscripts of canonical collections. In what follows I shall examine the relationship between a canonical collection and its satellite texts by concentrating primarily on two sets of examples: (i) citations from the Canons of Theodore and (ii) citations from the Dionysiana. As a control sample for assessing the extent to which manuscripts of the Hibernensis are unique in terms of the particular relationship that they exhibit between the principal text and satellite texts, I shall compare the relationship between another near-contemporary collection, the Corbie recension of the Collectio Vetus Gallica, and the sources with which it circulated. The Canons of Theodore is a blanket name for a body of rulings on matters of ecclesiastical discipline and penance which are attributed to Archbishop Theodore (d. 690) of Canterbury. They survive in at least seven recensions, five of which have been edited, and they are known by the shorthand B, D, G, Co, and U, as described in Chapter 3. I shall refer to some of these below, and also to one of the unedited recensions, Kol.9 Although the Hibernensis quotes from the Canons of Theodore, the wording of the quotations does not agree entirely with any of the known recensions, including the recensions that circulate as satellite texts of the Hibernensis. These are: recension D, which circulates alongside the Hibernensis in BP and as a fragment in H, and recension Kol, which circulates alongside the Hibernensis in K.10 It would appear that the Hibernensis drew upon a recension unknown today, whose wording was close to D, but whose sequence of canons followed a sequence common to recensions B, G, and Kol. 9  Cologne, Dombibliothek, 210, fols. 122r–151r. 10  Flechner, ‘The making of the Canons of Theodore’, 131–134, 140–143.

92  Deploying sources The relationship between the quotations from the Dionysiana in the Hibernensis and the corresponding satellite text of the Dionysiana is just as puzzling. The sixth-century Dionysiana, named after its compiler, Dionysius Exiguus, was the first collection to offer a Latin translation of a large number of canons from Eastern church councils and papal letters (decretals). The Hibernensis drew upon the Dionysiana for most of the canons it cited from Eastern church councils, as well as for papal decretals.11 However, rather than circulating with the Dionysiana, the Hibernensis circulated with the Collectio Dionysio-Hadriana in B and H. As its name suggests, the Dionysio-Hadriana was formed on the basis of a version of the Dionysiana, to which more material was added: from letters by popes Hilarius, Simplicius, Felix I, Symmachus, Hormisdas, and Gregory II, as well as the canons of the Roman Council of 721.12 The conventional wisdom is that the Dionysio-Hadriana was presented to Charlemagne by Pope Hadrian in 774, although this narrative (as mentioned in Chapter 2) has recently been challenged. Nevertheless, even if the Dionysio-Hadriana is dated earlier in the eighth century, the absence in the Hibernensis of any citations from the material that is unique to the Dionysio-Hadriana, argues strongly against the possibility that the compilers of the Hibernensis were familiar with the Dionysio-Hadriana. It will be useful at this stage to examine more closely the texts of the Dionysiana-like material which the Hibernensis cites and which circulated alongside it in manuscripts B, P, and H. There are, we may remind ourselves, copies of the Dionysio-Hadriana in BH (pp. 183–264, fols. 142v–188v, respectively); there are also a number of canons extracted from the Council of Ancyra and the Council of Neocaesarea, both of whose acta formed part of the Dionysiana, in BP (pp. 175–176, fols. 133v–134v, respectively). Hereafter I shall refer to the canons in BP as ‘floating canons’. More specifically, these ‘floating canons’ are Ancyra §§10, 14, 15, 19–22 and Neocaesarea §2. The Hibernensis itself cites canons §§10, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 from Ancyra and canon §2 from Neocaesarea. The ‘floating canons’ in BP contain all these canons except Ancyra §§23, 24, hence the ‘floating canons’ could not have been the direct source for all the canons that the Hibernensis quotes from these councils. Below I reproduce two canons from the Council of Ancyra, §§21, 22, which the Hibernensis attributes to ‘Dionysius’. In other words, the compilers of the Hibernensis were citing from (or believed that they were citing from) the Dionysiana. The canons are cited in a number of versions: the first text cited is from the Hibernensis, the second from the Dionysiana, the third from the Dionysio-Hadriana, and the fourth from the ‘floating canons’ in BP. Ancyra §21 Hib 27.10 (p.188 ln. 2–4) Dionisius: ‘Qui uoluntate homicidium fecerint, ad poenitentiam quidem iugiter se submitant, circa exitum uero uitæ perfectionem, id est, commonem [communionem S] Christi gratiam consequantur’. 11  Davies, ‘The Collectio’, 103, 139–140. Her study upholds Maassen’s hypothesis on this matter. 12 Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, 444–448.

Deploying sources  93 Dionysiana (ed. Strewe) Qui uoluntarie homicidium fecerint, ad paenitentiam quidem iugiter se summittant, circa exitum uero uitae perfectionem, id est, communionis Christi gratiam consequantur. Dionysio-Hadriana (ed. Elliot) Qui uoluntarie homicidium fecerint paenitentiae quidem iugiter se summittant, perfectionem uero circa uitae exitum consequantur. P, fol. 134r with variants from B, p. 176 De homicidiis qui uoluntarie homicidium fecerint [om. B] penitentiae VII [add. annorum B] quidem [om. B] iugiter se submitant [submittat B] perfectionem uero circa uitae exitum consequentur [consequatur B]. Ancyra §22 Hib 27.6 (p. 186 ln. 8–10) Dionisius: ‘Qui non sponte homicidium fecerint, per penitentiam VII annorum in commonionem æclesie recipiantur; manentes autem in hac suscipiant’. Dionysiana (ed. Strewe) Eos qui non uoluntate sed casu homicidium fecerint, prior quidem regula post septem annorum paenitentiam communioni sociauit secundum gradus constitutos. Haec uero humanior definitio quinquennii tempus adtribuit. Dionysio-Hadriana (ed. Elliot) De homicidiis non sponte commisis, prior quidem definitio post septennem paenitentiam perfectionem consequi praecepit, secunda uero quinquenni tempus explere. P, fol. 134r with variants from B, p. 176 De homicidio non sponte commisso. Qui himicidia [homicidium B] fecerunt [fecerint B] per penitentiam VII annorum [annorum VII B] in commonionem [comunione B] aeclesie recipiantur [recipiant B] manentes autem in hac commonione quinquennio, aeucharistiam postea accipiant [manentes… accipiant in marg. B]. The text of §21 as cited in the Hibernensis is closer to the Dionysiana version than to all other versions. However, the text of §22 as cited in the Hibernensis is closer (but not identical) to the ‘floating canons’ than to all other versions. The puzzle therefore remains unresolved: did the Hibernensis sometimes quote from the Dionysiana and sometimes from the ‘floating canons’? Did it quote from a florilegium that did not survive, which contained a mixture of synodal material, some of which agreed more with the Dionysiana text and some agreed with the ‘floating canons’? And why was the Dionysio-Hadriana rather than the Dionysiana transmitted alongside the Hibernensis in BH? Answers to these questions

94  Deploying sources begin to emerge once we compare the relationship between the Hibernensis and its satellite texts to the relationship between the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica (on which see Chapter 2) and its satellite texts. In examining the relationship between the Hibernensis and two satellite texts, the Canons of Theodore and a Dionysiana-like text (sc. Dionysio-Hadriana), we have seen how copies of the Hibernensis ostensibly circulated in the same manuscripts alongside copies of its sources, but on closer inspection it transpired that these satellite texts could not have served as the direct sources. A similar state of affairs obtains between the Corbie Vetus Gallica and its satellite texts. The Corbie Vetus Gallica cites from the Libellus responsionum, a reworking of correspondence between Pope Gregory the Great and his emissary to Kent, Augustine, dating c. 601 (discussed also in Chapter 3).13 The Libellus circulated both in a number of independent versions and as an interpolation into Bede’s Ecclesiastical History.14 The central fault line dividing all the versions is, according to Margaret Deanesly and Paul Grosjean, between what they identified as the earlier and later versions of the Libellus.15 The later version, which is shorter, structures the text in a question-and-answer form. This is the form cited by Bede. It consists of nine questions, whereas in other versions it can comprise up to eleven. With one exception, the later version omits a responsio concerning Augustine’s request of relics of a certain martyr Syxtus. This request for relics is known as the 13  The most recent edition of the Libellus is Mattaloni (ed), Rescriptum beati Gregorii papae ad Augustinum. 14  Bede appears to have been in possession of two different versions of the Libellus, one of which he cited in chapter 16 of his Prose Life of St Cuthbert [Colgrave (ed), 208], and the other he incorporated into his HE, 1.27, Colgrave and Mynors (ed and tr), 78–103. The Libellus is no longer held to have been forged by Nothelm, despite past attempts to argue that it was. Suso Brechter’s hypothesis that Nothelm forged the Libellus has already been successfully refuted by Deanesly and Grosjean, whose findings were upheld and expanded by Henry Mayr-Harting. Nevertheless, the latter three followed Brechter in maintaining that Nothelm had some agency in the formation of the Libellus, but they held that he edited genuine Gregorian material which he found in Canterbury. See Brechter, Quellen zur Angelsachsenmission Gregors des Grossen; Deanesly and Grosjean, ‘Canterbury edition’, 3, 4, 18, 23, 26, 32–3, 37–8; Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, 269–71. Indeed, at least two of the three known versions of the Libellus responsionum must have been shaped by editorial intervention, since not all three can be authentic. See Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s text of the Libellus responsionum’, 23. However, no compelling case has been made for attributing the changes that the original document underwent to Nothelm. The prevailing view nowadays is that all versions of the text are based on authentic correspondence between Augustine and Gregory, although some texts of the Libellus depart from it significantly. For this view, see Meyvaert, ‘Le Libellus responsionum à Augustine de Cantorbéry’, 543–50. Meyvaert argued for the authenticity of the core material in the Libellus. He believes that the ‘Letter version’ of the Libellus (transmitted independently of Bede) represents the earliest surviving form of the document whose original text is now lost. In two manuscripts the Libellus has also been combined with texts from the Canons of Theodore: Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 2195, fols. 2v–46; and Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14780, fols. 1–53. Both were transcribed by Michael Elliot and are available at: http://individual.utoronto.ca/michaelelliot/manuscripts/texts/iudicia_theodori.html 15  Deanesly and Grosjean, ‘Canterbury edition’. Other patterns of division were suggested by Meyvaert, ‘Bede’s text of the Libellus responsionum’; Idem, ‘Le Libellus responsionum à Augustine de Cantorbéry’.

Deploying sources  95 Table 5.1  Comparison of the Paris and Brussels manuscripts Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 1603

Brussels, Bib. Roy. 10127–44

Corbie Vetus Gallica containing the Libellus responsionum with the Obsecratio A copy of the Libellus responsionum as satellite text, without the Obsecratio

Corbie Vetus Gallica containing the Libellus responsionum with the Obsecratio A copy of the Libellus responsionum as satellite text, with the Obsecratio

Obsecratio Augustini. The best manuscript of the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 1603, cites the Libellus responsionum with the Obsecratio.16 In other words, the version in the Corbie Vetus Gallica was ostensibly the earlier version and not the Q&A version of the Libellus which omits the Obsecratio. Nevertheless, the version of the Libellus which circulates as a stand-alone text in the same manuscript of the Vetus Gallica is the Q&A version of the Libellus without the Obsecratio. The implication is that the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica could circulate alongside a different version of the Libellus from the one from which it cites. But this need not always have been the case, for in another manuscript, Brussels, Bib. Roy. 10127–44, the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica circulated with a version of the Libellus that was consistent with the one quoted in the Vetus Gallica. In other words, both the Vetus Gallica in the Brussels manuscript and the copy of the Libellus that was copied into the manuscript as a satellite text, contained the Obsecratio. For convenience, Table 5.1 (above) offers an illustration of the manuscripts in comparison. Likewise, the Corbie recension of the Vetus Gallica, which (like the Hibernensis) also cites from the Canons of Theodore, can clearly be shown to have drawn upon the second part of recension U of the Canons of Theodore (in contrast with the Hibernensis, which cites from a text that resembles recension D). Recension U is the exact same recension that circulated alongside the Corbie Vetus Gallica in at least three manuscripts: (i) Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB.VI.109, (ii) Cologne, Dombibl. 91, and (iii) Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 1603.17 In this case there is a perfect match between cited text and satellite text. The Vetus Gallica, like the Hibernensis, also cites from the Dionysiana, but I am not aware of any manuscript of the Vetus Gallica which transmits either the Dionysiana or the Dionysio-Hadriana as satellite texts. How then, can we account for the fact that, on the one hand, these canonical collections circulated with works that appear to constitute their fontes formales, but, on the other hand, these collections quote from different versions of these ostensible fontes formales? In other words, why would the Hibernensis quote from a version of the Dionysiana which was different from the version with 16 The Crobie recension survives primarily in Mordek’s Northern French Class, of which he regards the Paris manuscript as the most reliable witness. See Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform, 331, and 353 for evidence of the Obsecratio in the Corbie recension see 353 line 69. 17  The canons cited are VG XLVI 18 = U.II 6.9; VG XLIX 7m = U.II 12.1–3; VG XLVI 19 = U.II 12.37; VG XLVI 20 = U.II 14.3; VG XLVI 21 = U.II 14.5.

96  Deploying sources which it circulated, and why would the Vetus Gallica (sometimes) quote from a version of the Libellus responsionum which was different from the version with which it circulated? The answer may be that there is something wrong with our assumptions, because what we have here is not a case of the Hibernenis and the Vetus Gallica circulating alongside their sources, but vice versa. What we are in fact seeing are ‘sources’ being copied into the manuscripts because they were associated with quotations in the collections. This counter-intuitive proposition, may be stated in another way. To simplify, let us imagine the following hypothetical scenario: readers were made aware of fontes formales such as the Dionysiana or the Libellus responsionum through quotations in collections (e.g. Hibernensis and Vetus Gallica). These quotations attracted the interest of the readers, who then sought to acquire complete texts of these fontes formales. However, no copies of the Dionysiana or the Libellus responsionum could be found which matched exactly the quotations in the collections. But there were near-matches. For example, although it would have been difficult to obtain a copy of the Dionysiana in any of its sixth-century recensions (only twelve survive today) it was possible to substitute it with the ‘next best thing’ available, namely the Dionysio-Hadriana (of which more than ninety copies survive).18 This seems to me to be a plausible explanation for the incongruity between the texts quoted in the canonical collections and the texts that circulated as satellite texts alongside the canonical collections. The proposed explanation for the incongruity also suggests something about the manner in which books could be obtained in this period: a quotation from one text found in another text may prompt a reader to acquire a complete version of the quoted text. This challenges our understanding of fontes formales as mediators between fontes materiales and later derivative texts. Instead, and paradoxically, what we have seen are cases in which the later derivatives (Hibernensis, Vetus Gallica) are a spur for consulting or acquiring sources of all kinds.19 One may speculate that those in possession of systematic canonical collections, which were essentially a treasure-trove of quotations, wanted to read those quotations in their original contexts, perhaps in order to make better sense of them.

Insular material in the Hibernensis We have no clear indications of the routes by which texts, be they complete works or florilegia, reached the compilers of the Hibernensis. In particular, one would like to know whether texts could be obtained directly from continental Europe, or whether Britain was inevitably the intermediary stop on the way. On the available evidence no definitive answer can be given, but we may nevertheless consider the probability that certain texts reached the compilers of the Hibernensis from Britain. To do this I shall compare the Hibernensis’s sources 18 Kéry, Canonical Collections, 9–10, 14–18. 19  However, one thing that the proposed explanation does not account for is the presence of the ‘floating canons’ in the manuscripts of the Hibernensis. This remains a puzzle.

Deploying sources  97 with the sources of the Leiden Glossary, a text copied in the late eighth century at St Gall from an English exemplar.20 This and other continental glossaries from the group known as the ‘Leiden family of glossaries’, were drawn from textbooks that emanated from the late seventh-century Canterbury school of Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian.21 On one occasion the Leiden Glossary cites Theodore by name.22 From the perspective of present-day historians, the Hibernensis and the Leiden glossaries are equally important for attesting the texts that were available in their respective islands. As Michael Lapidge put it, the glossaries of the Leiden family ‘embody the teaching of Theodore and Hadrian, and thus represent an important source—perhaps the most important source—for knowledge of books and learning in early Anglo-Saxon England’.23 Below is a list of thirteen authors and a canonical collection cited in both the Glossary and the Hibernensis:24 1. Augustine, Sermones 2. Benedict, Regula 3. Cassian, De institutis coenobiorum 4. Eucherius, Instructiones 5. Eusebius, Ecclesiastica Historia (tr. Rufinus) 6. Gildas, De excidio Britanniae (Leiden Glossary)/Fragmenta (the Hibernensis) 7. Gregory, Dialogi and Regula pastoralis 8. Isidore, De ecclesiasticis officiis 9. Jerome, Commentarii in euangelium Matthaei 10. Orosius, Historiarum aduersus paganos libri VII25 11. Sulpicius Severus, Dialogi 12. Theodore, sayings (Leiden Glossary) /Canons (the Hibernensis)26 13. Excerpts from church councils and papal decretals There is nothing to indicate that the Leiden Glossary (or the text upon which it is based) is dependent on the Hibernensis or vice versa. The fact that both drew upon ten authors whose works were very popular in the early middle ages, upon 20  Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. Q. 69 fols. 20r–36r. There are two editions of the glossary, by Glogger, Das Leidener Glossar, and Hessels, Late Eighth-Century Latin–AngloSaxon Glossary. The importance of the Leiden Glossary as a witness to the exchange of books between scholars in Britain and Ireland has been stressed by Herren, ‘Scholarly contacts’; Idem, ‘Storehouses of learning’; Bremmer, ‘Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Vossianus Latinus Q. 69’; Griffiths, ‘The glosses on the Regula S. Benedicti’. 21  Lapidge, ‘The school of Theodore’, 53–54. 22  2xii §40, Hessels (ed), 13: Cẏneris nablis idest citharis longiores quam psalterium nam psalterium triangulum fit theodorus dixit. 23  Lapidge, ‘School of Theodore’, 59. For a list of manuscripts of the Leiden family see ibid. 67–72. 24  The list here covers only overlapping items. For a complete list of the glossary’s sources see Lapidge, ‘The School of Theodore’, 54–55. 25  Herren, ‘Scholarly contacts’, 44, 47, shows that at least one copy of Orosius’s History reached England from Ireland. 26  But the canons were definitely known in Britain. See Flechner, ‘The making of the Canons of Theodore’.

98  Deploying sources two insular authors (Gildas, Theodore), and upon canonical material, may be regarded as a coincidence.27 If so, then it follows that works by these authors reached Canterbury and Ireland independently and that Cú Chuimne’s and Ruben’s collection of books (or florilegia) would have appeared quite ordinary to some of their Anglo-Saxon contemporaries. On the other hand, it would not be far-fetched to postulate direct contacts between Canterbury and Iona or Dairinis (or both) which facilitated the circulation of books. A link between Canterbury scholars and the compilers of the Hibernensis is supported by the fact that the Hibernensis is probably the earliest secondary witness to canonical sayings attributed to Theodore and that Irish students frequented Canterbury to study with Theodore, while English students travelled regularly to Ireland (see Chapter 3). Iona, which is better documented for this period, was a centre frequented by aristocratic English pilgrims and Northumbrian royal exiles, and was a likely destination for English students who studied with Irish masters, such as are known from Aldhelm’s correspondence.28 Theodore himself drew upon Irish written material of legal flavour.29 The sources of the Hibernensis and of the Leiden Glossary may therefore bear witness to a circulation of books between centres of learning in Ireland and Britain. In the following list I note insular texts (British, Anglo-Saxon, and Irish) from which the Hibernensis cites, including such sources that overlap between the Hibernensis and the Leiden Glossary (Irish sources that cannot be identified are discussed later in this chapter): British 1. Gildas, Fragmenta (BCLL §28) 2. Synodus Luci Victoriae (BCLL §145) 3. Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum (BCLL §995) Anglo-Saxon 1. Aldhelm, Letter 4, to Gerontius30 2. Canons of Theodore31 (CPL §1885)

27  As noted above, the Hibernensis appears to have drawn mainly on the Dionysiana for its quotations from early church councils and papal decretals, whereas the Leiden Glossary drew on a collection that resembled the Dionysiana in some respects but the Sanblasiana in others. See Lapidge, ‘The School of Theodore’, 64–66. 28  Aldhelm, Letter 5, to Heahfrith, Ehwald (ed), 493. Among the famous English visitors to Iona are members of the seventh-century Bernician dynasty and Egbert, who reformed Iona’s rite of celebrating Easter according to Bede, HE, 5.22, 24, Colgrave and Mynors (ed), 552–554, 566. 29  Flechner, ‘The making of the Canons of Theodore’, 128–130, 135–138. 30  Ehwald (ed), MGH Auct. ant. 15:480–486. 31 The latest edition, published online, is by Michael Elliot, at http://individual.utoronto.ca/ michaelelliot

Deploying sources  99 Irish 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Canones Adomnani (CLH §621; BCLL §609) Cumméne, Penitential (CLH §§579, 581; BCLL §601) Vinnian, Penitential (CLH §§579, 580; BCLL §598) Muirchú, Life of Patrick (CLH §§27, 217; BCLL §303) De canibus synodus sapientium (CLH §618; BCLL §607) Sinodus Hibernensis (CLH §618; BCLL §605) De duodecim abusiuis saeculi (CLH §576; BCLL §339) Synodus sapientium de decimis (CLH §618; BCLL §604) Old-Irish Penitential, or a source thereof (CLH §583) Synodus episcoporum, a.k.a. First Synod of Patrick (CLH §616; BCLL §599) Synodus Patricii, a.k.a. Second Synod of Patrick (CLH §617; BCLL §600) Irish Augustine, De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae (CLH §574; BCLL §291)

All of the above are normative texts—sc. texts on ecclesiastical discipline, on proper Christian behaviour, and penitentials—except the Irish Augustine’s, which is a text of biblical exegesis, and Muirchú’s, which is a hagiographical text. The latter occurs only in two copies of the A-Recension of the Hibernensis: B and O. As for Aldhelm’s letter to King Gerontius of Domnonia (broadly coterminous with present-day Devon and Cornwall), it is the likely source for a text from a council which is quoted in Book 51 De tonsura (p. 407). In the letter Aldhelm says that he personally attended the council together with ex tota pene Brittania innumerabilis Dei sacerdotum caterua ‘a crowd of innumerable priests of God from nearly all of Britain’.32 The letter cites rulings that advocate the Petrine tonsure which bear a striking resemblance to canons attributed to Romani in chapters 1–6 of Hib 51 (pp. 407–410). These canons condemn the Hibernenses (described therein as inhabitants of Hibernia) for their erroneous form of tonsure. Aldhelm’s letter and Hib 51 expound an identical line of reasoning, both in content and in the sequence of arguments which they advance in support of the Petrine tonsure, beginning with an Isidorian scriptural interpretation, followed by a series of arguments based on the New Testament, and finally a paraphrase of a passage from Isidore’s De ecclesiasticis officiis, where it is said that the Petrine tonsure symbolises the rule of the church. It has been suggested that the council, whose proceedings Aldhelm reported to Gerontius at the request of omne sacerdotale Concilium ‘the entire sacerdotal council’, was that of Hertford in 672. However, since Aldhelm says that he was already abbot at the time, then the council in question must have met after 675. But there is no reason to doubt that it met in Britain. It is, in fact, the only insular council mentioned in the Hibernensis whose dates can be fixed within a wide but nevertheless limited date range: between the beginning of Aldhelm’s abbacy in 675 and his becoming bishop in 705.33 One must nevertheless allow for the possibility that the H ­ ibernensis does not 32  Aldhelm, Letter 4, to Gerontius, Ehwald (ed), esp. 482–483. The first to have noted the resemblance was Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, 211 n 4. 33  On the difficulty of identifying this and another synod mentioned briefly in Aldhelm’s De uirginitate with the council of Hertford, see discussion in Lapidge and Herren, Aldhelm. The Prose Works, 141–143. The date-range 675–705 is generally accepted. See, Keynes, ‘Anglo-Saxon church councils’, 587. Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, 261–262, believes the dating criteria are too insecure to allow for an identification of the synod.

100  Deploying sources cite the council from a version of Aldhelm’s letter, but directly from its acta (which do not survive independently) or from another intermediary source. Another insular text, whose relationship to the Hibernensis requires some clarification, is the Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum. The Excerpta were thought by Ludwig Bieler to be British.34 He upheld the date which Arthur Haddan assigned to its prototype, namely 550×650.35 But the Excerpta may in fact post-date the Hibernensis, in which case the Hibernensis must be considered one of their sources. Léon Fleuriot placed the Excerpta’s composition in sixth-century Brittany,36 whereas David Dumville accepted their origin as suggested by Fleuriot, but rejected the dating37: the sceptical reader who wishes to suspend judgment for the moment will place the Excerpta merely between about A.D. 510, the approximate date of the first known form of the Lex Salica,38 and about A.D. 800, the earliest likely date for the earliest extant manuscript. The Excerpta seem to have exercised no influence on early Irish penitential and canonical literature, which is unusual for a field in which texts were closely interdependent.39 Therefore, it follows either that the Hibernensis was the only exception to this rule, or that the Hibernensis was in fact a source for the Excerpta and not vice versa. Dumville acknowledged the latter possibility, and in a later study he seems to have accepted that the Hibernensis was a source for the Excerpta.40 Whereas the Excerpta can almost certainly be dismissed as a source for the Hibernensis, the remaining normative texts in the list above are securely identifiable as sources. In what follows I shall concentrate on the canonical and penitential texts, with the exception of the Canons of Theodore, which are discussed elsewhere in this chapter and in Chapter 3. Most of these texts can be dated with relative security, but the context in which they were conceived is not always known. This lack of context can be especially frustrating in the case of material that purports to be derived from Irish councils, about which we would have liked to know more. Once more, apart from the synod that Aldhelm quotes, no other insular council cited in the Hibernensis can be dated satisfactorily. The Synodus Luci Victoriae, or the Synod of the Grove of Victory, forms part of four interrelated British texts from the sixth or early seventh centuries. The 34 Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 69, 142. 35  Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, 1:127. 36  Fleuriot, ‘Un fragment en latin’. 37  Dumville, ‘On the dating of the early Breton lawcodes’, 220. 38  The most recent study dates the earliest text to between 475 and 487. See Ubl, Sinnstiftungen eines Rechtsbuchs, 92–97. 39 For patterns of interdependence, see Concordantiae canonum in Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 285–287. 40  Dumville, ‘Breton lawcodes’, 219–220. In his ‘Ireland, Brittany, and England’, 90, he was more confident about the relative chronology of the Hibernensis and the Excerpta: ‘The Hibernensis may have had some effect on Breton secular law too, since there seem to be borrowings from it in the Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum’.

Deploying sources  101 remaining three texts are (i) the Excerpts from a Book of David, (ii) the Synod of North Britain, and (iii) the Preface of Gildas on Penance.41 Of these, the Grove of Victory is the only one which is not addressed exclusively to monks but is, rather, concerned with the secular clergy and to a lesser extent with the laity. All four texts are cited and alluded to by later Irish penitentials. The penitential attributed to Vinnian echoes Vinnian’s correspondence with Gildas.42 Fragments from this correspondence, known as the Fragmenta Gildae, survive in the florilegium in W, which served as a source for the Hibernensis, as well as in the Hibernensis itself.43 Vinnian’s penitential addresses its penances separately to clerics and laypeople, and assigns different rates of penance to each group. Of its fifty-three clauses, clauses §§10–29 deal exclusively with clerics and clauses §§31–48 with laypeople. The texts known as De canibus, Synodus Hibernensis, and Synodus Sapientium, were all edited together by Bieler as members of a single group which he titled Canones Hibernenses. This group includes three other texts despite the fact that all six texts were never transmitted together and despite Bieler’s doubts regarding whether they ever formed a unity.44 As for Synodus episcoporum and Synodus Patricii, they are commonly dated to the sixth or seventh centuries, although this dating, like everything else about them, is tentative.45 A more secure dating is possible for the Canones Adomnani. These are attributed to the ninth abbot of Iona, Adomnán (d. 704), and devoted almost entirely to matters of ritual purity. A single text from the Canones is cited in the Hibernensis, and this only in one manuscript: H.

Irish councils Let us now turn our attention to the use that the Hibernensis made of Irish councils more generally.46 The Hibernensis cites extensively from conciliar canons that are associated with two seventh-century Irish clerical factions: Romani and Hibernenses. Based on this association, the councils have sometimes been dated to the time of division in the Irish church in the seventh century, although some Irish synodal decrees in the Hibernensis may well emanate from earlier councils, whose decisions were re-enacted in the seventh century. Of all the citations attributed to Irish sources, those attributed to sinodus Hibernensis and to Hibernenses are the most obscure.47 Only five out of ninety-one citations attributed to 41  BCLL §§144, 146, 147. 42  CLH §580. 43  Fragmenta Gildae, Winterbottom (ed), 143–5. 44 Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 8, 26. The remaining texts are BCLL §§602, 603, 606. Synodus Hibernensis and Synodus Sapientium are also transmitted together in the ninth-century Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, 625 (576), which, according to Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 26, derives from the same exemplar as B. 45  The strongest case for a seventh-century date for Synodus Patricii was made by Meeder, ‘Texts and identities’, esp. 26, 39. 46  What follows is largely based on a discussion of Irish synods in Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:70*–73*. 47 Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:151*–153*.

102  Deploying sources these sources have been identified. By contrast, the sources of twenty-five out of fifty-three citations attributed to sinodus Romana and Romani have been identified;48 ten of these are Irish and fifteen are not. It is interesting—and important for our understanding of the purpose of the Hibernensis—that no citations attributed to Romani and Hibernenses and their respective synods ever conflict with one another. In other words, although the canons are attributed to two distinct groups, the stipulations of one group never contradict the stipulations of the other. At first sight this may appear odd, because two ostensibly rival parties can reasonably be expected to have passed conflicting decisions in their respective assemblies. Otherwise why would they have held separate assemblies? We know from numerous examples that the compilers of the Hibernensis were keen to highlight contradictions that they found between authoritative sources.49 Hence, the fact that no inconsistencies in the conciliar decisions of Romani and Hibernenses can be found in the Hibernensis, strongly suggests that the compilers of the Hibernensis deliberately omitted canons that were in conflict with one another. They might have done so in order to create a semblance of harmony in the Irish church either before or shortly after the northern churches reformed, in the early eighth century. The politics behind this bid for harmony have already been mentioned in Chapter 3. There are indications that the compilers of the Hibernensis saw in the church council an important mechanism for solving disputes within the church. According to one text, Hib 20.5 (p. 114 ln. 15), the provincial council was to be the highest judicial instance in the Irish church. Also significant is the fact that the Hibernensis opens with an introductory text on synods (p. 1 ln. 14–p. 4 ln. 6), and that the preface (p. 1 ln. 1–13) portrays the compilers’ work as being primarily concerned with councils (albeit not only Irish ones). Furthermore, Book 19 (p. 111), De ordine inquisitionis causarum ‘Concerning the order of invoking authoritative sources’, which (as noted in Chapter 2) is the only book devoted exclusively to causis in quibus soluendi ligandique auctoritas est ‘sources in which there is authority to loose and bind’,50 appears to allude to the council when it rules: seniores prouinciae congrega ‘convoke the elders of a prouincia’. This is the only reference in this book to a source which is not a written text, like the Bible or a papal decretal. According to this book, the Bible is the first authority to be consulted, but an assembly of the ‘elders of a prouincia’ has the final word if all authorities fail to provide a fitting response. All surviving early Irish canons, quoted either in the Hibernensis or in other texts, are from councils whose dates and circumstances cannot be established with certainty. Most of these have already been mentioned: Synodus episcoporum, Synodus Patricii, Synodus sapientium, De canibus synodus sapientium, Synodus Hibernensis, De arreis, De disputatione Hibernensis synodi, and De iectione ecclesie graduum ab ospicio.51 Canons from all but the last three were excerpted 48 Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:154*–155*. 49  Discussed here in Chapter 6 and in Flechner, ‘Problem of originality’. 50 For causae as ‘sources’, see caussa in Thesaurus linguae Latinae. 51  Bieler (ed), 54–58, 184–196, 160–174.

Deploying sources  103 by the Hibernensis, which provides them with a terminus ante quem. Canons quoted in the Hibernensis from the first two synods are attributed to Romani or to sinodus Romana, whereas canons from Synodus sapientium and De canibus are attributed to sinodus Hibernensis and to Hibernenses. This reinforces the hypothesis that Romani and Hibernenses either held separate councils or appropriated canons from different Irish councils.52 On the Hibernensis’s internal evidence alone it is impossible to work out the circumstances of any Irish council mentioned therein. However, there is one attribution to a council which may hold a clue for identifying the place at which it was held. The attribution, in Hib 2.22 (p. 29 ln. 5–6), reads sinodus Feruensis, but in H it has been changed and now reads sinodus Hibernensis. The placename denoted by Feruensis may perhaps be Ferns, in Leinster (­modern Co. Wexford).53 The orthography is not a problem, because the letter n in a parent text could easily have been mistaken for the letter u: a common scribal blunder. For mention of a council at Ferns in early medieval Ireland we have only hagiography to go by. The Latin Life of St Máedóc tells of a council that was purportedly convened by King Brandub (d. 605) of Leinster for the purpose of ordaining Máedóc archbishop and elevating Ferns to the status of a metropolitan see. However, Richard Sharpe’s study of the relationship between the various recensions of the Life of Máedóc concludes that the account of the council and its decision to consecrate Máedóc archbishop were interpolated in the thirteenth century.54

Unidentified sources of likely Irish origin The Hibernensis appears to contain attributions to other texts and authorities which may be Irish. Most of these are attributed to authorities who were known by patristic pseudonyms: Origen, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory of Nazianzus. But some are attributed to an authority whose name distinctly identifies it with Ireland: Patrick. The appropriation of patristic names by Irish scholars is a well-documented phenomenon in seventh-century Irish literature.55 Bernhard Bischoff traced the earliest pseudonyms to early medieval Irish texts of biblical exegesis. In his ‘Wendepunkte in der Geschichte der lateinischen Exegese im Frühmittelalter’ he noted works of Irish exegesis attributed to Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory.56 The work written by an author who identifies himself as Augustine, De mirabilibus 52  Meeder, ‘Texts and identities’, 39, cogently argued that Synodus Patricii (in a version that he calls the ‘Vetus Gallica-text’) emerged from ‘the environment, or at least within the same cultural tradition’ as the Hibernensis. He shows that both Synodus Patricii and the Hibernensis seek to portray harmony rather than discord between Romani and Hibernenses. 53  I owe thanks to Dr Fiona Edmonds for this suggestion. 54 Sharpe, Medieval Irish Saints’ Lives, 365. 55  Bernhard Bischoff, ‘Wendepunkte’. The most comprehensive treatment of pseudonymity in early medieval Ireland is by Herren, ‘The pseudonymous tradition’. 56  These are 11A, 11B, 27, 32, 34B, 36, 37, 38 in his ‘Wendepunkte’.

104  Deploying sources sacrae scripturae, also refers to the author’s abbot by another patristic name: Eusebius.57 Apart from being cited in an exegetical text, (pseudo) Jerome is also the author ascribed with penning the seventh-century Irish penitential known as the Bigotian Penitential.58 As for (pseudo) Gregory, the name occurs also in the penitential text De disputatione Hibernensis sinodi et Grigori Nasaseni: sermo de innumerabilibus peccatis ‘Concerning a decision of an Irish synod and Gregory of Nazianzus: a discourse concerning innumerable sins’.59 In the Hibernensis, a pronouncement by a certain ‘Gregorius Nazanzeus’, which clearly does not go back to the Cappadocian Father of the same name, is contrasted with a ruling by a certain Origen, reflecting what might have been a debate between two Irish sages who assumed patristic names (another penitential, by Cumméne, also opens with a similar trope, citing a different pseudo-Father, Basil).60 An Origen is also cited in three other Hiberno-Latin texts as an exegete and author of certain aphorisms: the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum (Ars Grammatica),61 the Würzburg Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew,62 and the Commentary on the Catholic Epistles.63 The identity of the abovementioned Origen will be discussed in detail in a case study later in this chapter. Texts of possible Irish origin which circulated without attribution (or without an explicit attribution) to specific authors, are designated Annales, Annales Ebreorum, Annales Romanorum, Annales Latinorum, Veritas Ebreorum, Libri de Heredibus, Libri Patricii (here Patrick is the subject rather than the author), Humiliae [sic] de uacca rufa, Libri de regula monachorum, Libri de statu monachorum Aegypti, Catalogus, Epistulae de Leone et eius loco, ‘XLV Titulos’ [sic], the ninety-two texts attributed to sinodus Hibernensis/Hibernenses, and the twenty-eight texts attributed to sinodus Romana/Romani, which cannot be shown to go back to non-Irish sources.64 Of these, XLV Titulos, is cited only in H, in Book 53 De carnibus edendis (H54.9 [p. 419 ln. 1–12]), and I discuss it in Chapter 7. To judge by its title it is likely to have been a miscellany and, to judge by the text itself, on regulations pertaining to fish weirs, it appears to have been a miscellany of legal flavour. The titles Annales Romanorum and Annales Latinorum will be considered at length in the case study on Pseudo-Origen below. Some of the remaining titles, which appear to designate discrete texts, are also associated with Origen, but sometimes with other Patristic names too. It is nevertheless unclear whether the names belong to the authors of the texts or to authorities cited in the texts. Thus, Annales and Annales Ebreorum are both associated with the name Origen, and so are Veritas Ebreorum, Libri de Heredibus, and Humiliae de uacca rufa. But the Libri de Heredibus are also associated 57  Augustinus Hibernicus, De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae libri tres, PL 35:2149–2200, at 2149. 58  CLH §582. 59  Bieler (ed and tr), 160–2, at 160. 60  Hib 66.3 (p. 470 ln. 17–p.471 ln. 2). On Basil, see the apparatus in Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 108: Expositio sancti Basilii inquisitio a Cumiani Longii. 61  Bischoff and Löfstedt (ed), CCSL 133D (1992), p. 10 line 330; p. 12 line 372. 62 Koeberlin, Eine Würzburger Evangelienhandschrift §§ 4, 6, 15. 63  McNally (ed), p. 45 line 251. 64 Flechner, Hibernensis, 1:154*–155*.

Deploying sources  105 with the name Augustine and quote from Augustine of Hippo’s Sermon 9. Perhaps this title designated another miscellany comprising texts on the theme of inheritance, some of which were by late antique church Fathers while others were by Irish church Fathers. Other possible miscellanies are (i) Libri de regula monachorum, (ii) Libri de statu monachorum Aegypti, (iii) Catalogus, and (iv) Epistulae de Leone et eius loco. They are all associated with the name Jerome, who might have been their author or a cited authority. If one were to attempt to infer the contents of these four miscellanies by a process of induction from the few quotations that the Hibernensis extracts from them, then the first can be said to have included prescriptive texts on monastic living, the second would have included hagiographical narratives on desert monks, while the third and the fourth are impossible to determine. There is nothing certain, of course, about the Irish identity of these texts. Matters are further complicated by the similarity between the title Libri de statu monachorum Aegypti and the fifteen quotations in the Hibernensis attributed to Vita monachorum and Vita monachorum Aegypti. Texts from the latter two cannot be identified with late antique compendia of desert hagiography such as the Vitas Patrum, but they are less likely to be of Irish origin. However, it is nevertheless possible that they are Irish reiterations of late antique hagiographical narratives or that the florilegia in which they were transmitted were compiled in Ireland. The attribution to another text of insular origin, titled Libri Patricii, occurs only in H, and introduces a variant of a quotation on the Irish/British tonsure, which in the A-Recension is attributed to sermo Patricii (Hib 50.6 [apparatus p. 410 ln. 4–7]). There are three other occurrences of Libri Patricii of which I am aware. In the Book of Armagh, fol. 22r, St Patrick’s Confessio is introduced by the heading Incipiunt libri sancti Patricii episcopi. On fol. 15r of Rawlinson B 512, the designation Libri Patricii was interpolated into the Tripartite Life within a passage concerning twelve brothers who appeal to Lóegaire to settle a dispute between them. This interpolation is identical to an episode concerning Patrick and Lóegaire passing judgement on the seven sons of Amolngid reported in Tírechán’s Collectanea, section 15 of Bieler’s edited text. On fol. 132v of O the combination Libri Patricii introduces a story of Patrick and two bishops who are named in the manuscript as Cethianus and Conallus. The same story occurs in one of the notes preceding Tírechán’s Collectanea in the Book of Armagh, where the bishops’ names appear in different forms: Caetiacus and Sachellus. Thus ‘Libri Patricii’ appears to have been the title by which a collection of Patrician material was known, a collection that was in existence before Tírechán completed his work.

A case study: the Chronicle of Pseudo-Origen Unidentified texts in the Hibernensis which may appear at first sight to be florilegia, may sometimes turn out to derive from more coherent parent texts. I shall concentrate on one such text, from which a number of unidentified insular texts in the Hibernensis seem to derive. This text appears to have been framed as a world chronicle, and it is unattested elsewhere. Fourteen extracts from this text are cited in

106  Deploying sources the Hibernensis.65 In Appendix II I tabulate material from the Hibernensis which— as we shall see—can be associated directly or indirectly with this ‘chronicle’. An early world chronicle or a text that was designed to have the semblance of such a chronicle may seem an unusual source for a canonical collection. However, the Hibernensis deploys other sources that can broadly be understood to be concerned with the past in one way or another. This was not an uncommon thing for Irish normative texts to do, and we find allusions to both history and myth in vernacular law.66 The Hibernensis cites from six such texts: Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History in Rufinus’s Latin translation (fifteen times), Orosius’s History against the Pagans (seven times), Eutropius’s Breuiarium ab urbe condita (once), Isidore’s History of the Goths, Swabi and Vandals (once), Eusebius’s Chronicle as continued and translated by Jerome (six times), and Isidore’s Chronicle (five times). The latter two are commonly referred to as ‘world chronicles’, tracing the course of history from a foundational point in the Judeo-Christian past: creation (Isidore) and the ascendancy of Abraham (Eusebius). Of these, Eusebius’s in Jerome’s continuation is the most elaborate, in that it tabulates events in parallel columns, each reflecting the history of a particular nation. Hence we find, among others, [historia] Hebreorum, Assyriorum, Aegyptiorum, Atheniensium, and Latinorum. The latter becomes [historia] Romanorum from 753 BC, the year in which Rome is said to have been founded (ab urbe condita) according to a tradition that goes back at least to Varro, in the first century BC.67 For the most part, the Chronicle’s synchronic table is concerned with the timelines of Romans and Jews, whose history is designated Hebreorum before the destruction of the first Temple in 586 BC and Iudaeorum thereafter. The Jews’ timeline disappears completely with the destruction of the second Temple in AD 70. Thereafter the only history that remains is that of the Romans. A similar division of timelines is found in the Hibernensis, in entries attributed in annalibus Ebreorum (six times) /Latinorum (once) /Romanorum (once).68 Evidently, there is a dependence on the division of the Chronicle of Eusebius/Jerome. Seven additional entries are attributed simply in annalibus. None of the fourteen entries attributed either in annalibus or in annalibus with additional qualifier, can be traced to any known source. This is in sharp contrast to all entries in the Hibernensis attributed in c[h]ronica and in c[h]ronicis (fourteen altogether), all of which can be traced either to Eutropius’s Breviary, Eusebius’s Chronicle, or Isidore’s Chronicle.69 It would appear, therefore, that the Hibernensis observes a clear distinction between entries that it attributes to annales and to chronica. The former do not go back to any known source while the latter go back to known late antique sources. 65  Much of the following case study draws on my Peritia article ‘Chronicle of Pseudo-Origen’. 66  The most recent article to deal with this proclivity is Qiu, ‘Narratives in early Irish law’. 67 Varro, De re rustica 3.1.2, Gowtz (ed), 113. 68  See Appendix II.3 [Ebreorum], 4 [Ebreorum], 5 [Latinorum], 7 [Ebreorum], 10 [Ebreorum], 11 [Ebreorum], 13 [Romanorum], 14 [Ebreorum]. 69  Hib 17.15 (p. 102) ×2; V26.7 (p. 147); 24.14 (p. 155) ×3; H27.21 V26.18 (p. 156); 26.26 (p. 183); H34.26 V33.26 (p. 230); H38.14 V37.14 (p. 252); 40.1 (p. 307); 41.8 (p. 318); H46.16 V45.18 (p. 346); 62.2 (p. 450).

Deploying sources  107 None of the expressions that feature annales with a qualifier occurs in any other insular text. The only exception is annales Romanorum, which occurs three times in the ninth-century Historia Brittonum: in §§1, 3, 10. In §§1, 3 the annales Romanorum are contrasted with the chronica of Isidore and Eusebius/Jerome, suggesting a formal division between annales and chronica not unlike the one observed by the Hibernensis between foreign late antique sources and an insular source.70 Of the fourteen entries which the Hibernensis attributes in annalibus (with or without an additional qualifier), eight feature the name Origen, variably spelled Originis or Origines.71 A further sixty-seven attributions to Origen occur in the Hibernensis.72 In three of these he is associated with expressions that may designate titles of works: in ueritate Ebreorum, in libris de Heredibus, and in humilis [sic] de uaca rufa.73 Only four texts attributed to Origen have ever been identified: three are quoted from Orosius’s History and one from the Homilies on Genesis by the Greek Father Origen (d. 254), but there could be other texts by him that have not been identified yet.74 At least some of the remaining quotations may, perhaps, be by an irish author, whom I shall henceforth refer to as Pseudo-Origen. The name Origen itself is of course not Irish, but it may nevertheless have been appropriated by an Irish sage of ecclesiastical eminence. As mentioned already, an exegete by the name of Origen is cited in three Hiberno-Latin texts: the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum (Ars Grammatica),75 the Würzburg Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew,76 and the Commentary on the Catholic Epistles.77 The appropriation of patristic names by Irish scholars has already been discussed (and will be considered further in Chapter 6), but we may nevertheless wish to remind ourselves of a contrast that the Hibernensis draws between a text attributed to Pseudo-Origen and a text attributed to a pseudo-‘Gregorius Nazanzeus’, which is likely to have been another pseudonym for an Irish scholar. I cite the passage in full:78 De eo quod iudicem oporteat observare III. Gregorius Nazanzeus: ‘Probare sine discrimine, iudicare sine mora, uerum non tacere’. Origines: ‘Iudex debet mendatium distruere, fallacem reprobare, uerum sine mora iudicare, laudem de eo non querere’. That a judge ought to observe three things. Gregory Nazianzen: ‘To inquire without discrimination, to judge without delay, not to withhold the truth’. Origen: ‘A judge must overturn an injustice, condemn deceit, decide the truth without delay, and not seek praise for it’. 70  Stevenson (ed), Nennii Historia Britonum. The translation used here is by Rowley (Lampeter, 2005). 71  See Appendix II.1, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. 72  See Appendix III. 73  See Appendix III.7, 29, 60. 74  See, respectively, Appendix III.14, 15, 31, 51. 75  Bischoff and Löfstedt (ed), p. 10 line 330; p. 12 line 372. 76 Koeberlin, Eine Würzburger Evangelienhandschrift §§ 4, 6, 15. 77  McNally (ed), p. 45 line 251; p. 141 line 303. 78  See Appendix III.67 (Hib 66.3).

108  Deploying sources Although the entries with which Pseudo-Origen is associated do not definitively identify him as Irish, the attribution of triads to him and of rulings on church organisation further contribute to the circumstantial evidence for an Irish identity.79 As for the exact nature of this author’s relation to the annales: he might have been their author, or an authority cited in them, or indeed both. None of the extracts is a verbatim quotation from any biblical or late antique text. Likewise, there does not seem to be any obvious thematic connection between the text attributed to annales Romanorum in the Hibernensis, on the foundation of St Peter’s,80 and the annales Romanorum in the Historia Brittonum. Of the three references to annales Romanorum in the Historia Brittonum only one (§10) is accompanied by a citation from the annales, concerning the origin of the earliest inhabitants of Britain, who are said to be of Trojan descent, echoing the familiar Virgilian trope of the foundation of Rome. I cite the opening sentences (from Stevenson’s edition with Rowley’s translation): Si quis scire uoluerit quo tempore post Diluuium habitata est haec insula, hoc experimentum bifarie inueni. In annalibus autem Romanorum sic scriptum est. De Romanis uero et Graecis trahunt etymologiam, id est, de matre Lauinia, filia Latini regis Italiae, et progenie Siluani, filii Inahi, filii Dardani. Idem Dardanus filius Saturni regis Graecorum perrexit ad partem Asiae, et ille aedificauit urbem Troiae… If anyone wishes to know when after the flood this island became inhabited, I have found two accounts. This is how it is written in the Annals of the Romans. They trace their origin from the Romans and the Greeks, that is, on the mother’s side, from Lavinia, daughter of Latinus, king of Italy, of the race of Silvanus, son of Inachus, son of Dardanus. This Dardanus was son of Saturn, king of the Greeks, who took a part of Asia, and there built the city of Troy… Whether the expression annales Romanorum in the Historia Brittonum designates a discrete text that was known by this title, or a division within a world chronicle, or a strand within a text of another kind (perhaps a florilegium consisting of ‘historical’ entries) is impossible to say. In view of this uncertainty no link can be established with certainty between these annales Romanorum and the ones cited in the Hibernensis. In fact, one can argue both for and against such a link: for, because the combination annales Romanorum is not known to occur anywhere else except in these two texts, and against, because none of the citations in the Hibernensis concerns itself with an origin legend of any kind, let alone an origin legend of an insular people. Both arguments, however, are undercut by the fact that the surviving citations from the annales Romanorum are too few to be a reliable representation of a lost text. The same is true of annales Ebreorum, 79  See Appendix III.8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 24, 25, 29, 39, 42, 43, 44, 48, 49. The Old Irish triads have been edited and translated by Meyer, The Triads of Ireland. For triads as a peculiar Irish and Welsh literary convention, see Sims-Williams, ‘Thought, word and deed’. 80  Appendix II.13.

Deploying sources  109 annales Latinorum, and indeed annales, an expression which—according to the Brepolis Archive of Celtic Latin Literature—only occurs four times in contemporary Hiberno-Latin literature, with no occurrence bearing any relation to the annales mentioned in the Hibernensis (in fact, in most cases the noun is simply used in the sense of ‘years’).81 As a postscript one may add that the Chronicle of Pseudo-Origen should not be confused with the hypothesis of what Thomas O’Rahilly called the ‘Irish World Chronicle’ and what John Kelleher called the ‘Irish World Annals’.82 What they believed to have identified—building on spade-work by Eoin MacNeill—is a putative source compiled in Ireland on the template of Eusebius’s Chronicle (Irish World Chronicle) or Bede’s Chronica Maiora (Irish World Annals), and containing excerpts from Eusebius, Prosper of Aquitaine, Isidore, and Bede. The sources that were used for their texts therefore correspond to the sources of the entries attributed by the Hibernensis to chronica, with the exception of Prosper and Bede, who are not quoted in the Hibernensis.

Conclusion The long list of sources deployed by the Hibernensis is a treasure trove for the intellectual historian looking to chart the availability of texts in early medieval Ireland and the routes by which they got there. The transmission of the Hibernensis along with some of its sources then offers a way of assessing the impact that this canonical collection had on the reading that took place at centres in which the Hibernensis was copied and also on the strategies for acquiring new texts at those centres. The Hibernensis, it seems, could sometimes be used as a reference for identifying which texts were considered to be worth acquiring, based on quotations that it contained from these texts. When compared with another canonical collection, the Vetus Gallica, and its manuscript transmission, then arguably a similar pattern can be detected. Further research is needed to show whether this pattern is replicated in the transmission of other canonical collections, especially systematic collections. Some texts available to the compilers of the Hibernensis can be shown to have been available to other insular authors, also in Anglo-Saxon England. Nearly all of the insular texts quoted in the Hibernensis, which can be identified, are either normative (canons, penitentials) or containing normative material (e.g. Aldhelm’s account of a council). For some such texts, the fact that they were copied into the Hibernensis and transmitted alongside it may have guaranteed their (partial) survival. The Hibernensis, as a secondary witness, also provides many of these texts with a terminus ante quem. Of particular importance are texts attributed to Irish church councils, for which the Hibernensis is the only secondary witness. 81 Adomnán, Vita S. Columbae, II.39, Anderson and Anderson (ed), 160 (92a); De ratione conputandi §68 line 5; Anonymus ad Cuimnanum §18 line 71; Würzburg Commentary on Matthew §15. 82 O’Rahilly, Early Irish History and Mythology, 253–4; Kelleher, ‘Early Irish history and pseudo-history’.

110  Deploying sources Such texts, together with material from Irish councils that circulated alongside the Hibernensis, testify to what appears to have been a vibrant landscape of conciliar activity, from which hardly any concrete evidence remains in the form of dates, places, or participants. One of the more intriguing categories of source material reviewed in this chapter comprises unidentified sources that appear to be of Irish origin. Many of these sources appear to be exegetical or to be concerned with the question of proper Christian behaviour. In a case study of the various so-called ‘annales’, which can be shown to be associated with a certain Pseudo-Origen, we have seen how biblical exegesis and history could be used by the compilers of the Hibernensis in the interest of formulating canonical prescriptions. The interface between law, exegesis, and history is—once more—an example of the fluid (or sometimes non-existent) boundaries between what we may otherwise be tempted to regard as distinct genres. Law, history, and exegesis informed one another to the extent that we may (again) wonder about the validity of upholding a generic distinction between them.

6 The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law

Biblical quotations and corresponding exegesis form the conceptual bedrock of the Hibernensis.1 The Bible, according to Book 19 (p. 111) of the Hibernensis, is at the top of a hierarchy of sources and authorities to be consulted when disputes arise within the church (see Chapter 2). The position of primacy accorded to the Bible is consistent with evidence of late sixth- and early seventh-century practice among Irish clergy, who appealed to the Bible when they were implicated in disputes regarding the observance of Easter. Thus, Columbanus turned to the Bible as a means of countering arguments that Gallic bishops made on the authority of canon law, while Cumméne followed a procedure remarkably similar to the one prescribed in Book 19 when he first consulted the Bible to learn about Easter before taking his case to Rome.2 Moreover, once Cumméne became aware that the interpretation of the biblical testimony was contested, he sought clarification from a church council, which he summoned by invoking a biblical verse, Deuteronomy 32:7, a variant of which is quoted in Book 19 (p. 111 ln. 14 apparatus): interroga patrem tuum et adnuntiabit tibi, presbiteros tuos et dicent tibi. The same verse is cited by Columbanus in explaining why he chose to appeal to the pope.3 The Hibernensis quotes from sixty-five different biblical books, including such that are commonly considered noncanonical or apocryphal. This inclusivity is ostensibly at odds with Book 19, which defines the Bible rather narrowly by adhering to the canonical tally attributed to Pope Innocent in a letter addressed to Bishop Exsuperius of Toulouse, dated February 405. This canon comprises twenty-two books of the Old Testament together with the four Gospels and the writings of the Apostles.4 Innocent’s division of the Old Testament into twenty-two books corresponds to Jerome’s, which lumps together various books, for example the twelve prophets, which are counted as a single book. Both Innocent and Jerome 1  The pioneer study on the Bible’s role in articulating law in the early medieval period, especially in Ireland, is Raymund Kottje’s Studien zum Einfluß des Alten Testamentes auf Recht. 2  Cumméne’s Letter, Walsh and Ó Cróinín (ed), 58, 62, 64, 79, 83, 91. On Columbanus and the Bible, see the conclusion in Stancliffe, ‘Columbanus and the Gallic bishops’, 212, that for Columbanus ‘the Bible was primary’. 3  Columbanus, Letter 1, to Pope Gregory, Walker (ed), 2. 4 J3 675.

112  The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law acknowledge additional books, which they regard as noncanonical: Wisdom, Son of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, Judith, Tobias, Maccabees, III Ezra, and IV Ezra.5 By the early seventh century, Book 6 of Isidore’s Etymologies will offer further glossing on canonical books and on the apocrypha.6 Although the compilers of the Hibernensis clearly had a copy of the Etymologies which contained Book 6, they did not quote the pertinent passages. By contrast, a contemporary Irish biblical commentary, the Reference Bible (on which more below), opens by quoting extensively from Book 6 of the Etymologies.7 Jerome translated the noncanonical books, but did not admit them as sources for adducing dogma. The Hibernensis cites from all these books (with the exception of the apocryphal books of Ezra) without raising any concerns about their authority. The Hibernensis also cites four apocryphal books of the New Testament: the second-century Shepherd of Hermas (which Jerome knew and rejected), the third-century Acta Andreae, the Virtutes Iohannis (sc. Book 5 of Virtutes Apostolorum), and the Passion of Peter. The latter two were composed by the sixth-century ‘Pseudo-Abdias’, who drew mainly on ancient Greek material, with some original additions.8 The Hibernensis quotes the Shepherd twice, while each of the remaining three is quoted only once.9 There is no clear evidence of the Hibernensis deploying motifs that were incorporated into texts that comprise what has come to be known as the Irish apocrypha, most of which date after the ninth century. Of the sixty-five or so Irish apocryphal texts, only five have been dated before the ninth century:10 i. ii. iii. iv. v.

Liber Iubilaeorum (a fifth-century Latin translation of a part of this text appears to have been known in Ireland) The Irish Infancy Gospel of Pseudo-Thomas (c. 700) Descensus ad infernos from the Book of Cerne (perhaps from the eighth century) Visio Sancti Pauli (perhaps from the eighth century) Hiberno-Latin hymn based on the Acts of Thomas (eighth century)

5  For Jerome’s tally of canonical versus apocryphal books, see his prologues to the Books of Kings and of Solomon (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs): Weber and Gryson, Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam uersionem, 364–366, 957. 6  Isidore’s musings on the Bible are found in Book 6 of the Etymologies: 6.1.1–10 [on the division of the Bible], 6.2.1–49 [on the names and authors of biblical books], and 6.2.50–52 [on the apocrypha]. 7  And then continues with quotations on the canon of scripture from Iunilius’s Instituta regularia diuinae legis, and from another text, which may be Irish. See Reference Bible §§1–54, MacGinty (ed), 1–27. And see McNamara, ‘Plan and source analysis of Das Bibelwerk’, 88–89. 8  Batovici, ‘The Shepherd of Hermas’; Rose, ‘Abdias scriptor vitarum sanctorum apostolorum?’; Burke and Landau, The New Testament Apocrypha; Gregory, Tuckett and Nicklas, The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha. 9  Further on the apocrypha in early Ireland, see McNamara, The Bible and the Apocrypha. 10  The Irish apocryphal corpus is CLH §§103–168. The following five texts are, respectively, CLH §§105, 124, 140, 158, 166.

The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law  113 Another eighth-century source, the poems of Blathmac mac Con Brettan, has been argued to display familiarity with apocryphal material.11 There are no parallels that I am aware of between any of the above texts and the Hibernensis, but further research is needed in order to entirely dismiss or confirm a connection. In my edition of the Hibernensis I have identified 838 direct quotations from the Bible, of which 495 are from the Old Testament and 343 from the New Testament. In addition there are at least 433 allusions to the Bible and paraphrases on the biblical text. It has long been acknowledged that the Hibernensis’s heavy dependence on the Bible as a source is unprecedented among canonical collections.12 But other Christian normative texts soon followed in the footsteps of the Hibernensis, and by the mid eighth century a continental canonical collection was also quarrying the Bible systematically. Taking their cue from the Hibernensis, scholars at Corbie augmented the Vetus Gallica with fifty-two biblical quotations, thereby increasing its biblical inventory tenfold.13

The Bible-text of the Hibernensis Although the Vulgate is extensively cited in the Hibernensis, the compilers also admitted other Bible-texts. Among these is a Bible-text that also underpinned an Irish abridgement of the Pentateuch, known as Liber ex lege Moysi. The Bibletext of this abridgement has some idiosyncrasies in common with the Hibernensis.14 The manuscript circulation of the Liber is inseparable from the Hibernensis, with all four copies of the Liber transmitted alongside complete or abridged texts of the Hibernensis: ABOW. The peculiarities shared by the Hibernensis and the Liber may be attributed to a common unique Bible-text or to a direct dependence by the Hibernensis on the Liber. Influence in the opposite direction is less likely, because the Liber has 297 verses from the Pentateuch while the Hibernensis has only 235. However, if the compilers of the Hibernensis were indeed drawing upon the Liber, then they must have done so selectively, because their Bible-text sometimes departs from the Liber’s and they cite several verses that do not occur in the Liber. It is unknown whether the compilers of the Hibernensis possessed a complete text of the canonical scriptures or whether they only possessed some books but relied on florilegia like the Liber for others. However, extensive quoting from 11  Dumville, ‘Biblical apocrypha and the early Irish’, esp. 305–312. The poems, CLH §860, were edited and translated by Carney, The Poems of Blathmac, 1–88. For translations of (mostly later) Irish apocrypha, see Herbert and McNamara, Irish Biblical Apocrypha. 12  Fournier, ‘De l’influence’, 73; Idem, ‘Le Liber ex lege Moysi’, 228; Stickler, Historia Iuris Canonici, 93; Munier, Les sources patristiques du droit de l’Église, 31. Note that Munier’s figures are based solely on the A-Recension of the Hibernensis. 13  Meens, ‘The uses of the Old Testament in early medieval canon law’, 70. The Vetus Gallica was revised at Corbie c. 748. See Mordek, Kirchenrecht und Reform im Frankenreich, 86–94, 287; Ganz, Corbie in the Carolingian Renaissance, 20, 72. 14  Meeder (ed), ‘The Liber ex lege Moysi’, 191–218. To the peculiarities shared by both texts as noted by Meeder, one may add Exodus 22:6 and Leviticus 12:2, 20:20, which he notes in another context, on p. 178.

114  The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Gospels increases the likelihood that they possessed copies of these texts at least. In assessing whether complete copies of certain biblical books were available, it may be significant that there are twenty-one instances in which the Hibernensis abridges biblical texts by using combinations with the adverb usque ‘as far as’.15 For example, in Hib 25.4 (p. 161 ln. 7–8) we read: … ‘et cecidit sors super Beniamin’, et reliqua, usque: ‘ad Saul filium Chis’. … ‘and the lot fell on Benjamin’; and so forth, as far as: ‘Saul the son of Cis’. This is an abridgement of I Samuel 10:20–21, with the words ‘et reliqua, usque’ standing for the absent text. Another example from Hib 25.4 (p. 161 ln. 11–13) alludes to Acts 1:23–26: Et in nouo ‘statuerunt duos’, id est, Barnaban et Madian et sequentia, usque dicit: ‘Et cecidit sors super Mathian et numeratus est cum XI apostolis’. And in the New Testament ‘they appointed two’, namely Barsabas and Matthias, and so on until it says: ‘And the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles’. It may be argued that by making such abridgements the compilers of the Hibernensis expected their readers to possess fuller (if not complete) texts of the books in question, by means of which the readers could supply the missing material. For one to have such an expectation one would be assumed to possess a full text oneself. Of the twenty-one instances in which the Hibernensis abridges biblical texts by using ‘usque’, fourteen are abridgements of texts from the Psalms,16 while the remaining seven are from the Pentateuch, Samuel, Chronicles, and the Gospels. Perhaps the compilers of the Hibernensis took it for granted (or thought it more likely) that their readers will have access to the Psalms at least, which were transmitted independently of other biblical books.17 In a text-critical study of the manner in which the Hibernensis deployed biblical quotations, Luned Davies upheld the findings of Arthur Haddan that the Hibernensis exhibits a mix of Vulgate and Vetus Latina readings.18 In comparison, no evidence for the use of the Vetus Latina has been found in Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis, a text originating in Iona.19 One of the presumed compilers of the 15  p. 76 ln. 10, p. 96 ln. 1, p. 96 ln. 4–5, p. 161 ln. 8, p. 161 ln. 11–13, p. 163 ln. 2, p. 167 ln. 10, p. 168 ln. 2, p. 237 ln. 2, p. 245 ln. 9, p. 264 ln. 19 (apparatus), p. 384 ln. 3–4 (×2), p. 384 ln. 7, p. 385 ln. 7, p. 461 ln. 10–11, p. 467 ln. 6 (apparatus), p. 471 ln. 5, p. 471 ln. 6, p. 471 ln. 20, p. 473 ln. 7–8. 16  p. 76 ln. 10, p. 96 ln. 1, p. 167 ln. 10, p. 168 ln. 2, p. 237 ln. 2, p. 384 ln. 3–4 (×2), p. 384 ln. 7, p. 385 ln. 7, p. 461 ln. 10–11, p. 467 ln. 6 (apparatus), p. 471 ln. 5, p. 471 ln. 6, p. 471 ln. 20. 17  Of the fifteen books that survive from Ireland before AD 808, two are Psalters and eleven are Gospel books. See Sharpe, ‘Books from Ireland’, 12. 18  Haddan, ‘Latin versions of the Holy Scripture in use in the Scoto-Britannic churches’, 170–197; Davies, ‘The biblical text’, 21. 19  O’Loughlin, ‘The Latin version of the scriptures in Iona’.

The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law  115 Hibernensis, Cú Chuimne, himself resided at Iona, where the Vulgate was dominant. One may speculate that the introduction of non-Vulgate quotations is owed to Cú Chuimne’s presumed-co-compiler, Ruben, who was based at Dairinis, in the south of Ireland. Davies also argued that although no recension of the Hibernensis can be said to adhere to one Bible-text more closely than the other, there are more instances in which manuscripts of the B-Recension and ABP show fidelity to the Vulgate in comparison with other manuscripts.20 She occasionally finds evidence for a process of selective replacement of Vetus Latina quotations with Vulgate quotations during transmission, especially in APH.21 This is not unusual for composite texts like the Hibernensis, and the replacements can work both ways, such that it is possible to point to other texts of an exegetical hue in which Vulgate quotations appear to have been replaced by quotations from other Bible-texts.22 Some of the non-Vulgate readings from the Hibernensis have been argued to bear comparison with biblical quotations found in other insular texts and insular Gospel books.23 The insular texts are: Pelagius’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles (not of insular origin but favoured by insular scholars), the eighth-century collection of homilies known as Catechesis Celtica, and Gildas’s De Excidio Brittaniae.24 As for parallels with Gospel books, Davies notes the following: Book of Kells (saec. IX: Trinity College Dublin MS 58) has twenty-five agreements, the Macregol Gospels has twenty-one (saec. VIIIin: Bodleian Library, MS Auctarium D. 2. 19; also called Rushworth Gospels), the Lichfield Gospels has eighteen (saec. VIII: Lichfield, Cathedral Library, MS 1), the Breton Egerton Gospels sixteen (saec. IX: British Library, Egerton 609), the Echternach Gospels fifteen (saec. VIIex: Paris, BNF, lat. 9389), the Book of Durrow eleven (saec. VII2: Trinity College Dublin MS 57), the Book of Armagh ten (saec. IXin: Trinity College Dublin MS 52), and the Lindisfarne Gospels three (saec. VIIIin: British Library Cotton MS Nero D.IV). Her identifications flag valid parallels but they do not distinguish systematically between different manuscripts of the Hibernensis. The version of the Psalms quoted in the Hibernensis is the so-called Gallican, which is the same version attested in both surviving early Irish Psalters, the Cathach and the Faddan More Psalter, and was the most common version in early medieval Europe.25 A contemporary Old Irish treatise on the Psalms describes this version as follows:

20  Davies, ‘The biblical text’, 23–24. Sadly, Davies published only a small portion of the data that she drew upon, making her findings impossible to falsify without undertaking a major new study. 21  Davies, ‘The biblical text’, 34–35. 22  Rittmueller (ed), Liber Questionum in evangeliis, 25*–29* (Bible-Text Variant List 3). 23  Davies, ‘The biblical text’, 25–26. 24  Davies, ‘The biblical text’, 25–26; McNamara, ‘The Irish affiliations of the Catechesis Celtica’; Idem, ‘Sources and affiliations of the Catechesis Celtica (MS Vat. Reg. lat. 49)’. The biblical versions used by Gildas have been the subject of a recent study: O’Loughlin, Gildas and the Scriptures. 25 McNamara, The Psalms in the Early Irish Church.

116  The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law Tintúd Septin ém, is hé fil forsna salmu, ocus is hé romalartad oco. Tintúd asind ebru isin n-gréic, isin latin. The translation of the Septuagint, truly, that is the one which is on the Psalms, and this is the one which was altered by him [sc. Jerome]. It is a translation from the Hebrew into the Greek, into the Latin.26 The same text, which regards the Psalms as having a prophetic quality, also offers an explanation for their value as a source for providing normative instruction, when properly interpreted: Ceist. Cid diatirchan fáitsine inna salm? Ní anse. Di gein Chríst ocus dia baithis ocus dia chésad esérgiu ocus dia ḟresgabáil ocus dia ṡuidiu for deiss Dé athar i nim; de thochuired gente i n-iris, de indarbu Iuda i n-amiris; de mórath cecha fírinne, de dínsim cecha clóine, de maldachad pecthach, de thuidecht Chríst do messemnach for bíu ocus marbu. Question. Of what did the prophecy of the Psalms foretell? Not difficult. Of the birth of Christ and of His baptism, and of His passion, and of His resurrection, and of His ascension, and of His sitting on the right hand of God the Father in Heaven, of the invitation of the heathen to the faith, of the thrusting of Judah into unbelief, of the increase of every justice, of the spurning of every injustice, of the malediction of sinners, of the coming of Christ to judge the quick and the dead.27

Exegesis and its applications Biblical texts, like other sources on which the Hibernensis drew, were admitted both as testimonia, particular quoted texts serving as precedents, and exempla, examples of instances in which rules were followed. But in order to admit biblical verses either as testimonia or exempla, their message or prophetic thrust (as in the Psalter, above) had to be extracted through a filter of interpretation. Interpretation by means of biblical exegesis allowed the interpreter to make sense of obscure passages, to distil rules from texts whose normative application is not immediately obvious, and to justify admitting Old Testament prescriptions in the era of the new law. The compilers of the Hibernensis can be shown to have enlisted exegesis in the cause of all these objectives. Justification for selectively admitting texts from the Old Testament was therefore sought by clinging to various authorities, for example Eucherius of Lyon and Jerome: Hib H14.8 V13.8 (p. 56 ln. 1–7) De obseruatione legis ueteris et adiectione. Eucherius: ‘Interrogatio: “Quæ de ueteri testamento relinquere uel obseruare debemus”? Responsio: “Debemus obseruare mandata, quæ ad corrigendam uitam moresque pertinent, 26  Old-Irish Treatise of the Psalter §329, Meyer (ed and tr), 32/33. 27  Old-Irish Treatise of the Psalter §328, Meyer (ed and tr), 31/32–32/33.

The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law  117 r­ elinquere autem ceremonias ritusque sacrificiorum, que figuras atque umbras futuris tunc rebus pretullerunt”’. Hieronimus: ‘In preceptis quæ ad uitam pertinent querere allegoriam non debemus, nec requiramus nodum in scirpho’. Concerning observing and rejecting the old law. Eucherius: ‘Question: “What of the Old Testament ought we to relinquish, and what ought we to observe”? Response: “We ought to observe the commands that pertain to the correction of life and mores; but relinquish the ceremonies and rites of sacrifices, which once conveyed the figures and shadows of things to come”’.28 Jerome: ‘In regard to precepts that pertain to life, we ought not evoke allegory, nor should we seek a knot in a bulrush’.29 This text appears to be the Hibernensis’s response to Romans 7, where Paul warns against the corrupting power of Old Testament law (7:8), a law which, according to him, became obsolete with the advent of the new, spiritual law (7:1– 6). Much of Paul’s criticism stems from his understanding of Old Testament law as a law that demanded genuine inner commitment from its followers, but due to human weakness, it could only be followed superficially through the rituals it prescribed. However, the new law that Paul preached was said to be wholly spiritual. Eucherius makes a distinction between the ritualised law of the Old Testament, which already fulfilled its prefigurative role by showing the figuras atque umbras of the new law, and aspects of the Old Testament that ad corrigendam uitam moresque pertinent. This distinction is important, for it justifies the choice made by the compilers of the Hibernensis to admit material from the Old Testament as law even though the Hibernensis addresses itself exclusively to Christians, who, according to Paul, are ‘dead to the law’ (Romans 7:4). Not only are a great many precepts of the Hibernensis drawn from the Old Testament, but Book 19, as already noted, explicitly places the Old and New Testaments side by side at the top of a hierarchy of authoritative Christian sources. The expression nodum in scirpo quaerere in the quotation from the Hibernensis (above) is well attested in Classical Latin. Jerome’s original text reads: in praeceptis quae ad uitam pertinent et sunt perspicua non debemus quaerere allegoriam, ne iuxta comicum nodum quaeramus in scirpo ‘in precepts which pertain to [the conduct of] life and are manifest, we ought not seek allegory, nor—in the manner of the comic—seek a knot in a bulrush’.30 The citation from Jerome further authorises those who sit in judgement to draw upon the Old Testament as a source for law without having to depart from the literal sense of the text by, for example, treating it allegorically and consequently complicating it. Like the citation from Eucherius, the citation from Jerome can also be seen as an adaptation of Romans 7:1–6, where the laws of the Old Testament are portrayed as obsolete. Despite the preference for literal exegesis the Hibernensis practises allegorical 28  Eucherius, Mandolfo (ed), 97. 29  Jerome, Commentary on Zechariah, verse 2:8, Adriaen (ed), 819. 30  Alluding to Plautus, Menaechmi 2.1.22. I am indebted to Dr Sven Meeder for the reference to Jerome and for identifying the ‘comic’.

118  The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law exegesis on several occasions, especially in the opening chapters, which are devoted to the seven ecclesiastical grades, which are likened (by allegory) to different turning points in Christ’s biography.31 The risks of misinterpreting the Bible by means of exercising extensive interpretative license are expounded in another colourful passage: Hib H24.9 V23.9 (p. 120 ln. 12–17) De eo quod sensum scripturæ deprauare non oportet. Hieronimus: ‘Quasi grande et non uitiosum dicendi genus deprauare sententiam, et ad sensum suum scripturam trachere repugnantem.32 Diligenter intuendum est, ut lex Dei cum legitur, non secundum proprii ingeni intelligentiam legatur. Sunt enim multa in scripturis diuinis que possunt tradi ad eum sensum quem sibi unusquisque sponte presumpserit. Quod fieri non oportet’. That the sense of scripture should not be distorted. Jerome: ‘It is as though it were a noble and not a depraved way of reasoning, to distort the meaning, and to drag scripture against its will towards one’s own interpretation. It must be diligently observed, that when God’s law is read, it should not be understood according to one’s own interpretation. For there are many things in the divine scriptures that can be made to agree with an understanding that each and every person contrives independently. This should not be’. Despite the plea to leave the sense of scripture unchanged, which opens with a quotation from Jerome’s letter to Paulinus of Nola, the Bible is interpreted quite liberally throughout the Hibernensis, as we shall see in detail below. It is not clear what form of interpretation this text is opposed to, because it does not explicitly advocate a literal interpretation, nor does it dismiss allegorical interpretation. Perhaps it simply wants its readers to reject tendentious interpretations of the biblical text. The only Irish exegete cited in the Hibernensis, who can be identified by name, is, in fact, famous for his preference for literal exegesis. This is the Irish Augustine, whose mid seventh-century De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae pursues two ambitious goals, which are, at times, contradictory: to demonstrate that events which the Bible describes as miracles are not in fact so, and to offer a literal explanation for the ostensible biblical miracles.33 Although the Irish Augustine is the only Irish exegete cited in the Hibernensis who can be identified by name, other Irish exegetes are cited by pseudonyms (like Jerome and Gregory of Nazianzus; see Chapter 5). Some of them can be connected with other Hiberno-Latin works of exegesis. The extent of Irish exegesis at the time in which the Hibernensis was compiled is not easy to determine.34 In my estimation there are fifteen texts that 31  On the seven grades being interpreted by analogy to stations in Christ’s life, see Crehan, ‘The seven orders of Christ’; Reynolds, The Ordinals of Christ. 32  Jerome, Letter 53.7, Hilberg (ed), 453–454. 33  PL 35:2149–2200. On Augustine and his work, see MacGinty, ‘The Irish Augustine: De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae’; Bracken, ‘Rationalism and the Bible in Seventh-Century Ireland’. 34  On the debate, see Stansbury, ‘Irish biblical exegesis’.

The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law  119 can securely be argued to have either been written in Ireland or at least by Irish authors working elsewhere between 600 and 800.35 I list them below together with references to modern editions: i. The Milan glosses on the Psalms: Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, eds. W. Stokes and J. Strachan, 2 vols (Dublin, 1901), 1:7–483.36 ii. The Würzburg glosses on the Pauline Epistles: Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, eds. W. Stokes and J. Strachan, 2 vols (Dublin, 1901), 1:499–712. iii. The Würzburg Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew: ed. Karl Koeberlin, Eine Würzburger Evangelienhandschrift: (Mp.th.f.61.s. VIII) (Augsburg, 1891). iv. The Old Irish Treatise on the Psalter: ed. and tr. K. Meyer, Hibernica Minora, being a fragment of an Old-Irish Treatise on the Psalter (Oxford, 1894), 20–37. See also P. Ó Néill, ‘The Old-Irish Treatise on the Psalter and its Hiberno-Latin Background’, Ériu 30 (1979): 148–164. v. The Lambeth Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount: ed. and tr. L. Bieler and J. Carney, ‘The Lambeth Commentary’, Ériu 23 (1972): 1–54. vi. An epitome of Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram: ed. M. Gorman, ‘An unedited fragment of an Irish epitome of St Augustine’s De genesi ad litteram’, Revue des Études Augustiniennes 28 (1982): 76–85, at 81–85. vii. Laidcenn of Clonfertmulloe’s abridgement of Gregory’s Moralia in Iob: ed. M. Adriaen, Ecloga quam scripsit Lathcen filius Baith de Moralibus Iob quas Gregorius fecit, CCSL 145 (1969). viii. An epitome of Julian of Eclanum’s translation of Theodore of Mopsuestia’s Commentary on the Psalms, whose early transmission is exclusively Irish: ed. L. Coninck, Theodori Mopsuesteni Expositionis in Psalmos Iuliano Aeclanensi interprete in Latinum versae quae supersunt, CCSL 88A (1977). ix. A recension of Jerome’s Commentary on Isaiah made in the late eighth century by Josephus Scottus, an Irish member of Alcuin’s circle: The text, with no modern edition, is referenced in BCLL §649. x. A commentary on Matthew: ed. Michael Cahill, CCSL 82 (1998).37 xi. Irish Augustine, De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae: PL 35.2149–2200.

35  The publication of Bischoff’s ‘Wendepunkte’ in 1954 ushered a debate on the identity of certain exegetical texts that he believed were Irish. The debate—much too intricate to sum up adequately here—stimulated scholars to restate the case in favour of Irish exegesis more firmly and to refine it. Herren, ‘Irish biblical Commentaries’ and Ó Cróinín, ‘Bischoff’s Wendepunkte fifty years on’, argue that no small number of works from Bischoff’s list can be associated with Ireland or with Irish scholars working elsewhere. The list of fifteen texts given here is guided by—but not entirely based on—their work. For past and recent sceptical views about the scope of Irish exegesis, see Coccia, ‘La cultura irlandese precarolingia: Miracolo o mito?’; Stancliffe, ‘Early “Irish” biblical exegesis’; Gorman, ‘A critique of Bischoff’s theory of Irish exegesis’; Idem, ‘The myth of Hiberno-Latin exegesis’. 36  On which see now Blom, Glossing the Psalms, 91–128. 37  But note the reservations discussed by Cahill in his introduction, 100*–115*.

120  The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law xii. A commentary on the so-called Catholic Epistles from a Reichenau manuscript, now Karlsruhe Landesbibliothek, MS. Aug. ccxxxiii fols. 1r–40v: ed. E. McNally, CCSL 108B (1973), 3–50. xiii. A work containing questions and answers on the Old and New Testaments known as The Reference Bible or Das Bibelwerk: ed. G. MacGinty, The Reference Bible. Das Bibelwerk. Inter pauca problesmata de enigmatibus ex tomis canonicis nunc prompta sunt praefatio et libri de Pentateucho Moysi, CCCM 173 (2000). xiv. Aileran’s commentary on the genealogy of Christ: ed. Aidan Breen, Ailerani interpretatio mystica et moralis progenitorum domini Iesu Christi (Dublin, 1995). xv. Adomnán, De locis sanctis: ed. D. Meehan, Adamnan’s De locis sanctis (Dublin, 1958). Some of these works can, with certainty, be dated to seventh- and eighth-century Ireland. That the Reference Bible and the Hibernensis did in fact partake in a common scholarly discourse is evident from the fact that both paint an almost identical trajectory for the development of law from the days before Moses into the authors’ own time (as discussed in Chapter 4). The two texts are contemporary and it is impossible to say whether one influenced the other directly or whether they both drew on a well-known idea.38 Further connections between the Hibernensis and exegetical texts can be made based on authorities they all quote: Adomnán, the Irish Augustine, and Origen. The first two are authors of exegetical texts (nos. xi, xv, above) and the latter is mentioned as an authority in the Würzburg Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew and in the Commentary on the Catholic Epistles (nos. iii, xii). All three are quoted in the Hibernensis. Drawing on foundations laid by Paul Grosjean, both Michael Herren and Michael Gorman (before he became sceptical about the extent of early medieval Irish scholarship and exegesis) argued convincingly in favour of a south-Irish exegetical circle, to which various exegetical texts in the list above can be ascribed. This ‘Munster circle’, as Herren termed it,39 was a refinement of Grosjean’s ‘Carthaginian circle’, which was believed to have been centred around Lismore. The authors who are said to have belonged to the circle are the Irish Augustine, Laidcenn (d. 661), Banbanus sapiens (d. 686) who is referred to as an authority in the anonymous Commentary on the Catholic Epistles (no. xii, above), and the anonymous author (often referred to as Pseudo-Isidore) of De ordine creaturarum,40 a work of possible Irish origin which makes abundant use of exegesis and which cites the Irish

38  See McNamara, ‘Plan and source analysis of Das Bibelwerk’, 88–89. 39  Herren, ‘The pseudonymous tradition’, 130. Gorman, ‘An unedited fragment’, 79. 40  Diaz y Diaz (ed), Liber de ordine creaturarum; Smyth (tr), ‘The seventh-century HibernoLatin treatise’. The text also influenced Bede’s De natura rerum, hence any parallels observed between the Irish Augustine and Bede may be indirect. But Jones (ed), Bedae opera de temporibus, 364, was adamant that Bede did not have direct knowledge of De mirabilibus.

The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law  121 Augustine.41 Gorman suggested that the circle should also include the anonymous author of an epitome of Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram (no. vi, above).42 The Commentary on the Catholic Epistles, a text numbered xii in the list above, is pivotal for establishing links between seventh-century Irish exegetes and their works. The anonymous commentator on the Epistles mentions Manchéne, whom he designates doctor noster. This appears to be the same Manchéne, whom the Irish Augustine mentioned in his preface as his pater.43 Perhaps the anonymous commentator and Augustine were both Manchéne’s students. This may also explain why they both shared a preference for literal exegesis. The anonymous commentator also mentions Laidcenn,44 Banbán sapiens,45 Berchán son of Áed, a certain Brechán (perhaps a metathesised form of Berchán), and Pseudo-Origen.46 The last three cannot be securely identified.47 All six figures— Manchéne, Laidcenn, Banbán, Berchán, Brechán, and Pseudo-Origen—are mentioned as authorities who offered interpretations to various passages in the Catholic Epistles. These six authors are all deemed to have belonged to—or to have constituted the core of—the ‘Munster Circle’ of Irish exegesis. The Hibernensis can be connected with this circle thanks to the Irish Augustine, whose De mirabilibus it cites, and who may also be associated with other quotations attributed to (Pseudo-) Augustine throughout the Hibernensis. But the connection with the Munster circle can also be posited through Pseudo-Origen, on whom see Chapter 5. Adomnán provides a link with the exegesis practised in the monastery on Iona, of which Cú Chuimne, one of the presumed compilers of the Hibernensis, was an inmate. The other presumed compiler, Ruben, who hails from Dairinis, offers another convenient link with Munster. Irish exegetes notwithstanding, the biblical exegesis in the Hibernensis was mostly supplied from patristic commentaries and from other renowned authoritative authors, listed below in alphabetical order: 1. Ambrose On Luke On Psalm 118 41  Herren, ‘The pseudonymous tradition’, 125, also added to the list Virgilius Maro Grammaticus, although he acknowledges that his Irishness is not universally accepted. By 1979, however, Herren was more confident that Virgil was born and educated in Ireland. See Herren, ‘Some new light on the life of Virgilius Maro Grammaticus’. Virgil is the author of Epitomae, Polara (ed), Virgilio Marone grammatico, 2–171. 42  Gorman, ‘An unedited fragment’, 79. 43  Commentary on the Catholic Epistles, McNally (ed), 15 ln. 475. De mirabilibus praef. (PL 35:2151). 44  Commentary on the Catholic Epistles, McNally (ed), 15 ln. 493, 49 ln. 66. 45  Commentary on the Catholic Epistles, McNally (ed), 19 ln. 637. 46  For Berchán, see Commentary on the Catholic Epistles, McNally (ed), 9 ln. 233. For Brechán, see ibid, 5 ln. 106; 9 ln. 233; 19 ln. 662; 29 ln. 51, 63; 38 ln. 86; 45 ln. 237. For Origen, see ibid, 45 ln. 251. 47  Grosjean’s suggestion (‘Sur quelques exégètes’, 79) that Banbán is identical with the Bathanus of De mirabilibus, has been rejected by the editor of the Commentary, McNally (CCSL 108B, ix n 12).

122  The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law 2. Augustine On Genesis On the Psalms On John On the Sermon on the Mount 3. Cassiodorus On the Pauline Epistles 4. Gregory the Great Homily on Ezechiel Moralia in Job Homilies on the Gospels 5. Pseudo-Hilary (perhaps an Irish source48) Commentary on the Catholic Epistles 6. Isidore Questions on the Old and New Testaments 7. Iunilus Instituta regularia diuinae legis 8. Jerome Commentary on Ecclesiastes Commentary on Isaiah Commentary on Jeremiah Commentary on Ezechiel Commentary on Daniel Commentary on the Minor Prophets Commentary on Matthew Commentary on the Pauline Epistles 9. Origen Homilies on Genesis 10. Pelagius Commentary on the Pauline Epistles Liber de induratione cordis Pharaonis Of these ten authors Jerome tops the list with thirty-one different quotations from his exegetical texts. Gregory follows with twenty-one, and third in line is 48  According to McNally, CCSL 108B, x–xii, who built on previous work by Bischoff. See also Webber, Scribes and Scholars, 38, 61–62, on her discovery of a fragment of Pseudo-Hilary in the twelfth-century Salisbury Cathedral, MS. 124, which is possibly copied from an insular exemplar.

The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law  123 Augustine, with sixteen. The complete list of identified biblical commentaries accounts for only a small proportion of the overall exegesis of the Hibernensis, which is sometimes spuriously attributed and sometimes appears with no attribution at all. Occasionally an exegetical source will be cited indirectly through a derivative text, such as the exposition on the genealogies of Christ according to Matthew and Luke by the chronographer Africanus, whose work is cited via Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History (in Rufinus’s translation).49 Exegesis can take different forms and should not be expected always to appear in the form of a commentary. It can appear also in the title of a chapter, in which biblical passages are cited, or in which allusions to biblical episodes are made. Likewise, it can appear in a comment imbedded in the chapter itself, in the manner of a gloss. As for the purpose of exegesis in the Hibernensis, more often than not it is used as a means for inferring a rule from the Bible. Two examples of exegesis in chapter headings are Hib 26.20 (p.180 ln. 11) De adiuuantibus bono animo apostatas ‘Concerning those helping apostates in good faith’, and Hib 40.10 (p. 319 ln. 10) De eo quod liceat aeclesie sumere danda omnia ‘That the church may accept everything that is given to it’. The first refers to (among other supporting allusions) Joshua’s treaty with the disguised Gabaonites (Joshua 9), and the second refers to (among others) Daniel’s acceptance of gifts from Nabuchodonosor (Daniel 2:48). The interpretations in these cases are moral and normative, and they are given with the aim of prescribing behaviour. We have already encountered similar such cases in Chapter 2, in connection with the rationale for justifying lot-casting, which the Hibernensis infers from the Bible. An example of exegesis imbedded in a chapter itself is the following interpretation of a well-known scene from the Gospels: Hib 16.3 (p. 84 ln. 14–17) De hiis, qui ad testimonium non admitendi sunt … Testimonium feminae non accipitur, sicut apostoli testimonium feminarum non acciperunt de resurrectione Christi. Concerning those who must not be admitted as witnesses … The testimony of a woman is not admitted, just as the apostles did not accept the women’s testimony concerning the resurrection of Christ. According to Luke 24:1–11, the apostles were wrong to disbelieve the women’s testimony. But there is no reason to assume that the compilers of the Hibernensis did not know the biblical story. Nevertheless, here as elsewhere they were applying acontextual literal exegesis in order to give biblical censure to a procedure known from an Irish law tract which rendered the oath of a woman (bannoíll) inadmissible, although there were a number of exceptions to this.50 A curious type of exegesis makes use of spurious biblical quotations or modified biblical stories, of the kind that has also examined elsewhere in this book, in the context of the casting of lots and of the Chronicle of Pseudo-Origen (Chapters 49  Eusebius/Rufinus, Ecclesiastical History, 1.7.7–10, cited in Hib H45.9 V44.9 (pp. 333–334). 50  GEIL, 202, 207–208.

124  The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law 2 and 5). An example is Hib 46.17 (p. 394 ln. 1–4): De anno uno ad poenetentiam subficiente ‘That doing penance for a single year is sufficient’. The text reads: Dominus dixit ad Iob de turbine: ‘Per angelos meos et per sedem regni mei anima; quodsi unius anni spatium emendationis fecisses in sæculo, numquid tibi priora crimina commemorassem’? The Lord said to Job from the whirlwind: ‘Take courage in my angels and the throne of my kingdom; but had you reformed yourself in this world for a year, would I have remembered your former offences’? This is not a genuine biblical quotation, although whoever interpreted it with the aim of inferring a rule from it might have believed that it was. Equally likely is the possibility that the compilers of the Hibernensis or certain scholars, whom they drew upon, practised what may be referred to as ‘inventive exegesis’, a practice whereby biblical quotations would be fabricated. Indeed, there are several instances in which the Hibernensis draws on what appear to be fabricated biblical quotations. The following are among the most outlandish examples: Hib 25.1 (p. 159 ln. 11–12) Filius Serac dicit: ‘Sors inter dubia mittitur, ut Deus in uisu homini distinguat’. Hib 25.2 (p. 160 ln. 4) In Paralipiminon: ‘In sorte non est electio, sed Dei uoluntas’. Hib 32.1 (p. 231 ln.3) Iob dicit: ‘Debitum uniuscuiusque solui’. Hib 32.2 (p. 231 ln. 13) Moises: ‘Debitum fratris ne retineas’. Hib 32.2 (p. 231 ln. 14) Salamon: ‘Ne teneas debitum proximi tui’. Hib H35.5 V34.5 (p. 233 ln. 4) Ezechiel: ‘Hominem inopem non depremit et pignus reddidit debentis’. Hib 36.6 (p. 259 ln. 10) Lex: ‘Populus terrae obediat Deo et principi, nec contradicat illi’. Hib 36.6 (p. 259 ln. 11) Ezechiel: ‘Timeat quisque uestrum principem et honoret’. Hib 36.8 (p. 260 ln. 2) In Regum libris: ‘Qui non obedierit principi, morte morietur’.

The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law  125 Hib 36.10 (p. 262 ln. 2) Iob: ‘Neminem contempsi et humilis fui ad uniuersos’. Hib 36.10 (p. 262 ln. 3) Moises: ‘Non grauis fui populo huic, neque asinum cuiusquam per uim sustulli’. Hib H63.1 V62.1 (p. 444 ln. 20) Lex: ‘Ne feceris malum proximis tuis. Si autem fecisti, roga illum donari tibi’. Hib H63.1 V62.1 (p. 444 ln. 21) Iob: ‘Neminem lessi, et si quem male lesi, placui’. Some of these quotations can be identified. For example, the first two (Hib 25.1, 2 [p. 150 ln. 13–14, p. 160 ln. 4]) correspond closely to Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos 30.2.2.13 (ed. Dekkers and Fraipont, p. 211 ln. 4–5, 13–14). The attribution to the Bible, however, is not in the Augustinian text. Other spurious biblical quotations may also go back to intermediate sources, which I have not been able to identify, but they may equally have been contrived by the compilers of the Hibernensis or someone in their intellectual circle; it is impossible to say on the available evidence. In addition to spurious biblical quotations there are also spurious allusions to biblical narratives, which do not correspond to any biblical or apocryphal text known to me. Once more, I offer a selection of the more peculiar examples: Hib 16.11 (p. 90 ln. 6–9) Quando Iacob aperuit puteos patris sui Isac, quos Philistim obstruxerunt, dixerunt habitatores terræ: ‘Cur id fecisset’? Et respondens dicit: ‘Quia patris mei erant’. Illi dixerunt: ‘Eamus ad testes et firma coram eis pretium aut sermonem, quantum et quot’. Hib 31.16 (p.224 ln. 11–12) Pars, que uenit in partem tribus Dan, de terra Damasci uenit et non reuersa est. Hib 31.17 (p.225 ln. 17–18) Iacob dedit partem filiæ suæ Dinae, que uidua mansit post uirum suum. Hib H 39.17 V 38.18 (p. 260 ln. 15) Noe diuissit orbem terrae filiis suis antequam moreretur. Most of the allusions just quoted seem to be connected either directly or indirectly with the exegesis of the Irish sage, who self-identified by the patristic name Origen (on whom see Chapter 5), who may have taken liberties in modifying the biblical text. One may speculate further that, to some extent, the Hibernensis

126  The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law reflects a form of what I have already referred to above as ‘inventive exegesis’, which was, perhaps, practised as a schoolroom exercise in monastic schools as part and parcel of students’ training in exegesis or as part of routine debates among seasoned exegetes. The process through which such ‘inventive exegesis’ could be formed, may be observed in the following counterfactual text, in which a spurious saying is attributed to God, prefaced by the qualifying phrase ‘what if God were to say’, a phrase taken from a sermon by Caesarius:51 Hib H20.11 V19.11 (p. 96 ln. 15–20) Agustinus: ‘Decime ex debito requiruntur. Quid si diceret Deus: “Nempe meus est homo, mea est terra, quam colis, meae sunt semina, que spargis, mea animalia, quae fatigas, meus est solis calor; et cum omnia mea sunt, tu, qui manus adcommodas, solam decimam merebaris. Sed serua tibi VIIII, da mihi decimam. Si non dederis mihi decimam, auferam ouem. Si dederis mihi decimam, multiplicabo nouem”’. Hucusque Agustinus. Augustine: ‘Tithes are demanded out of debt. What if God were to say: “Indeed, man is mine, mine is the earth which you cultivate, mine are the seeds that you strew, mine are the animals that you wear out, mine is the heat of the sun; and since all are mine, you, who apply your hands, deserved only a tenth. But keep nine tenths, give me a tenth. If you will not give me a tenth, I shall carry off a sheep. If you will give me a tenth, I shall increase the nine tenths”’. Thus far Augustine. While the hypothesis of ‘inventive exegesis’ may account for some spurious biblical quotations, there may be another explanation: that the compilers or their sources were drawing on apocryphal texts or traditions that are no longer known today (or at least not known to me). This possibility gains support from the fact that, on occasion, the Hibernensis is a witness to traditions that are attested in Jewish Midrashim, which might have been mediated by lost Latin texts. An example is the following passage in Hib 26.13 (p.175 ln. 5): Lamech parricida parricidæ post multum tempus consummitur. Lamech, the kin-slayer of a kin-slayer, is exterminated after a long time. The direct source for this story remains unidentified, but the ninth-century Jewish exegetical text, Midrash Tanhuma, is witness to a tradition according to which Lamech killed his exceptionally long-lived ancestor Cain, slayer of his own brother Abel, in a hunting accident.52 Whether the compilers of the Hibernensis were drawing on the interpretation of others or making it up themselves, their 51  Sermo 33.2, Morin (ed), p. 145. The text between decime and merebaris is by Caesarius, and the remainder is an addition. Many of Caesarius’s sermons, like the present one, were attributed in the Middle Ages to Augustine. 52  Tanhuma §11, in Berman (tr), Midrash Tanhuma-Yelammedenu, 32.

The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law  127 readiness to admit heavily manipulated or downright fabricated biblical quotations is at odds with the injunctions they quote against playing fast and loose with the biblical text, as in Jerome’s quotation from his letter to Paulinus, which was discussed above (Hib H24.9 V23.9 [p. 120 ln. 12–17]).

Exegesis, contradictions and legislation The Hibernensis appears to seek to reflect a contemporary debate culture, which accommodated many a diverse interpretation. In these debates, matters of jurisprudence and biblical interpretation appear to have been closely intertwined. That the compilers of the Hibernensis deliberately retained the contradictory positions in these debates rather than imposed consistency, can be inferred from the many cases in which the Hibernensis deliberately juxtaposes ostensibly contradictory rulings, some of which draw on different interpretations of the Bible. Below is an example: Hib 57.1 (p. 432 ln. 13–15) De substantia hominis punienda pro peccato eius. Dominus in natura dicit: ‘Maledicta terra in opere tuo’. In diluuio tota mundi substantia deleta est propter peccata hominum. That man’s property is punished for his offence. The Lord pronounces against nature: ‘Cursed is the earth in your work’. In the deluge all the property of the world was destroyed because of the offences of men. Hib 57.2 (p. 433 ln. 12–14) De substantia hominis non punienda pro peccato eius. In Exodo: Deleto Faraone et populo eius in Mari Rubro, pecora eius salua permanserunt. That a man’s property should not be punished for his offence. In Exodus: Although Pharaoh and his people were destroyed in the Red Sea, his livestock were spared. These two opposite rules are sustained by a biblical quotation (Genesis 3:17) and by allusions to well-known biblical stories (Genesis 6:21–23; Exodus 14:28). Both chapters include pseudonymous attributions to Irish exegetes—Jerome, Origen, and Augustine—who appear to have taken part in this particular debate. The inclusion of contradictory statements in the Hibernensis is a unique feature of this text which we have encountered earlier in other contexts, especially in the context of the concluding book, De contrariis causis (Hib 66 [pp. 466–474]; discussed in Chapter 1). Other insular texts of exegetical hue can also be shown to deliberately deploy contradictions. Take, for example, the following citation from the preface to Gildas’s De excidio Britanniae:53

53  De excidio 1.8–10, Winterbottom (ed and tr), 88 (Latin), 14 (translation).

128  The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law Legebam, inquam, Dominum dixisse: ‘non ueni nisi ad oues perditas domus Israel’. Et e contrario: ‘filii autem regni huius eicientur in tenebras exteriores, ibi erit fletus et stridor dentium’ … Audiebam: ‘multi ab oriente et occidente uenient et recumbent cum Abraham et Isaac et Iacob in regno caelorm’. Et e diuerso: ‘et tunc dicam eis: discedite a me, operarii iniquitatis’. I read, I say, that the Lord said: ‘I have not come except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ [Matt. 15:24]. And on the other hand: ‘But the sons of this kingdom shall be cast forth into outer darkness, and there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth’ [Matt. 8:12] … I heard: ‘Many shall come from east and west, and lie with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven’ [Matt. 8:11]. And on the other hand: ‘And then I shall say to them: Depart from me, workers of iniquity’ [Matt. 7:23]. The text continues in this vein, giving six pairs of ostensibly conflicting biblical statements, two of which are separated by the expression et e contrario, one by et e diuerso, and the rest by other means. There is therefore a resemblance to the Book De contrariis of the Hibernensis, which systematically juxtaposes contradictory statements, which are separated from one another by the expression e contra. Another reason why Gildas’s rhetoric would be of interest to anyone working on the Hibernensis is that his so-called ‘fragments’ are cited in the Hibernensis.54 In both recensions of the Hibernensis Gildas is cited by name thirteen times altogether (see Chapter 5). Gildas’s influence on early Irish scholars was not restricted to the compilers of the Hibernensis. His De excidio was known to Columbanus, and it is also Columbanus who tells us that Gildas corresponded with a contemporary cleric who resided in Ireland, Vinnian (see Chapter 3).55 Vinnian sought advice from Gildas on the matter of monks who quit their monastery to seek a harsher form of asceticism. The continual influence of Gildas’s works on successive Irish clerics, from the sixth to the eighth century, implies he achieved an authoritative status in the Irish church.56 Although the use that the Hibernensis makes of contradictions in De contrariis and elsewhere may be directly indebted to the antithetical formulation in Gildas’s De excidio, this cannot be proved conclusively. But it may be that both Gildas and the compilers of the Hibernensis were applying a device that was being used more widely by insular exegetes: indeed, the use of rival explanations of biblical passages is well attested in seventh-century Irish biblical commentaries. For example, the Liber Questionum in Evangeliis (a commentary on Matthew) offers twenty different interpretations to the passage beati qui persecutionem patiuntur (Matthew 5:10) and eight interpretations for quod si oculus tuus

54  The fragments were edited by Winterbottom, 143–5, and see pp. 80–2 for translation. 55  Columbanus, Letter 1 §7, to Pope Gregory, Walker (ed), 8. Winterbottom, ‘Columbanus and Gildas’, 310–17, argued on the evidence of Columbanus’s fifth letter, to Pope Boniface, that his style and thought were influenced by Gildas. 56  On Gildas’s renown in Ireland, see Sharpe, ‘Gildas as a Father of the Church’.

The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law  129 dexter scandalizat (Matthew 5:29).57 The ‘Reference Bible’ is replete with different interpretations—attributed to Origen, Jerome, Augustine, and Eucherius, among others—of the same biblical passages.58 I hesitate to speculate whether these texts have issued from the same exegetical mindset that produced De contrariis. Nevertheless, they do invite attention to the possibility that within certain exegetical circles in—and perhaps beyond—Ireland, it was not uncommon to consider either rival biblical passages or exegetical texts side by side, without clearly preferring one to the other. This method might, perhaps, have originated from classroom disputations. I am unaware of contradictions being used systematically in Christian literature of the first millennium, although Augustine and Jerome do, on occasion, contrast individual biblical passages. Jerome even lays down a principle, according to which ‘rather than trying to adhere to one interpretive school or another, the role of a commentary was to offer divergent opinions for the reader’s choice’.59 The Hibernensis, as we have seen, applied exegesis, but it was not the only contemporary Irish legal text to do so. As Charles-Edwards has shown, ‘the role of the exegete as a maker of law’ is attested in a number of early medieval Irish legal texts.60 In the intellectual climate of early medieval Ireland the boundary between biblical exegesis and other disciplines was fluid. Exegesis did not only overlap with law, but also with natural sciences (e.g. the Irish Augustine who applied it to understanding the natural world), with cosmological observations (e.g. the principles underpinning computus), with political thought (e.g. Adomnán’s framing of kingship in biblical terms),61 with geography (e.g. Adomnán’s exegetical interest in the topography of the aforementioned De locis sanctis),62 and with historical and pseudo-historical writing (e.g. the origin legend in Lebor Gabála, which gives the Gaels biblical ancestors, and the Chronicle of Pseudo-Origen).63 The centrality of exegesis to the training of Irish scholars in this 57  Liber Questionum in Evangeliis, Rittmueller (ed), 92–101, 115–6. 58  Edited by MacGinty, CCCM 173 (2000). 59  Thus Stansbury, ‘Irish biblical exegesis’, 121, explicates the following passage in c. 3 of Jerome’s Commentary on Jeremiah, which was known to the compilers of the Hibernensis: leges commentariorum, in quibus multae diuersorom ponuntur opiniones uel tacitis uel expressis auctorum nominibus, ut lectoris arbitrium sit, quid potissimum eligere debeat ‘the laws of commentaries, in which many opinions of different writers are included, both tacitly and explicitly with the authors’ names, so that it is the choice of the reader to decide which ought to be especially chosen’ (tr. Stansbury). Further on the Hibernensis’s use of contradictory statements see Flechner, ‘Problem of originality’. 60 Charles-Edwards, The Early Mediaeval Gaelic Lawyer, 20–21. For an analysis of the exegetical principle that underpins the pseudo-historical introduction to the Senchas Már, see CharlesEdwards, ‘Celtic Kings: “Priestly Vegetables”?’, 67. 61 Life of Columba 3.5, Anderson and Anderson (ed and tr). For commentary, see Sharpe, Adomnán’s Life of St Columba, 355–456 n. 358. 62 Adomnán, De locis sanctis, Denis Meehan (ed), Adomnan’s De Locis Sanctis. For De locis sanctis as a ‘manual of sacred topography’, see O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, 16–41. 63 For example, Lebor Gabála Érenn. The Book of the Taking of Ireland, Macalister (ed), 1:152/153, where the Irish are said to be the descendants of Gomer, son of Japheth, son of Noah. On Pseudo-Origen, see Chapter 5.

130  The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law period has long been recognised and, in fact, the two presumed compilers of the Hibernensis, Cú Chuimne and Ruben, can be understood from their annalistic obits to have been trained in exegesis themselves.64 Contemporary evidence suggest that exegesis was the high point of Irish education, and that proficiency in biblical exegesis was a requisite for attaining ecclesiastical pre-eminence and guaranteed certain social privileges.65 When, from a young age, one is trained to think in exegetical conventions, it is no surprise that exegetical methods should spill over into other disciplines. The contemporary Irish exegetical mindset could also, therefore, have imported the methods of juxtaposing contradictions into legislation. Ecclesiastical legislators and compilers of ecclesiastical law were themselves qualified exegetes. Apart from offering them models of systematic argumentation, the exegetical methods they applied allowed them to cast their work as essentially interpretative rather than innovative. In other words, legal scholars could portray their work process in terms that were analogous to biblical interpretation. Hence, they could say that they were not creating new legislation, but merely extracting latent principles from authoritative sources (some of distinct legal flavour, others not) by means of interpretation.66 64 Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland, 264–271. 65  Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland, 176–177. Charles-Edwards, ‘The context and uses of literacy in early Christian Ireland’, esp. 67. 66  An idea I first advanced in the ‘Problem of originality’, 46.

7 Reception and practice Brittany as a case study

Nowhere is the continental reception of the Hibernensis better attested than in Brittany, a region in which Irish (and British) religious practices persisted long after they had been abandoned in Ireland. The Irish form of tonsure and Easter table, as well as an Irish monastic Rule, prevailed in Brittany (albeit not throughout) at least until 818, when Louis the Pious proudly announced that Landévennec, in the west of Brittany, had finally joined the uniuersalis aeclesia ‘universal church’ by adopting the Roman liturgy, the Roman tonsure, and the Benedictine Rule. In a letter to the bishops of Brittany, he urged them to follow Landévennec’s example and abandon the religious practices that the Bretons received ab Scotis ‘from the Irish’.1 Brittany was also one of the principal gateways through which insular texts entered the European Continent. Among the insular texts that were transmitted through Brittany are Gildas’s De excidio Britanniae, the Hisperica Famina, extracts from the penitential of Vinnian, Synodus episcoporum, six seventh-century Irish canonical collections, the Canones Adomnani, Liber questionum in euangeliis, a collection of Theodoran canonical and penitential material known as Capitula Dacheriana (or recension D), the Prouerbia Grecorum and the Hibernensis.2 Brittany played a major role in the early transmission of the Hibernensis. In total, five complete copies of the Hibernensis, an abridgement, and a fragment were written in Brittany or copied from Breton exemplars. The complete copies are ABHOP, the abridgement is E, and the fragment is Lm. Another way of presenting this tally is that all but two of the seven surviving complete copies of the Hibernensis have Breton connections.3 The Breton transmission of the Hibernensis has been subject to investigation since the 1870s, when the Cambridge Librarian, Henry Bradshaw, ‘invented the

1  De la Borderie (ed), 75–76. 2  For the first eleven texts, see BCLL §§27, 325–327, 598, 599, 602–607, 609. For the Liber questionum see Rittmueller, CCSL 108F (2003), 67–79. For manuscripts of the Capitula Dacheriana see Finsterwalder (ed), Die Canones Theodori, 5, 11–21. Bischoff suggested that one of the manuscripts of the the Prouerbia Grecorum, Munich, Clm 14096 (saec. IX), might have been written in Brittany. See his Die südostdeutschen Schreibschulen und Bibliotheken, 229; Idem, ‘Die europäische Verbreitung der Werke Isidors von Sevilla’, 186–187. 3  The remaining two are SV.

132  Reception and practice study of both early Breton palaeography and Old Breton philology’.4 Breton glosses that he found in copies of the Hibernensis were subsequently analysed by the comparative philologist Whitley Stokes (who was at the time working for the British government in India) and provided the corner-stone for Old Breton lexicography.5 In the introduction to his edition of the Hibernensis, Hermann Wasserschleben remarked that a couple of proper names in P were Breton,6 and in an appendix to that introduction he published a letter from Bradshaw which asserted a Breton origin for five of the manuscripts of the Hibernensis.7 Since then, two more manuscripts, consisting of an abridged copy and a fragment, have been added to that list: E and Lm. A third derivative, a collection of excerpts in W, in a manuscript copied at Tours from a Breton exemplar, was already known to Bradshaw. These derivatives testify to the fact that the Hibernensis was not transmitted statically through Brittany. Rather, it should be assumed that copyists reproduced canons selectively, in response to particular demands. In theory, revisions that the Hibernensis underwent during transmission have the potential to reveal something about the local circumstances that prevailed in places at which the Hibernensis was copied. In practice, as we shall see, the evidence is not always as conclusive as we would like it to be. In what follows, the Breton transmission of the Hibernensis is explored from three distinct angles. First, I provide introductory notes on manuscripts of the Hibernensis with Breton connections and explain how they relate to one another. I then review a document which may offer a historical context for the reception of the Hibernensis in Brittany, namely: a letter by Pope Leo IV to Breton bishops which appears to allude to the Hibernensis. The final section examines modified copies of the Hibernensis with Breton connections and discusses the circumstances in which they were modified.

Manuscripts of the Hibernensis with Breton connections Five complete copies of the Hibernensis, an abridgement, a collection of excerpts, and a fragment, are believed to be either Breton or copied from Breton exemplars. These copies represent both text-types of the Hibernensis: the A-Recension and the B-Recension. Manuscripts ABOP are complete copies of the A-Recension and H is a complete copy of the B-Recension. Luned Davies argued on the evidence of concurring readings that all five complete copies of the Hibernensis with Breton connections, ABHOP, attest the existence of ‘a distinct Breton textual tradition’ of the Hibernensis.8 In fact, it is possible to take this observation even 4  As described by Dumville, ‘Ireland, Brittany’, 88. 5 Stokes, Old-Breton Glosses. 6 Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, xxxi. 7  The letter, dated 28 May 1885, is printed in Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, lxiii–lxxv. 8  Davies, ‘The Collectio’, 316. Note that Davies’s method does not always lead to compelling conclusions. For instance, in ‘The Collectio’, 178–179, she shows that readings from a selection of manuscripts of the Hibernensis, which includes Breton manuscripts, and from Gregory’s Dialogues, agree with each other against S. This merely illustrates that S, rather than the group with which it is compared, is uniquely different.

Reception and practice  133 further and show that four of those manuscripts, ABOP, derive from a common archetype. Let us examine the evidence for this. The most recent complete copy of the A-Recension, B, was shown by Bradshaw to derive from the same exemplar as the earliest Breton copy (saec. VIII or IX), A, a copy written at the behest of a synod.9 This link was reinforced by Bieler, who performed a more thorough analysis of these manuscripts. He concluded that A and B are, ‘for all practical purposes, identical’:10 B is a compilation of three different collections of texts. Its first section (pp. 1–164 [the Hibernensis spans pp. 19–160]) is, for all practical purposes, identical with A; section II (pp. 164–83) is closely parallel to the last part of P (fols. 127v–139r); section III (pp. 184–356) is almost identical with C [Cambrai 625 (576)] (which has some minor omissions). Textually, B is not a copy of either A or P or C [Cambrai 625 (576)]; in all its three sections, B and its companion derive from a common exemplar. To Bieler’s observation one may add that three of the above manuscripts, A, B and P, contain an identical scribal subscription (A p. 22, B p. 18, P fol. 139r).11 In both A and B this subscription comes in addition to other scribal colophons on p. 212 of A and on p. 356 of B. The subscription in A and B is shorter than the one in P, and reads: Pro me frater oraueris pictore parui codicis [codices B] Deum ut mea debita largiatur innumera. Brother, pray for me, the painter of this small book, so that God may remit my countless debts. But in P, the subscription is longer, and contains the names of the scribe Arbedoc and his abbot Haelhucar (the identity of the latter is discussed at length later).12 The recurrence of the subscription suggests either that all three manuscripts are derived from the same exemplar, or (hypothetically) that A and B are copies of P, the only manuscript to contain a full version of the subscription. However, it is impossible that P was the common exemplar for A and B, since A is the earliest of the three and, as Bieler’s textual analysis has already shown, B is not a copy of P. Hence it is likely that the subscription and the names it contains belong to a common textual ancestor which predated all three manuscripts, A, B, and P. It is possible to fit O into this picture as well. Two identical explanatory glosses which the text of the A-Recension in A shares with O at Hib 10 (p. 45 ln. 18 apparatus: thia glossed .i. soror matris) and at Hib 11.4 (p. 51 ln. 6 apparatus: angelo 9 Bradshaw apud Stokes, The Breton Glosses at Orléans, iv. For the date accepted here see Lindsay, ‘Breton scriptoria’, 265; Idem, Notae Latinae, 469–470; Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 12. Dumville, ‘Ireland, Brittany’, 94 nn 41, 44, reviews the debate on the dating of this manuscript. 10 Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 21–22 [citations]. 11  The first to record this subscription in A was Bradshaw apud Stokes, Glosses at Orléans, iv. 12  For the full text, see Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, xxxi.

134  Reception and practice glossed .i. sacerdoti) suggest that A and O are witnesses to the same exemplar. Manuscript O, the more recent of the two, could not have been a copy of A since it (and, for that matter, also B) contains material which A omits. It cannot be confirmed that ABOP derive directly from the same exemplar. Possibly, they all had a common Breton archetype—whose scribal colophon only P preserved in full—which generated one or more intermediate exemplars from which A, B, and O were copied. Any stemma connecting the manuscripts must therefore take into account the following criteria: (i) ABP derive from a common exemplar, as attested by the fact that the same scribal subscription occurs in all. However, (ii) P is probably the most faithful to the archetype since it retains the full text of the subscription, whereas (iii) A and B have an identical shortened version of it. In addition, (iv) the same glosses occur in A and O (as described above).13 The remaining Breton copies of the Hibernensis cannot be linked directly to ABOP. These are H, which is of a different recension; E, which is an abridgement of the A-Recension14; Lm, which contains fragments from Books 2, 8, 9, 10 (all of which deal with ecclesiastical grades) copied from a corrupt version that differs from both the A-Recension and from the B-Recension;15 and W, which contains a collection of excerpts from the Hibernensis as well as a florilegium which served as a source for the Hibernensis’s compilers.16 The copy O belongs to the A-Recension.17 However, it has been collated in a single codex together with fragments from the B-Recension. These fragments occur in a florilegium found between fols. 128r and 179v, which is the final written page of the manuscript. Among these fragments there can be found a copy of the preface to the Hibernensis on fol. 136r.18 The origin of all but one of the manuscripts in the list above has been ascribed to Brittany on the evidence of Breton glosses, Breton proper names, or both. Thus, three complete copies of the Hibernensis, ABP, have Breton glosses and scribal colophons containing Breton names: Iunobrus (A), Maeloc (B), and Arbedoc (P).19 Manuscript H contains Breton glosses and a Breton proper name of a figure whose relation to the manuscript is unknown (Matguoret). Manuscript O, as well as the florilegium within it, contains Breton glosses.20 Bieler thought that H and O might not be Breton themselves, but merely copied from Breton exemplars.21 13  It is possible that O cited the scribal subscription as well, but the damage it incurred in the Cotton fire of 1731 destroyed it. 14  For the contents of this manuscript I rely chiefly on a transcript in Ambrose, ‘The codicology and palaeography of London, BL, Royal 5 E. xiii’. 15  As described by Ker in Bill (ed), A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library, 61. 16  As described by Sharpe, ‘Gildas as a father of the church’. The manuscript’s physical features, contents and glosses are described in Simpson, ‘Ireland, Tours and Brittany’. 17  However, Wasserschleben thought he noticed some minor affinities with the B-Recension, but these are few and insignificant. 18 Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, 1. In addition to O, which he notes, another manuscript containing the preface is D. 19 Fleuriot, Dictionnaire. 20  For a list of glosses in each manuscript, see Stokes, Old-Breton Glosses; Idem, Glosses at Orléans. 21 Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 21.

Reception and practice  135 Of the three incomplete copies of the Hibernensis with Breton connections (E, W, and Lm) E has Breton glosses, W (which has a single Breton gloss) is believed to have been copied in Tours from a Breton exemplar, and Lm appears to have been ascribed to Brittany on palaeographical grounds. To my knowledge, its putative Breton connection has not yet been scrutinised.22 In a list of manuscripts of Breton and presumed-Breton origin, Jean-Luc Deuffic considers glosses as one of the least secure criteria for identifying a Breton origin.23 For instance, the Breton glosses in manuscripts EHOW, which were eventually transported to England, could (hypothetically) have been inserted into the manuscripts on their way to England. Furthermore, Breton monks lived in monasteries outside Brittany and might have glossed manuscripts.24 Unlike glosses, some scribal colophons may prove to be more reliable pointers to the origin of a manuscript or its exemplar. For instance, the colophon on fol. 139r in P mentions a scribe Arbedoc who worked Haelhucar abbate dispensante ‘at the charge of abbot Haelhucar’. The names of both a Breton abbot (suggesting a Breton monastery) and a Breton scribe, add up to form solid evidence for the Breton origin for the exemplar of the manuscript from which the colophon was copied (as discussed above). I know of no occurrences of the name Arbedoc in other texts that can be cross-referenced with the colophon. However, two abbots by the name Haelhucar are known to have lived in Brittany in the ninth century. Deuffic already drew attention to an abbot ‘Heclocar’, who is mentioned in a letter by Pope John VIII (872–882) dated 874/5 to Bishop Mahen of Dol.25 The orthographic variants are not an obstacle in identifying this abbot with the Haelhucar of the scribal colophon since, as Deuffic realised, ‘Heclocar’—a hapax legomenon in documents relating to Brittany—is a scribal misrendering of ‘Haelhucar’.26 John’s letter upholds the ordination of a few Breton monks despite the fact that ‘Heclocar’, who ordained them, is said to have usurped his abbacy. 22 Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 15. Ker in Bill (ed), A Catalogue of Manuscripts in Lambeth Palace Library, 61. 23  Deuffic, ‘La production manuscrite’, 321. His list is not exhaustive and the author claims he intended for it to serve as a working aid. Interestingly, of the eighty-eight manuscripts in Deuffic’s list that are believed to date before the eleventh century, only six contain names of Breton scribes, of which three, ABP, are manuscripts of the Hibernensis. The remaining three are: Douai, bibl. municipale 13 [Gospel book]; Paris, BN lat. 13386 [contains Eriugena’s Liber de praedestinatione on fols. 103r–158v]; Tongres, Collégiale Notre-Dame de la Nativité [Gospel book]. The difficulty of inferring a manuscript’s origin from the language or orthography of the glosses is also stressed by Lambert, ‘Les gloses du manuscrit BN lat. 10290’, esp. 210. 24  Flechner, ‘Paschasius Radbertus’, 416. 25  Letter 44, E. Casper (ed), MGH Epist. 7:299–300. 26  Deuffic, ‘La production’, 311, considers Heclocar to be a ‘cacographie’. Note that the name ‘Haelhocar’ occurs only in two charters of the Redon Cartulary (Cartulaire de l’abbaye de Redon, de Courson (ed) §§8, 29) but the figures to which they refer were either serfs or free tenants. The name in §8 is wrongly transcribed in the edition as ‘Haelocar’. The facsimile of the charter clearly reads ‘Haelhocar’. See Guillotel et al. (ed), Cartulaire de l’abbaye SaintSauveur de Redon, fol. 5r. For background on the Redon Cartulary, see Davies, ‘The composition of the Redon cartulary’.

136  Reception and practice Another possible candidate for identification with Haelhucar is ‘Helogar’, bishop of Alet and abbot of Saint-Méen (Helogar episcopus Aletensis et abbas Sancti Meuenni) at Gäel in north-eastern Brittany. To modern scholarship he is better known by the French spelling of his name, Hélocar. With the exception of Vannes, Alet is the only place in early ninth-century Brittany over which Charlemagne is known to have exercised direct lordship, albeit as a one-off incident. This happened after Saint-Méen’s treasury and archives were attacked during a revolt and the monastery’s title deeds were destroyed. In the aftermath, Charlemagne gave ‘Helogar’ a charter confirming that the monastery possessed all the lands said to have been included in the original title deeds. The charter, now lost, was re-enacted in a diploma which Louis the Pious issued to Saint-Méen on 26 March 816, in which he granted the monastery immunity from lay intervention.27 If we had to decide between the two abbots, the earlier one would fare better with other evidence which has already been considered; this is to say that if A and P are copies of the same exemplar and A, our earliest Breton copy, is dateable on palaeographical grounds to saec. VIII2 or IX1, then an earlier ninth-century exemplar from which A was copied would be more likely. Sadly, the present state of the evidence does not support a positive identification of Haelhucar of the scribal colophon with either ‘Heclocar’ the usurper or ‘Helogar’ abbot of Saint-Méen. We must also allow for the possibility that the name in the colophon refers to an altogether different abbot, who is unattested in the surviving records. Hence, in the absence of a compelling identification of the abbot (and scribe) mentioned in the colophon, we are left with no secure historical criteria for dating the manuscript or its exemplar. The dates that have been assigned to the manuscript on palaeographical grounds vary considerably: Jean Mabillon dated it to the eighth or ninth century, Arthur Haddan to the eighth century, Friedrich Maassen to the tenth or eleventh century, and Ludwig Bieler to the tenth century.28

A political dimension Louis the Pious’s appointment of Nominoe, a native Breton, as dux and missus in Brittany marked a turning point in the relationship between the Carolingian empire and the province that refused to accept imperial rule since it was conquered in 799. The appointment took place in 831, a year after Louis launched a massive campaign against Brittany with the aim of tightening imperial control over the

27  Louis the Pious’s diploma for Saint-Méen, 26 March 816, in Morice, Mémoires pour servir de preuves à l’histoire ecclésiastique, 1:225–227. See Chédeville and Guillotel, La Bretagne des saints, 220–222. Smith, Province and Empire, 70. Louis’s diploma is attested in a transcript made in 1294. 28 Mabillon, De re diplomatica (supplement), 360 [the manuscript appears under its former Corbie shelfmark, no. 424]. Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, 1:127. Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, 786. Bieler, Irish Penitentials, 14.

Reception and practice  137 obstinate province.29 The extent of Nominoe’s powers as missus is unknown. It has been suggested however that he was no more than a ‘figurehead of imperial authority’, who owed only personal loyalty to a particular emperor, but there is no evidence that he ever acted on the emperor’s behalf.30 The arrangement between the two rulers lasted while Louis was alive, but upon his death in 840 it became apparent how vulnerable the status quo between Brittany and the empire actually was. Soon, Nominoe grew increasingly hostile towards Louis’s successor, Charles the Bald. He allied himself with Count Lambert against Charles in 843, defeated him in battle at Ballon in 845, and participated in an attack on Angers in 849.31 Nominoe appears to have been determined to loosen the empire’s grip on Brittany and consolidate his own rule as an independent sovereign. In his efforts to achieve this goal he did not spare the church, over which he sought to exert direct influence. In an unprecedented move, Nominoe replaced five bishops whom he accused of simony at the synod of Coitlouh in 848 or 849.32 This was a defining event for the medieval Breton church, since it resulted in the severing of ties with the metropolitan see of Tours, and set the stage for Salomon’s attempts to elevate Dol to archiepiscopal status in the 860s.33 Nominoe’s actions were denounced by Pope Leo IV (847–855), whose reaction to the bishops’ dismissal is preserved in a letter he delivered to a delegation of Breton bishops.34 The letter contains his comments on matters raised by the delegation, among them a query on simony. Leo sought to undermine the legitimacy of Nominoe’s decision to remove the bishops by invoking canons that belong to the Pseudo-Isidorian Forgeries (also known as the False Decretals).35 One of these canons, which Leo attributed to Pope Sylvester (314–335), can be sourced to the so-called Constitutio Syluestri.36 Another traceable source for his letter, the Capitula Angilramni—allegedly sent by Pope Hadrian I (772–795) to Bishop Angilram of Metz (768–791)37—is a text concerned with the process of bringing accusation against bishops and other clerics.38 Both of these texts render it nearly impossible to remove a bishop from office on grounds of misconduct, since they decree that a testimony against bishops is admissible only if it be made 29 Smith, Province and Empire, 78–82. Chédeville and Guillotel, La Bretagne des saints, 223– 229. Nominoe styled himself missus imperatoris in the only surviving charter that he issued, dated 18 June 834, for which see de Courson (ed), Cartulaire §2. In other charters he appears as missus, princeps, and dux. See Pettiau, ‘A prosopography of Breton rulership’, 179 n 75. 30 Smith, Province and Empire, 83–84 [citation]. 31  Pettiau, ‘Prosopography’, 179–180. 32 Documents relating to this event are edited by Hartmann, MGH Conc. 3:185–193. Smith, Province and Empire, 154 n 22, argues against Hartmann that five rather than four bishops were deposed. Nominoe’s involvement and the accusations of simony are discussed below. For a hagiographical account of the events leading up to this incident, see Gesta Sanctorum Rotonensium, II.10, Brett (ed and tr), 174–183. 33  On which see Smith, Province and Empire, 158–159. 34  Leo IV, Letter 16, MGH Epist. 5:593–596. Repr. MGH Conc. 3:187–189. 35  The latest summary account of these is Harder, ‘Pseudo-Isidorus Mercator’. 36  MGH Conc. 3:188 n 15. Hinschius (ed), Decretales Pseudo-Isidorianae, 449–451. 37  Fuhrmann, ‘The Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries’, 149–151. 38 Hinschius, Decretales, 757–769.

138  Reception and practice by no fewer than seventy-two witnesses. The Capitula Angilramni go one step further and give the accused the right to suspend the proceedings against him if he asks to be judged directly by the pope.39 Leo cited precisely these canons in his letter: Nam nullam dampnationem episcoporum esse unquam censemus, nisi aut ante legitimum numerum episcoporum, qui fit per duodecim episcopos, aut certe probata sententia per LXXII idoneos testes … sicut nobis beatus Siluester tradidit et Romana sancta tenere uidetur aecclesia. Et si inter eos, quos dampnandos esse dixerint homines, fuerit episcopus, qui suam causam in presentia Romanę sedis episcopi petierit audiri, nullus super illum finitiuam presumat dare sentenciam, sed omnino eum audiri decernimus.40 For we decree that no condemnation of bishops is ever possible, unless [it be made] before the lawful number of bishops, which is twelve bishops or by a sentence tested for certainty by seventy-two trustworthy witnesses … as the holy Sylvester has taught us and as the holy Roman church is seen to uphold. And if among those whom the people wish to condemn there is a bishop who asks for his case to be heard before the bishop of the Roman see, we decree that no one shall presume to pass a final sentence on him, but let him be heard through and through. Other matters that the Breton delegation raised before the pope related to the promulgation of canonical sentences, the governing of a parochia, offering gifts (eulogia) to church councils, divination, marriage within the kin, divorce, alienation of church property, ecclesiastical land holding, tithes, and twice weekly fasts. Leo’s letter concludes with a comment on the authority of libelli et commentarii aliorum ‘little books and commentaries of others’, which circulated in Brittany and appear to have offered their own rulings on the issues just mentioned, rulings that sometimes conflicted with the teachings of Rome. The context (below) confirms that by the expression libelli et commentarii, Leo had in mind books of legal flavour. In Leo’s view, these libelli et commentarii were only to be consulted in exceptional cases: De libellis et commentariis aliorum. Non conuenit aliquos iudicare et sanctorum canonum iudicia relinquere, uel decretalium regulas, id est, qui habentur aput nos simul cum illis in canone, et quibus in omnibus ecclesiasticis utimur iudiciis, id est apostolorum, Nicenorum, Ancyranorum, Neocesariensium, Gangrensium, Antiocensium, Laodicensium, Calcedonensium, Sardicensium, 39  Hinschius (ed), 449: constitutum est, ut nullus laicus crimen clerico audeat inferre, et ut presbiter non aduersus episcopum … et non dampnetur presul nisi in septuaginta duobus testibus; 762: Placuit ut si episcopus accusatus appellauerit Romanum pontificem, id statuendum quod ipse censuerit; 768: Et non dampnabitur praesul nisi LXXII testibus. The claim that such prescriptions are unique to the False Decretals is made by Fuhrmann, ‘The Pseudo-Isidorian forgeries’, 142. 40  MGH Conc. 3:187–188.

Reception and practice  139 Carthaginiensium, Affricanensium, et cum illis regule Romanorum pontificum Siluestri, Siricii, Inocentii, Zosimi, Celestini, Leonis, Gelasii, Hilarii, Simachi, Simplicii, Ormisdae et Gregorii iunioris. Isti omnino sunt, et per quos iudicant episcopi et per quos episcopi et clerici simul iudicantur. Nam si tale emerserit uel contigerit inusitatum negotium, quod minime possit per istos finiri, tunc si illorum, quorum meministis dicta, Hieronimi, Augustini, Isidori uel ceterorum similiter sanctorum doctorum similium reperta fuerint, magnanimiter sunt retinenda ac promulganda uel ad apostolicam sedem referatur. Concerning the little books and commentaries of others. It is inappropriate that some should judge and forsake the judgments (iudicia) of the holy canons or the rules of the decretals, namely, the ones that we keep together with those [i.e. the iudicia] in the canon, and which we employ in all ecclesiastical judgments—namely: [the iudicia] of the apostles, of Nicaea, of Ancyra, of Neocaesarea, of Gangra, of Antioch, of Laodicea, of Chalcedon, of Sardica, of Carthage, of Africa, and alongside these the rules (regulae) of the Roman pontiffs Sylvester, Siricius, Innocent, Zosimus, Celestine, Leo, Gelasius, Hilarius, Symmachus, Simplicius, Hormisdas, and Gregory the younger. These are the ones without exception; and bishops judge by them, and bishops and likewise clerics are judged by them. For if such an extraordinary case has emerged or presented itself which can by no means be settled by these [authorities], then, if the sayings of those whom you mentioned— Jerome, Augustine, Isidore, and similarly other saints [and] similar doctors—should be available, they [i.e. Jerome et al.] are to be readily accepted and promulgated; or [alternatively] let it be referred to the apostolic see.41 The authorities of which Leo spoke approvingly are the sources of the Dionysio-Hadriana (on which see Chapter 2).42 Promulgated at the council of Aix-laChapelle in 802, it was to serve as an instrument for securing a universal Christian tradition with Rome at its centre, and for the promotion of the imperial ideal of uniformity in religious practice at the expense of other (usually local) canonical collections.43 But in the middle ages the Dionysio-Hadriana had no formed title and could have been referred to in different ways. Leo referred to it in his letter as the sum of iudicia sanctorum canonum and regulae decretalium found in canone. Likewise, the expression libelli et commentarii aliorum ‘little books and commentaries of others’ may also designate a specific work. We can attempt to identify this work in the same manner that the Dionysio-Hadriana has just been identified, namely, through its sources. According to Leo, among the sources of the libelli et commentarii were Jerome, Augustine, Isidore, et ceteri similiter sancti, doctors ‘and similarly other saints [and] doctors’. The only major canonical collection that circulated in the Carolingian empire which cited Jerome, Augustine, 41  Hartmann (ed), 189 [but I emended the punctuation slightly]. 42  For the identification, see Hartmann, MGH Conc. 3:189 n 22. The sources of the DionysioHadriana are listed in Maassen, Geschichte der Quellen, 444–448. 43  Fournier and Le Bras, Histoire des collections canoniques, 1:95–96.

140  Reception and practice Isidore and several other sancti and doctores extensively, was the Hibernensis. In fact, a systematic use of the Fathers (and the Bible) in a canonical collection was an innovation that the Hibernensis introduced, as already discussed, especially in Chapters 1 and 5. The Hibernensis cites Augustine and Jerome by name hundreds of times, and Isidore approximately seventy times (the figures vary between manuscripts). Unlike the Hibernensis, other major canonical collections that circulated on the Continent in the ninth century, such as the Dionysio-Hadriana, the Vetus Gallica and the Hispana, were essentially compilations of synodal constitutions and papal decretals. In comparison with the Hibernensis, the Vetus Gallica—dubbed by Roger Reynolds the ‘quasi-official Frankish systematic collection of the Carolingians’44—cites Augustine by name only twice (one of the two citations was excerpted directly from Hib 38.4 [p. 292 ln. 12–14]), Jerome once, and Isidore four times.45 Hence the Fathers were not an essential part of this collection, but a minor consequential addition. The Hispana does not appear to cite Augustine or Jerome by name (or at all).46 The Dionysio-Hadriana does not make any use of the Fathers either. Let us suppose by way of hypothesis that the expression libelli et commentarii was Leo’s way of alluding to the Hibernensis. This possible identification is supported by the fact that at least two copies (or exemplars) of the A-Recension (AP) and a copy (or an exemplar) of the B-Recension (H) were extant in Brittany in the ninth century.47 Moreover, ten out of the eleven matters that Leo commented on in his letter are dealt with by the Hibernensis.48 This is not to say that all ten matters were derived from the Hibernensis, but that some of them could have been. For instance, the query on simony was evidently prompted by Nominoe’s actions and not by the Hibernensis’s rulings on simony. As for the matter that does not occur in the Hibernensis—gifts to church councils—the question concerning it might have been inspired by local Breton practices or by other prescriptive texts which circulated in Brittany. Incidentally, Reynolds also suggested that abbot Conuuioion of Redon might have had a copy of the Hibernensis when, according to the Gesta sanctorum Rotonensium, he attended a Roman synod which condemned

44  Reynolds, ‘Unity and diversity’, 133. 45  Vetus Gallica, Mordek (ed), 538 [Augustine from Hib 38.4], 555 [Augustine], 508 [Jerome], 375 [Isidore], 377 [Isidore], 510 [Isidore], 563 [Isidore]. No other canons in the Vetus Gallica have been sourced to the works of these authors, except Isidore, whose De ecclesiasticis officiis is also cited on pp. 512, 513. 46  On Isidore’s authorship, see Martínez Díez, La colección canónica Hispana, 1:271–305. 47  The manuscripts of the A-Recension are AP and the manuscript of the B-Recension is H. 48  Simony: e.g. Hib 1.8 (p. 9 ln. 21); promulgation of canonical sentences: e.g. Hib 8.2 (p. 40 ln. 2), Hib 19 (p. 111 ln. 7), Hib 20.3 (p. 113 ln. 6), Hib 20.5 (p. 114 ln. 13); Parochia: e.g. Hib 1.22 (p. 18 ln. 17), Hib H39.45 V38.46 (p. 275 ln. 22), Hib 41.18 (p. 324 ln. 16); divination: Hib 63.1 (p. 451 ln. 4), Hib 63.3 (p. 451 ln. 18), Hib 63.5 (p. 452 ln. 7); divorce: Hib 45.7 (p. 362 ln. 2), Hib 45.8 (p. 363 ln. 16), Hib 45.28 (p. 373 ln. 3); alienation of church property: e.g. Hib 1.21 (p. 18 ln. 14), Hib 40.1 (p. 307 ln. 7); ecclesiastical land holding: e.g. Hib 41.7 (p. 318 ln. 2), Hib 41.18 (p. 324 ln. 16), Hib 41.19 (p. 325 ln. 11), Hib 41.20 (p. 325 ln. 16). Marriage within the kin (on which the Hibernensis cites Isidore), twice weekly fasts and tithes, will be discussed anon.

Reception and practice  141 simony in Brittany.49 Notwithstanding the potential fancifulness of hagiographical narrative, this scenario must not be ruled out. However, since Conuuioion’s presence in Rome cannot be confirmed, the theory remains speculative. Three of the matters that Leo commented on do not occur in the A-Recension, but only in the B-Recension. The first, marriage within the kin, was settled at a Roman synod in 721 presided over by Gregory II, which forbade marriage within six degrees of consanguinity.50 Leo referred the bishops to that synod’s acta, which he designated beati iunioris Gregorii decreta. The issue of consanguinity is addressed in the B-Recension in an Isidorian citation from Etymologiae 9.6.29, in which Isidore asserts that the term ‘consanguinity’ applies to relatives who are separated by six degrees or fewer: usque ad sextum generis gradum consanguinitas constituta est (Hib H45.3 V44.3 [p. 331 ln. 1–4]). The remaining two matters, which are peculiar to the B-Recension, were introduced by Leo as de decimis ‘concerning tithes’ and de esu carnium ‘concerning the eating of meats’, a title which Leo prefixed to instructions on the twiceweekly fast. I take the combination formed by the preposition de and the description of the topics which Leo proceeded to discuss, to be ‘introductory headings’ that capture the essence of the bishops’ queries. The heading de decimis in Leo’s letter may echo a couple of consecutive chapters in the B-Recension which are devoted to the topic of tithes. They are titled De decimis and De eo quod pauperes recipere decimas tertio anno oportet (Hib H20.11 V19.11 [p. 96 ln. 13], Hib H20.12 V19.12 [p. 97 ln. 4]. The texts following these titles are attributed to Deuteronomy, Augustine, and to certain auctores that can be identified as the seventh-century Synodus sapientium de decimis §1.51 The Hibernensis asserts that pauperes recipere decimas tertio anno oportet ‘the poor should receive tithes every third year’. Leo took a different view on the matter, and his response to the Breton bishops’ query on tithes (a query which could have been framed with the Hibernensis in mind) qualifies the type of people who may receive support from the church: De decimis. Iusto ordine non tantum nobis sed et maioribus uisum est plebibus tantum, ubi sacrosancta dantur baptismata, deberi.52 Concerning tithes. It has seemed not only to us, but also to our predecessors, that, by just command, [income from tithes] is due only to the plebes that receive sacred baptism. The second matter which is peculiar to the B-Recension, the twice-weekly abstinence from meat, is dealt with in the Hibernensis in a chapter titled De eo quod ieiunandum in quarta et in sexta feria ‘That it is necessary to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays’ (Hib H15.27 V14.27 [p. 68 ln. 11]). This chapter occurs in Book 49  Reynolds, ‘The transmission of the Hibernensis in Italy’, 23. See Gesta sanctorum Rotonensium, II.10, Brett (ed), 176–180. 50  CPL §1714 (p. 558 §vi). 51  BCLL §604. 52  MGH Conc. 3:189.

142  Reception and practice 12 De ieiunio (p. 57), which cites Jerome and Isidore extensively. Whereas the chapter De eo quod ieiunandum is unique to the B-Recension, the book is found in both recensions. The authority quoted in this chapter is Vita sanctorum, but I have been unable to trace the actual source. That the early Irish church observed a twice-weekly fast on Wednesdays and Fridays during which one was forbidden to eat meat, is evident from the Irish names for these days: cétaín ‘first fast’ and aín or aín dídine ‘last fast’.53 We also know that Aidan’s mission to the English placed particular emphasis on the twice-weekly fast.54 Leo approved of the twice-weekly fast and specified how it was to be observed:55 De esu carnium. Est aput nos uetustissima et non improbanda tradicio semper tenenda, ut a cene termino, que in principio noctis quartae ferie … usque in diluculum quinte ferie, et similiter a cena noctis VI-te ferie… usque ad sabati lucem uel quantum de diei parte aliquis ieiunare maluerit uel debuerit. Concerning the eating of meats. There is among us a most ancient tradition that must always be observed rather than deplored, according to which one may or must fast from the end of the meal on Wednesday evening … until Thursday at dawn, and similarly, from the evening meal on Friday … until Saturday at dawn or [moreover for] any part of the day. At this stage we may sum up the evidence in support of the hypothesis that the libelli et commentarii aliorum which Leo mentioned were, in fact, an allusion to a copy of the Hibernensis, which the Breton bishops brought with them to their meeting with him. First—and most importantly—Leo’s letter mentions a combination of authorities which is unique to the Hibernensis. The Hibernensis (and its derivatives) was the only canonical collection in the Carolingian empire that cited these authorities extensively. Secondly (and secondarily), ten of Leo’s answers could have been framed in response to matters that the Hibernensis dealt with. All the authorities that the Breton bishops are said to have revered—Hieronimus, Augustinus, Isidorus, uel ceteri—are cited in books of the Hibernensis that deal with the matters, on which Leo commented in response to the bishops’ queries. Finally, the pronoun aliorum ‘of others’ implies that the libelli et commentarii were foreign, i.e. non-Roman or non-continental. In sum, the evidence strongly supports (but does not compel) an identification of the Hibernensis with libelli et commentarii aliorum. Leo’s letter is a good example of the tension between local/foreign and Roman-sanctioned canonical collections. Leo urged his recipients to invoke the authorities found in the foreign little books and commentaries, namely dicta Hieronimi, Augustini, Isidori uel ceterorum similiter sanctorum, doctorum, only as a last resort in case all other authorities in canone failed to provide a fitting 53 Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 346–347, where the example given is from CIH 2:523, ln. 12 = AL iii 14.20. 54 Bede, HE, 3.5, Colgrave and Mynors (ed), 226. 55  MGH Conc. 3:189.

Reception and practice  143 response. As a substitute for the foreign precepts which, perhaps, gained currency among Breton ecclesiastics, Leo offered the Roman-sanctioned Dionysio-Hadriana. The clash between the foreign books and the Dionysio-Hadriana illustrates nicely how Rome promoted the Dionysio-Hadriana as a standard imperial reference work of canonical discipline and encouraged bishops to forsake other collections which were used locally, such as the Hibernensis. Leo’s wish to endorse Roman discipline in Brittany appears to have had little or no success, as evidenced by Brittany’s continuous defiance of Roman authority, and by the fact that the Hibernensis continued to be copied in Brittany throughout the ninth and tenth centuries. The Hibernensis’s endurance in this instance is characteristic of its resistance to Carolingian and Roman attempts to abolish non-Roman canonical practices. As Reynolds concluded in his landmark study of the continental reception of the Hibernensis: ‘Despite the promotion by the Carolingian rulers of Roman canonical texts and their apparent disapproval of the Irish, the Hibernensis continued to flourish and luxuriate in a variety of contexts both canonical and literary as well as geographical’.56 The Dionysio-Hadriana even circulated alongside the Hibernensis in the same manuscripts: B and H. Besides the Dionysio-Hadriana Leo’s letter drew upon another set of canonical rulings, namely the False Decretals, which were invoked in order to contest the lawfulness of Nominoe’s decision to remove the bishops. But these failed to impress Nominoe who ignored Leo’s directives, and, as a consequence, saw his newly appointed bishops excommunicated by the Frankish church. In c. 850 a Frankish synod even accused him that cupiditate tua uastata est terra Christianorum ‘the land of the Christians has been devastated by your greed’.57 This triggered aggression from Nominoe who sacked the cities of Rennes and Nantes, and replaced the bishop of the latter.58 Through his actions, Nominoe brought about the separation of the Breton church from the ecclesiastical power-structure in Francia and prepared the ground for Salomon’s later move to disengage from Tours formally by attempting to establish an independent metropolitan province. Perhaps, in those unstable times, the Hibernensis’s comprehensive programme for church organisation provided the Breton church with a blueprint for church organisation to rival the existing regional hierarchy from which it was trying to break away. The fact that the Hibernensis does not explicitly propagate Roman supremacy or stress metropolitan authority but takes an ambiguous stand on these issues in a manner which is open to interpretation, would (hypothetically) have increased its appeal to the clergy in Brittany, where ‘episcopal politics in the middle of the ninth century constitute a dramatic saga of the rejection of both

56  Reynolds, ‘Unity and diversity’, 133. 57  MGH Conc. 3:203–206, at 204. 58 Smith, Province and Empire, 155.

144  Reception and practice metropolitan and papal authority’.59 Hence, the Hibernensis would have allowed the Breton church a great deal of discretion and manœuverability with respect to accepting or rejecting metropolitan and Roman authority. A scribal colophon in the earliest of the Hibernensis’s Breton copies, A, attests that the Hibernensis’s Breton readership was not confined to a limited number of individual clergymen who consulted it out of mere intellectual curiosity. The colophon, which states that that particular copy of the Hibernensis was copied at the behest of a synod, suggests that the Hibernensis came to the attention of a wider Breton ecclesiastical audience. The colophon, on p. 212 of the manuscript, reads: Iunobrus scripsit haec sancta sinoda dicite animam eius in requiem erit et habitaret in baradiso sine fine. Not only is the grammar of this phrase corrupt, but the original intention of its author is further obscured by the fact that the combination sancta sinoda (abbreviated ‘scā sinoda’) is written slightly higher than the rest of the text, and occupies a space from which another word might have been deleted. The first clause of this colophon can be amended as follows: Iunobrus scripsit haec, sancta sinodo dicente [or dictante]. Iunobrus has written these things at the behest of the synod. However, the second clause appears not to be independent since animam (abbreviated animā)—in the accusative—is an unlikely subject, nor can it be the direct object of either of the verbs that follow—erit and habitaret. Likewise, animam cannot be the subject of a clause of reported speech (e.g. ‘Iunobrus has written these things since/after the synod said that his soul will rest in peace …’) because the following verbs are not in the infinitive. The second clause can only be independent if we emend animam to anima (nominative). At any rate, all interpretations support the notion that a synod instigated the production of the manuscript. This is, of course, only true if we assume that the deleted word that was replaced by scā sinoda is an integral part of the colophon. The unnamed synod as well as the reasons for which it commissioned this copy, remain as obscure as the grammar of the colophon. Did the synod take place during the ecclesiastical upheaval of the ninth century? Was it a ‘national’ Breton synod (perhaps Coitlouh)? Was it a local diocesan synod? Did the synod sanction the Hibernensis for use? These questions remain unanswered. However, it seems only fair to assume that the synod commissioned the manuscript—which 59 Smith, Province and Empire, 154. On the programme for church organisation in the Hibernensis, see Etchingham, Church Organisation, 47–63. The fact that Hib 20.5 [p. 114 ln. 16–17] advocates an appeal to the Apostolic See when quaestiones in hac insola oriantur which cannot be settled within a prouincia, does not conflict with Leo’s suspicious approach towards the foreign libelli. Even if Leo had been aware of this canon, he may nevertheless have regarded the Hibernensis as an alien work which rivalled Rome’s corpus of canonical literature, a corpus which, as we have already seen, Leo was keen to promote.

Reception and practice  145 also contains the Canones Adomnani and the Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum—with a view to its canons being applied in one way or another. Perhaps the synod intended the copy to serve as nothing more than a handy source of biblical and patristic citations for instructing the clergy. But—and this is speculative—it might have been copied for the use of a Breton episcopal delegation preparing to leave for Rome where it was due to debate canonical matters before Pope Leo. At any rate, its heavy glossing with Old Breton words suggests at least that its contents were studied.

Modified copies of the Hibernensis The Hibernensis was not merely copied in Brittany, but also modified there. One revised Breton copy of the Hibernensis is E, an abridgement of the A-Recension containing two hundred and twenty chapters. Its purpose is unknown, and on the face of it, there appears to be no particular theme linking its canons. It contains two texts on fols. 66v–67r which have no parallels in other copies of the Hibernensis, and can therefore be assumed to have been inserted into the text in Brittany. The first deals with the observance of special days in honour of saints. The second tells of the miraculous healing power of water, which was used to wash the feet of thieves. The stories are attributed to Vita monachorum, an unidentified text cited fifteen times in the Hibernensis. The abridgment omits a significant number of canons attributed to Hibernenses and sinodus Hibernensis which occur in the A-Recension: out of approximately seventy-two canons attributed to them in the A-Recension (the number varies between manuscripts), the abridgment preserves ten. Canons attributed to sinodus Romana and Romani have also been omitted to the extent that their number was reduced from approximately forty in the A-Recension (their number also varies) to three in the abridgment. Against the possibility that the omissions reflect the abridgers’ lack of interest in authorities which are, ostensibly, uniquely Irish, it can be shown that texts attributed to Augustine have also decreased to sixteen, texts attributed to Jerome decreased to fifty-one, and texts attributed to Isidore decreased to ten. Other authorities cited include Patrick, who is mentioned eleven times, Gregory the Great (eleven times), and Gregory of Nazianzus (six times). A copy of the Hibernensis that was heavily augmented in Brittany is O. In a study of the Breton transmission of the Hibernensis, David Dumville went so far as to regard O as a third recension of the Hibernensis, which ‘seems to be an adaptation of an A to a B text, with a supplement containing the matter distinctive to B’.60 I counted at least sixty-four cases in which O was augmented interlineally or in the margin by material from the B-Recension (but the copy used for these augmentations was not H). This is indeed a good amount of augmentations, but it is far from constituting an adaptation of one recension to another and cannot therefore be indicative of a third recension in progress. 60  Dumville, ‘Ireland, Brittany’, 85. He designated it recension ‘C’. The first to record the store of material from the B-Recension in the manuscript was Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, xxxiii.

146  Reception and practice Interlinear augmentations are also found in the supplement which contains excerpts from the B-Recension in O. It is possible to show that at least some of these augmentations were already extant in the exemplar from which the supplement in O was copied. This can be deduced from a short text attributed to Vita sanctorum which was accidentally copied twice in the supplement in O: on fol. 150r and on fol. 152r. It has a couple of explanatory glosses which, curiously, occur in both copies of the text. This suggests that the glosses were not created by the scribe of the supplement, but were present in his exemplar.61 Since the other copies of the B-Recension—HDV—do not contain these glosses in their versions of the text from Vita sanctorum, it follows that none of the three could have been the exemplar for the supplement in O. Other glosses, however, provide evidence that the store of the B-Recension material on fols. 150r–179v of the supplement in O, written by a distinct hand, is textually related to H (a copy of the B-Recension with Breton connections). The glosses in question are found on fol. 159r, in a short text on units of measurement, titled De diuisione orbis terrarum. The text itself is also found in both H and V, but in the latter it is free of glosses. However, the same words that were used to gloss the text in O occur in the main text in H (fol. 32r), sometimes preceded by ‘.i.’ (for id est), suggesting that they are embedded glosses. I reproduce five of the parallel glosses (Hib H22.2 V21.2 [p. 113 ln. 2–3 apparatus]): climata is glossed .i. CXX pedes; actus is glossed LX pedes; perticas is glossed .i. X pedes; passus is glossed .i. V pedes; palmas is glossed transuersus. The store of the B-Recension material on fols. 150r–179v could not have been the direct source for H since it contains a mere selection of material from the B-Recension, whereas H contains a complete text. What follows is that H and fols. 150r–179v in O derive from a single textual ancestor, although one cannot say for certain how many intermediate copies (if any) intervened between the common ancestor and either H or fols. 150r–179v in O. Manuscript H fused the ancestor’s glosses with the main text of the Hibernensis, whereas the section on fols. 150r–179v of the supplement in O kept them separate. The process of augmenting one recension with material from another worked in both ways: not only was the copy of the A-Recension in O augmented by passages from the B-Recension, but the copy of the B-Recension in H was augmented by material from the A-Recension.62 At least four attributions of texts in H were replaced by attributions from the A-Recension, and at least fifteen texts in H which were formerly unattributed, were given attributions that concur with the A-Recension. There is no certainty however that the augmentations to H were made in Brittany. They could just as well have been made later in the manuscript’s

61  The words are: accusauit gloss .i. peccauit presbiter; cupiebat gloss .i. senex. See Hib H2.12 V2.12 (p. 23 ln. 17–p. 24 ln.1 apparatus). 62  Flechner, ‘Paschasius Radbertus’, 416, 421 n 44.

Reception and practice  147 transmission, at a centre that possessed copies of both recensions, such as Corbie or Worcester.63 In a few cases the main text of H differs substantially from that of V. This suggests that either H or V, both copies of the B-Recension, departed from their common ancestor. Theoretically, H or its exemplar could have been modified in Brittany or elsewhere on the Continent. However, one might expect such continental ‘contaminations’ to feature non-Irish material. But H contains three Irish texts which are absent from V. This begs the question: did H introduce them to the B-Recension or did V omit them? The first of these Irish texts—first noticed by Bradshaw and pronounced as unique to H by Wasserschleben64—is a text on fol. 106v, excerpted from a collection of canons attributed to Adomnán (Hib H48.46 [p. 361 ln. 1–5]).65 The text, De muliere meretrice ‘Concerning the harlot wife’, was placed in H in the Book De ratione matrimonii ‘Concerning the law of matrimony’. It is possible to argue that this text was inserted into H or its exemplar in Brittany since it is unique to copies of the Canones Adomnani with Breton connections.66 However, it cannot be ruled out that the text was already present in an Irish textual ancestor of H. The second example is a citation from recension D of the Canons of Theodore which is peculiar to H (Hib H1.21 V1.21 [p. 19 ln. 3–4]).67 The passage in question says that slayers of bishops or presbyters must be judged by a king. The third of these texts occurs on fol. 117r, in a book entitled De carnibus edendis (Book 53 [p. 415]), which deals with restrictions on the eating of meats. The text, attributed ‘XLV titulos’ [sic], is clearly an interpolation since its topic—regulations concerning the use of weirs for trapping fish—is blatantly out of context. A transcript of the text and a translation are provided below (Hib H54.9 [p. 419 ln. 1–11]).68 De fluminibus piscium. Item XLV titulos: Et discernunt quod distruenda gurgitia piscium, que correte dicuntur, in fluminibus retibus aptatis, ne semen discordiae pro æsca in fraternitate sit, et corda eorum rancore possessa tristentur, secundum illud exemplum, euangelium: Si offeres munus tuum ad altare, et reliqua. In alio loco uero fluminis retibus inæpto, ita conponantur gurgitia piscium, ut sint supra aquas mensura æquali. Et condatur piscibus maris tractus natandi ad usum commoniter omnibus hominibus flumine ab imo usque ad superiorem eius partem, quo proficiunt in cibos omnibus, 63  For manuscripts of the Hibernensis at Corbie, see Flechner, ‘Paschasius Radbertus’, 413, 416. To the list given there add Q, a manuscript whose contents are described by Nürnberger, ‘Über eine ungedruckte Kanonensammlung’. For manuscripts of the Hibernensis at Worcester, see Flechner, ‘Paschasius Radbertus’, 415, 420 n 37. 64 Bradshaw apud Wasserschleben, Kanonensammlung, lxx–lxxi, and note ** [sic] for Wasserschleben’s comment. 65  Canones Adomnani §16, Bieler (ed), 178. 66  These are B, H, O, and P. The non-Breton copy of Canones Adomnani, which does not contain this canon, is Cambrai 625 (576), fol. 54v. See also Flechner, ‘Paschasius Radbertus’, 415, 420 n 36. 67  Canones Theodori, D §79, Finsterwalder (ed), 245. 68  I owe thanks to Professor Michael Winterbottom for his help with the translation.

148  Reception and practice quibus a creatore in commone dictum est: Et dominamini piscibus maris. Tamen est prout aptauerint ueri iudices quanto spatio iuxta correptam in transuerso natanti tractus sit, etenim dicitur: Vae tibi, qui predaris, quia et ipse predaueris. Concerning rivers with fish. Likewise, XLV titulos: And they lay down that fish-weirs, which are called correte, shall be destroyed in rivers suitable for nets, so that there may be no seed of discord in the brotherhood for the sake of food, and so that their rancour-possessed hearts may not be saddened, in accordance with the example of the Gospels: If you offer your gift at the altar, etc [Matt. 5:23]. But in another part of the river unsuitable for nets, fish-weirs should be constructed in such a way that they are of the same measurement upon the water. And a channel for swimming should be built for the fish of the sea for the benefit of all men, right along the river from its lowest to its highest part, so that they (i.e. the sea-fish) may provide food for all, to whom it was said in common by the Creator: Rule over the fishes of the sea [Gen. 1:28]. How far the swimming channel next to the weir shall extend across [the river] shall, however, be as true judges adjudicate. For it is said: Woe to you who despoil, for you also will be despoiled [Is. 33:1]. The words used in the text to render ‘fish-weirs’ are gurgitia piscium, correte, and correptam [read corretam]. Whereas gurgitia is derived from the Latin masculine noun gurges (gen. gurgitis) which the text treats as a neuter, the forms correte and correptam are not of Latin origin. An ablative, coretis, in the combination cum coretis, is found in the Cornish Carta Maenchi comitis,69 and charters from the Welsh Book of Llandaff contain references to cases where land was granted cum coretibus suis to the bishopric of Llandaff.70 According to John Gwenogvryn Evans and John Rhŷs, the charters used coretibus to render Old Welsh coret ‘weir’.71 The Book of Llandaff is unique in its treatment of this word as a noun of the third declension. A similar form, cora, is attested in Old Irish.72 Given the fact that three Celtic languages, Old Irish, Old Cornish and Old Welsh, constructed the word for ‘fishweir’ using the same root, it may well be the case that a cognate existed in Old Breton as well. The attestations of the root in three Celtic languages and the possibility that it also existed in a fourth, make it all the more difficult to establish the origin of our text, and determine whether it was interpolated in Brittany or elsewhere. Like the text from the Canones Adomnani discussed above, the text on fish-weirs could have been copied into a textual ancestor of H already in Ireland.

69  Also known as the Lanlawren Charter, Padel (ed), ‘The text of the Lanlawren charter’. A commentary is Padel, ‘The new pre-conquest charters from Cornwall’, 20–26. I am grateful to Dr Anthony Harvey for drawing my attention to this charter. 70  The noun occurs in the Book of Llandaff, Gwenogvryn Evans and Rhys (ed), 150, 156, 158, 183, 210, 221, 225, 226, 234, 236. For background on the charters in the Book of Llandaff, see Davies, The Llandaff Charters. 71  Book of Llandaff, Gwenogvryn Evans and Rhys (ed), 394. 72 See cora(b), corr3 in Quin et al. (ed), Contributions to a Dictionary of the Irish Language.

Reception and practice  149 An Irish origin for the text on weirs is supported by the fact that weirs were frequently mentioned in the laws as a common method of fishing in medieval Ireland. Like H, some law tracts discuss in detail the manner in which weirs should be positioned, as well as other technical aspects.73 The following passage is a case in point: aire .i. ime nó fal … adeir sé: Ni techta ni bes [mó] nó trian inn uisce do aire ‘aire’, i.e. a dam or a fence … he says: it is not lawful to dam more than a third of the water.74 This and other passages in Irish law indicate that fishing by means of weirs came under strict regulation. For instance, in another case it is stated that a landlord who builds a weir beyond the limits to which he is entitled, must share his catch with others, who fish in the same river.75 The chapter De fluminibus piscium is reminiscent of this type of regulation in that it seeks to safeguard the rights of landowners to a fair distribution of the catch by specifying how and under what conditions weirs should be constructed. But it is unique in that it finds support for its stipulations in biblical passages.

The Hibernensis and the Breton church: a recapitulation Whether or not the text on fish-weirs was interpolated into the Hibernensis in Brittany, it can certainly be pronounced as peculiar to a copy of the Hibernensis with Breton connections which, as we have seen, was contaminated by material from other insular sources. Other copies of the Hibernensis with Breton connections, E, the florilegium in O, and W, exhibit revision on a much larger scale, to the extent that their texts are best described as derivatives of the Hibernensis. Brittany thus presents itself as a zone which was particularly receptive to insular canonical texts and which appears to have adapted these texts to suit particular local needs. The sources used to augment H, the Canones Adomnani, and the

73 Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 287–290. Kelly provides the following references: CIH 3:1018, ln. 6, 6:2163, ln. 6; CIH 4:1468, ln. 8–9 = O’Davoren’s Glossary, Stokes (ed), 2:206 §60 [discussed anon]; CIH 2:369, ln. 15 = AL 1:130, ln. 4 [ownership of weir by kin-group]; CIH 2:395, ln. 18–21; 5:1699, ln. 11–14 = AL 1:204, ln. 27–1:206 ln. 2 [fishing in excess at the expense of neighbours who have a claim to the same river]; CIH 3:1018 ln. 6–10; 6:2163, ln. 6–9; CIH 1:261, ln. 13, 3:928, ln. 12–13 = AL 3:148, ln. 19–21 [theft from weir], CIH 4:1189, ln. 36; CIH 5:1874, ln. 20; CIH 2:369, ln. 9 = AL 1:122, ln. 15 [mention of córus lín ‘regulation of nets’]; CIH 2:592, ln. 11 = R. Thurneysen (tr), Die Bürgschaft im irischen Recht (Berlin, 1928), 8 §13 = Stacey (tr), ‘Berrad airechta: An Old Irish tract on suretyship’, 212 §13 [earnings from net casting are entirely immune from claim]. 74  O’Davoren’s Glossary (CLH §889), Stokes (ed), 206 §60 = CIH 4:1468, ln 8–9. 75 Kelly, Early Irish Farming, 289. His sources: CIH 2:395, ln. 18–21; 5:1699, ln. 11–14 = AL 1:204, ln. 27–1:206, ln. 2; CIH 3:1018, ln. 6–10; 6:2163, ln. 6–9.

150  Reception and practice Canons of Theodore, were transmitted in Brittany as satellite texts of the Hibernensis, as were a few other minor texts of canonical flavour.76 The scribal colophon in A, which claims that a Breton synod (perhaps in the ninth century) commissioned a copy of the Hibernensis, shows that the Hibernensis was received as a document of potential practical value. The Hibernensis was not copied by individual clergymen for private purposes, but—as we learn from the same colophon—it was deliberately brought to the attention of a wider Breton audience. The question of whether or not the Hibernensis played a role in contemporary Breton church politics, remains open. Nevertheless, evidence discussed here supports the notion that prescriptions from the Hibernensis were debated at the meeting between Pope Leo IV and the delegation of Breton bishops. It is clear that the events leading up to the meeting, the meeting itself, and its consequences, were quite unlike their portrayal in Redon’s tendentious hagiographical accounts. This is to say that Nominoe (and perhaps abbot Conuuioion) was not such a ‘positive’ force as he is depicted in hagiography, who—in good faith and with no ulterior motive—led a papally-sanctioned campaign to stamp out simony from Brittany. The hagiography is counter-balanced by a single surviving historical document—Leo’s letter to the Breton bishops—which shows that the pope made it tremendously difficult (if not utterly impossible) for Nominoe to depose the bishops accused of simony. The conflict between the Breton church and Rome is of particular concern to us since canonical texts played a part in it. The Breton delegates and the pope debated the matter of simony with recourse to canonical literature. The Bretons used the opportunity to ask Leo for his opinion on a particular set of canons they had been using, which differed from Roman-sanctioned canons. We have seen that the issues dealt with by the Bretons’ canonical text concur with issues dealt with by the Hibernensis. Leo objected to the use of the Bretons’ canonical text, which he urged the bishops to replace with prescriptions from the so-called False Decretals and the Dionysio-Hadriana. This episode is a good illustration of the ninth-century clash between Roman and non-Roman canonical teachings. What is remarkable about this case, is that the origin of the non-Roman teachings appears to have been Irish. Thanks to Leo’s responses, we know which canonical matters other than simony the Bretons raised at their meeting with the pope. But, sadly, we only have Leo’s views on these matters, and not the Bretons’. In theory, if we knew for certain that the Bretons had employed the Hibernensis, it would have been possible to deduce how their views differed from Leo’s. Indeed, earlier we have explored the possibility that Leo gave two of his rulings in response to the B-Recension’s canons on tithes and twice-weekly fasts. However, as regards the more important and contentious canonical issue that might have been relevant to ninth-century Breton church organisation—namely, the governing of a parochia—it is impossible to 76  Penitential of Vinnian, Synodus Hibernensis, Synodus sapientium de decimis, De arreis, De iectione eclesie graduum ab ospitio, De canibus sinodus sapientium, and Synodus episcoporum. For editions, see CLH §§580, 616, 618.

Reception and practice  151 establish (i) which of the Hibernensis’s canons concerning this issue attracted the Bretons’ attention, and (ii) how the Bretons interpreted them. In theory, the Breton church could also have relied on the Hibernensis for inspiration or guidance in the aftermath of the deposition of the Breton bishops, as it was taking its first steps towards independence from the see of Tours. But without any complementary evidence, it is impossible to know exactly how the Hibernensis served the Bretons, since its programme for church organisation is not only complex, but at times manifestly inconsistent.

Conclusion

Questions of identification—in the broadest sense of the word—formed a central plank of this book. To what extent can we distinguish secular law from canon law? When is a compilation of normative material a ‘law book’ and when is it something else, for example jurisprudence? Was there an insular tradition of canon law? Were the places in which rules were originally conceived a factor that influenced their reception elsewhere? The book tested the potential of using primarily text-critical evidence as a means for answering such questions. As has already been anticipated in the introduction, answers will vary according to place, period, and context, be it political, ideological, intellectual, or any other context. This casual observation, however, may be developed further. Causes indeed vary, but this variability in fact mirrors a process. It is the process through which normative texts and normative traditions were formed, sometimes deliberately, sometimes serendipitously. The copying of manuscripts and the continual modification of texts through transmission allow us to observe this process closely, in particular by concentrating on the Hibernensis and on texts that circulated alongside it or derived from it, all of which continued to morph in response to one another. Insofar as it is possible to identify any such thing as an ‘insular tradition’ of canon law, then it is the tradition reflected in the connections between texts that form a core group, comprising the texts listed in the introduction, which in turn had a noticeable impact on the emergence of subsequent canonical and penitential texts, such as the ones that we have encountered in Chapters 2 and 3. Despite occasional thematic correspondences and the attested links between compilers of normative texts in the insular region—both forms of contact may be suggestive of distinctly insular conceptions about law and order—the core group remains defined primarily by its own textual and codicological interconnectivity. The pattern of cross-influence within this group is undeniable, but its zigzagging texture suggests that serendipity was also at play. For example, Wulfstan did not draw on the Hibernensis for his own canon law collection because he wanted the best systematic collection available in contemporary Europe, but because a copy of the Hibernensis happened to be available at Worcester, while he also was there. This serendipity, as we have seen, can also work the other way around, such that the presence of a major canonical collection—like the Hibernensis or the Vetus Gallica—in an ecclesiastical centre might have served as a prompt for acquiring texts that were quoted in

Conclusion  153 these collections. The quotations did not always lead their readers to obtain the original texts (which may not have been available) but to obtain different, and sometimes heavily augmented versions of the desired texts and to acquire them instead: a case in point is the Dionysio-Hadriana, which was copied alongside the Hibernensis in lieu of the Dionysiana. As we widen the radius of our investigation by stepping out of this core group of texts we enter more firmly the realm of continental reception. Continental patterns of transmission clearly show that continental copyists tended to bunch together insular normative texts in manuscripts, and they almost always copied the insular material alongside penitentials, either of insular or continental origin (granted that continental penitentials also included insular penitential rulings). The codicological context for the circulation of insular normative texts is, therefore, a determinately penitential one. The same is broadly true of the reception of material that has been excerpted from insular normative texts, especially by Cumméne and Theodore. Such excerpts have a strong presence in penitentials, whose compilers—like the compiler of the Excarpsus Cummeani, or Halitgar, or Regino—sometimes credited the insular authorities and sometimes did not. In certain cases, like the south Italian Collection in Five Books, extensive excerpting from the Hibernensis complemented excerpts from Roman, Frankish, and Lombard law. Acceptance and rejection of material from within the core group of insular canonical texts can be seen to have been—on occasion—ideological, as was arguably the case with Leo IV’s endorsement of the Dionysio-Hadriana and the False Decretals and his rejection of insular canons. Earlier in this book we noted Roger Reynolds’s observation that the presence of the Hibernensis alongside the Dionysio-Hadriana in B and H suggests that the two may not have been perceived by contemporaries to be as incompatible with one another as Leo presented them. Likewise, fragments from the Hibernensis could be included alongside fragments from another collection favoured by Carolingian partisans, the Vetus Gallica, as they were in Θ and in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. 572, and even within the Vetus Gallica itself, as they were in the Corbie recension of that collection. But despite these examples it must be acknowledged that ideological motivations for admitting or rejecting insular material are difficult to gauge and leave much room for speculation. The choice of which canonical texts to study, copy, modify, or even to adhere to—insofar as these factors can be inferred by observing surviving copies—was clearly a matter for negotiation. There were no absolutes. Excerpts from the Hibernensis could sometimes even be found in compilations that were not distinctly normative in character. Such was the case with Θ, in which a florilegium (fols. 1–42) comprises mainly Patristic texts excerpted from a version of the Hibernensis that does not survive and that might in fact have been a draft text of the Hibernensis. The overall picture that emerges is one of a primordial pool of normative material in which texts and excerpts collided, connected, coupled and decoupled in response to different motivations and contingencies. The primary ingredients in this pool were the fontes materiales ‘material sources’, ranging from the Bible, to Church Fathers, to conciliar acta, to papal decretals, to Roman law. That the

154  Conclusion Hibernensis has done more than any other collection to expand the range of material sources used by canonical collections has been mentioned repeatedly. The additional sources included texts that were not originally meant to be normative—for example works of history, etymologies, and biblical exegesis—but the Hibernensis sought to derive rules from them nevertheless. This was among the compilers’ many experimental innovations which they implemented through trial and error and which reverberated throughout Carolingian Europe as new texts were carved out of the Hibernensis and as older texts (like the Vetus Gallica) were re-shaped partly in response to the sources introduced by the Hibernensis. Strikingly, the material sources themselves were not perceived as static. The compilers of the Hibernensis accepted modified versions of sources, even the Bible, which was sometimes quoted as saying the opposite of what it actually said. Such liberally modified sources were absorbed into the mix that nourished continental canonical teachings. The compilers of the Hibernensis were clearly aware of the conflicting nature of sources and they made allowances for this. They paired contradictory rulings in different places throughout the collection and devoted the collection’s final book to conflicting sources. The Hibernensis in fact opens with a statement concerning the rich, diverse, but ultimately contradictory pool of canonical sources that prompted its compilers to undertake their project in the first place. Ever intent on reassuring their readers that their aim was to interpret rather than to create new laws, the compilers let the contradictions stand without imposing (artificial) consistency on them. It was, nevertheless, a formal source, the Dionysiana, rather than the material sources, that gave a certain generic cohesion to early canonical texts. The constant drawing upon the Dionysiana was a staple of early medieval collections, including the Hibernensis. The Dionysiana applied a recognisable hue also to collections that sometimes circulated alongside it or alongside its Carolingian recension, the Dionysio-Hadriana, in the same manuscripts. Despite the innovations, therefore, by drawing on the Dionysiana the compilers of the Hibernensis could also be seen to have adhered to a convention that identified their work as a canonical collection by the prevalent contemporary formal idiom. The Hibernensis was also among the first collections (if not the first) to articulate with local normative traditions. This was rarely repeated by later collections, but some of the exceptions were clearly themselves influenced by the Hibernensis, like the Collection in Five Books, whose dependence on Lombard and Frankish laws has already been noted. Since it also drew extensively on the Hibernensis one may wonder whether it sought to broaden the scope of its sources under the latter’s influence. The local tradition that informed the Hibernensis is to be found in texts that are commonly referred to as early Irish vernacular law. Principles admitted from this tradition were translated in the Hibernensis into Latin, sometimes modified, and then incorporated into a systematic structure that placed them side by side with distinct Christian texts. The comparison that was undertaken here (Chapter 4) with a text of Irish vernacular law, Córus Bésgnai, shows that the compilers of the Hibernensis conceptualised the development of law in terms that were analogous to an imagined trajectory of the development

Conclusion  155 of law espused by authors of Irish vernacular law tracts. The analogy places the Israelites of the pre-Sinai revelation era on a par with the Irish of the pre-Patrician period, and the Israelites of the Old Testament law on a par with the Irish of the Patrician and post-Patrician era. The Hibernensis can also be seen to incorporate Latinate equivalents of Old Irish legal terms for different types of sureties, thereby echoing an important Irish institution for maintaining social order and guaranteeing trust in legal transactions. Just as striking as the similarities are the differences between Córus Bésgnai and the Hibernensis, with the former apparently observing a clearer distinction between kin and church, while the latter posits a society in which some kin groups were either subsumed by churches or in which peasants labouring for the church were first and foremost loyal to the church and only then to their kin (if at all). Vernacular conceptions and terms for expressing social obligation are also more prevalent in Córus Bésgnai than they are in the Hibernensis, which opts for a more pastoral idiom that is very much informed by the Bible. The differences between Córus Bésgnai and the Hibernensis cannot be expressed in terms of ‘secular’ versus ‘ecclesiastical’ because of the ecclesiastical associations and ecclesiastical thematic coverage of both texts. Rather, the most appropriate criterion for distinguishing the two appears to be by concentrating on the way in which the kin is situated vis-à-vis the church and the relative importance that each was accorded. The distinction is then between a tradition whose roots are predominantly local, and another that looks to ecclesiastical institutional structures for harmonising the local with an ever-evolving conception of a wider Christian identity, largely informed by Gallic, Roman, and Patristic Christian teachings. This was not a dichotomy but a spectrum. How and in what circumstances was the Hibernensis or any other related canonical collection used remains a largely unresolved question. By their very nature normative texts tell us more about conceptions than about practice, and examples for practice are very rare indeed. Quotations from the Hibernensis can be found in the context of dispute settlement in a letter by Alcuin from 801 (Chapter 2), but all other cases in which the Hibernensis was quoted—for example by the Council of Tribur in 895, by Oda, by Wulfstan, or by any subsequent anonymous collection—invite speculation as to the practical or intended-practical implications but provide no definite answers. One such speculation, in Chapter 7, is that the Hibernensis might have played a part in informing the ideology that underpinned a plan for ecclesiastical reform in mid-ninth-century Brittany. The preface to the Hibernensis does not make it clear whether the compilers of the Hibernensis themselves intended the collection to have a practical utility, although it is difficult to imagine that they would not have anticipated, or indeed hoped, that at least some rulings would be implemented in judicial contexts. The preface nevertheless makes the point that the collection was meant to be an accessible reference work to be consulted, but for what purpose we are not told. A hint that the compilers might have been anxious that the Hibernensis would go unread can be found in the following note in the B-Recension (H68.5 V67.5 [p. 468]): Sunt multi et forte religiosi, qui plures libros ligatos uolunt et eos in armaris clausos tenent, ut illos nec ipsi legant, nec aliis ad legendum tribuant.

156  Conclusion There are many, even religious men, who want to have many bound books and yet they keep them shut up in cupboards, so that they neither read them themselves, nor lend them to others to read. At the very least, the extensive glossing of some copies of the Hibernensis and the numerous derivatives that issued from this collection, leave no doubt that the Hibernensis was used in a scholarly context. Likewise, quotations from the ­Hibernensis in subsequent collections, from the Vetus Gallica to Gratian’s ­Decretum, show how it stimulated normative Christian thinking across centuries. The way in which the Hibernensis was received by others may bear little or no resemblance to the compilers’ unspoken expectations of their collection. Their achievement was to pause for a moment the flood of canonical material that came their way, apply some order and interpretation to it, before releasing it again to be reconfigured by others elsewhere.

Appendix I

A Synopsis of the Hibernensis and Cop, fols. 69v–80v1

Sigla Θ = Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, Mp. th. q. 31, fols. 1–41 Cop = Copenhagen, Kongelike Bibliothek, Ny Kgl. Saml., 58 8° fols. 69v–80v D = Monte Cassino, Archivio e Biblioteca dell’Abbazia, 297 [Hib.B] H = Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 42 [Hib.B] V = Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, T. XVIII [Hib.B] Note: The numbers following the siglum Θ represent my division of the material in the MS In the entries below, serial numbers by which texts are referenced in the present study are given in angle brackets. Folios in square brackets correspond to the pagination in Cop. H18.8 V17.8 (Hib p. 82) [Heading only in Θ362, 367] De mortuis quibus non prodest uiuorum miseratio AGUSTINUS AIT: [HVΘ368] Sunt aliquos non adiuuant ista. quorum tam mala merita ut nec talibus digni sunt adiuuare. [HVΘ369] Hieronimus. Quicumque uitiaticum uitę in uita sua non acceperit. post mortem que potest adiuuare: H18.1 V17.1 (Hib p. 77) [Θ363] De quattuor modis quibus uiui adiuuant mortui. [Hib.A+B not in Θ] Origenis ait. Animę defunctorum IIII modis [fol.70r] soluuntur. aut oblationibus pręsbiterorum dei. aut elemosynis. aut pręces sanctorum. uel aut ieiunio cognatorum. [fol. 70r] [Θ364] De. decreto ecclesię in tribus generibus mortuorum 1  The transcription of Cop used here is by Michael Elliot, at http://ccl.rch.uky.edu/aboutKob58

158  Appendix I H18.2 V17.2 (Hib p. 77) [Hib.A+B not in Θ] ecclesia Romana decreuit. Ualde boni non egent remedium post mortem. quia seipsos in uita sua liberauerunt. Pro ualde malis non est necesse. que de eis iudicatum est. Non est fructuosum. nisi tamen elemosyna accipienda uiuis. et pauperibus [fol. 70v] diuidendum. Pro ualde non malis. et pro ualde non bonis oblatio et oratio et elemosina et ieiunium danda sunt. si non in uita professi sunt que crediderunt. [fol. 70v] [Hib.A+B, Θ371] Agustinus ait. trea genera oblationis sunt. pro ualde bonis gratiarum actiones. Hoc est. deo gratias agunt que bene uixerit. Pro non ualde malis propitiationes quibus prosunt sacrificia. uel elemosinae. pro se offerre pietate suorum. si non ali [fol. 71r] quid meritum pręparauerint in uita. Pro ualde malis si nulla adiumenta mortuorum. tamen consolationes uiuorum id est pauperum sunt. [fol. 71r] H18.8 V17.8 (Hib p. 82) [HVΘ373] Gregorius. O homo noli querere remissionem post mortem. nisi prius in uita quęseris. Dicit enim profeta. Redeme peccata tua elemosinis. H18.3 V17.3 (Hib p. 78) [Hib.A+B, Θ389] Gregorius. pro medico. si uel XXX sacrificia per XXX dies obtulero et liberatus est de poena. semetipso monstrante. [fol. 71v] [Hib.A+B, Θ390] Item. Gregorius. Uirum suum liberauit mulier de VII sigillis per VII sacrificia. H49.10 V48.10 (Hib p. 384) [HIb.A+B, Θ357] Hieronimus ait. lacrimas Petri lego. satisfactionem eius non lege. abluunt ergo lacrime delictum quod uoce pudor est confiteri. [Not in Hib or Θ] De eo que degradatus sit semper H13.1 V12.1 (Hib p. 50) [HDV, Θ518] Sub gradu peccans. senodus ait. Quicumque sub gradu cecidit. sine gradu consurgit. [HDV, but not in Θ] Originis ait. Iudas Scarioth de gradu suo cecidit. et iterum non inuenit. [Hib.A+B, Θ514] De eo qui incertum sit [fol. 72r] ut se priorem gradu episcopi meretur accipere post lapsum. [Hib.A+B, but not in Θ] Patricius ait. Episcopus qui sub gradu peccat debet excommunicari. quia magna est dignitas huius nominis. tunc potest redimere animam suam post penitentia ad priorem gradum uenire difficile nescio. an. non. [fol. 72r] [Hib.A+B, Θ516] Hieronimus ait. Quicumque dignitatem gradus diuini non custodiunt. contempsus fiat animam suam saluare. reuertere autem in eum gradum. nescio. an. non. deus scit. [fol. 72v]

Appendix I  159 H13.2 V12.2 (Hib p. 50) [Hib.A+B, Θ515, 517] De ministerio que agit post penitentia sub gradu peccans. [Hib.A+B, Θ518] Agustinus. ait. qui sub gradu cecidit post penitentia contentus fiat. baptizare communione infirmis dare. et altario ministrare. [Not in Hib or Θ] De eo qui post gradu accipere priorem post lapsum. Iohannis in apocalypsin dicit. Memento unde cecidistis. age penitentia et opera tua priora fac. Eneus et Primasius hoc denuntiat de sub gradu cadentibus; [fol. 73r] H13.3 V12.3 (Hib p. 50) [Hib.A+B, but not in Θ] De consultu senodorum in his lapsis [Hib.A+B, but not in Θ] senodus decreuit. ut in peregrinationem exierint. et ibi ministrare sub manu abbatis. [Hib.A+B, but not in Θ] Humanius autem. Hierbenses2 interprętauit causa paucitatis sacerdotum hęc denuntiat. ut post penitentia consecrentur per manus inpositionum et in silentio ministrarent sub signo penitentię usque ad mortem nihil sua uoluntate facientes. H13.5 V12.5 (Hib p. 52) [Hib.A+B, but not in Θ] De sermone Esydori [fol. 73v]de his labefactis Esydorus ait. in epistola de penitentia sacerdotali. post lapsum. alibi legitur. In lapsu corporali restaurando honori gradu. post penitentiam. alibi post huiusmodi dilectum. nequaquam hii reparandum antiqui ordinis meritum. Hęc enim diuersitas ita distingitur. [Not in Hib or Θ] Illos enim a pristinos gradus redire canone pręcepit. quos penitentiae pręces sint satisfactio uel digna peccatorum con[fol. 74r]fessio. H13.5 V12.5 (Hib p. 52) [Hib.A+B, but not in Θ] Ad contra hii qui neque a uitio correptionis emendantur. nec hoc ipsum carnale delictum que admittant. et quam uendicare quadam superstitiosa teneritate nitantur. nec gradu. utique honoris. nec gratiam communionis recipiant. [Not in Hib or Θ] Ezechiel autem profeta. sub typu. pręuaricationis Hierusalem ostendit. post penitentiam et satisfactionem pristinum restaurare honore. Confundere inquid. o. Iuda. et porta homicidium [fol. 74v]tuum. et post paululum inquid tu et filię tuę reuertimini ad quantitatem uestram quod tu confundere ostendit post confessiones. id est peccati opus debere quemque erubescere. et pro admissis sceleribus post. uerecundiam fontem homo prostratum demergere. pro eo que dignum confessionis perpetrauit. opus. Deinde ignominiam depositionis

2  Recte Hibernenses.

160  Appendix I lugens cum humilitatem reuocari ad priorem statum per profetam poterit: Item. Iohannis. euangelista [fol. 75r] H13.4 V12.4 (Hib p. 51) [Hib.A+B, but not in Θ] Angelo Ephesi ecclesię. inter cetera scripsit. Memor esto unde cecideris et age penitentiam. et priora opera fac. Alioquin ueniam tibi et amouebo candelabrum tuum de loco suo. In angelo ecclesię prępositum. id est sacerdotem ostendit. Iuxta Malachiam. qui dicunt. labia sacerdotis custodiunt sapientiam et legem se scirent. ore eius quia angelus domini est. prępositus ergo lapsus in uitia per euangelistam meretur [fol. 75v] ut memor sit. unde ceciderint et penitentiam agant. et prima faciat opera. non mouentur candelabrum eius. hoc est. doctrina sacerdotalis uel honor potestatis. quam gestat. Intellegitur iuxta que scribitur. aput Samuhel de damnatione Heli. Oculi eius caliginauerunt non poterat. uidere lucerna dei antequam extingueret. Lucerna quippe qui dignitate sacerdotali pollens iustitię claritate fulgebat. [fol. 76r] Extincta profeta adserit. dum ob scelera filiorum sacerdotis potestatem meritorumque lumen admisit. Candelabrorum ergo sine lucerna sacerdotes sunt. Elleguntur carissimata honoris que extinguntur. uel commouebuntur per admissa scelera. Non enim dixit pro eo que cecidisti commouebo candelabrum tuum. sed nisi penitentiam egeris commouebo candelabrum tuum. Ergo quemquam peccantem prępositum si peruenerit penitentiam utique [fol. 76v] sequitur. perpositio meriti et in prouerbiis qui abscondit scelera sua non dirigetur qui confessus fuerit et relinquerit ea misericordia consequitur. nam per penitentiam IIII annorum in statum pristinum quemquam ex diuini iudicis sententia restaurandum patres sanxerunt. [Hib.A+B, but not in Θ] Legitur namque maria soror Moysi profetiza. dum per obtractiones aduersus Moysen incursisset. delictum illi constigmate leprę perfusa est. Cumque petisset Moyses [fol. 77r] ut emendaretur pręcepit eam deus extra castra egredi. VII diebus et post emendationem rursus eam. in castra admitti pręcepit. [Hib.A+B, but not in Θ] Maria ergo caro intellegitur sacerdotis. qui dum superbię sordidissimis contagiis maculatur. extra castra VII diebus Id est extra collegium sanctę ecclesiae proiecitur. quibus post. emendatione loci siue pristine recipit meritum. sacris igitur testimoniis explanauimus eum posse proprio honore restaurari [fol. 77v] qui per penitentię satisfactionem nouit propria delicta deflere. Eum uero non posse. restaurari. qui neglegit quę gessit et lugenda sine ullo pudore relegionis uel timore iudicii diuini committit. [Not in Hib or Θ] Hucusque sermo efficio dom episcopi de penitentia sacerdotali quem ecitius ad mosonem episcopum portauit. Et noscendum que in hoc lectione. episcopus presbiter ad deinceps reliquos gradus sacerdotum nomine conpręhendat. [fol. 78r] H18.6 V17.6 (Hib p. 80) [Hib.A+B, Θ378] De elemosyna pro mortuis [Hib.A+B, Θ379] Hieronimus ait. Elemosina non deneganda aut peccata redemit. aut poenas relenet aut remissionem in futuro prestet.

Appendix I  161 [Hib.A+B, not in Θ] Item. Iudas Machabeus obtulit. argentum pro uiris in bello occisis qui prius iuda pro furtum celebant que non fecisset si non profuisset in resurrectione. [Hib.A+B, not in Θ] Quidam puer moriens uiuus est matri non una uice in ueste lugubri. sitiens et esuriens inde [fol. 78v] mater eius indicauit sapienti qui dixit. offer uestem pro eo et cibum et obtulit inde apparuit et. in ueste candida et floribus bonis. [fol. 78v] H16.10 V15.10 (Hib p. 73) [similar wording Hib.A+B, exact match Θ384] quid interest inter elemosina et ieiunium. [Hib.A+B, Θ385] Hieronimus Agustinus. bonum est. ieiunare. sed melius est elemosyna dare. Si quis utrum potest facere duo bona sunt. sin. uero elemosyna. suficit sibi sine ieiunio. ieiunium uero sine elemosyna omnino non prodest. Ieiunium cum elemosyna duplex bonum est. [fol. 79r] ieiunium uero sine elemosyna nullum bonum. sicut autem lucerna sine oleo accenditur fumare potest lumen habere non potest. ita ieiunium sine elemosyna. carnem quidem cruciat. sed caritatis lumine animam non inlustrat. [fol. 79r] H49.26 V48.26 (Hib p. 392) [Hib.A+B, Θ349] Agustinus. ait. quattuor in penitentia consideranda sunt. Confessio. locus. tempus. habitus. [fol. 79r] H49.8 V48.8 (Hib p. 383) [HV, not in Θ] senodus Nicena dicit. qui ad militiam post professionem redeunt. et iterum conuersi. XIIII [fol. 79v]annos. peniteant. H49.32 V48.32 (Hib p. 391) [HV, not in Θ] Quicumque inlicito matrimonio fuerint post penitentiam non debet fieri in una domo nec se inuicem causam amoris copolare. [fol. 79v] [HV, not in Θ] Qui demiserit adulterium agat penitentiam postea nec in uno domo nec in una uilla habitent. [HV, not in Θ] Uir uel mulier cum reuersi fuerint ad dominum. post peccatum suum nec in una ecclesia conueniant. nec sit inter eos salutatio nec beneficium nec uisus nec conloquium nec de uno fonte potum [fol. 80r] nec alumnus inter utramque fiat uterque[fol. 80r] [Hib.A+B, Θ280] Agustinus. ait in humiliis que mulier aut partum suum disperdit aut filium negauit. homicidium perpetrauit. mulier. siue uir. VII annos peniteat. districte Quicumque mulier hanc detestationem fecerit rea. his constituitur. ut suę animae aut homicidii in filium suum. inde definimus ei. ut XIIII annos peniteat. [Hib.A+B, Θ281] Item nulla mulier potationem accipiat. nec filios aut conceptos. aut innatos occidat. quecumque autem mulier [fol. 80v] hoc facit. ante tribunal Christi sciat se cum illis causam reddituram.

162  Appendix I [Hib.A+B, Θ282] Item. nullas potationes diaboliticas debet mulieres accipere per quas iam non possunt concipere. Quecumque autem mulier hoc fecerit. quantoscumque concipere uel parere debuerit. tantorum homicidiorum rea esse cognoscerit. [fol. 80v] H47.5 V46.5 (Hib p. 352) [Hib.A+B, not in Θ] antiquas disputatio eos usque ad exitum. uitae. ab ecclesia. remouit. humanius autem definimus ut eis XV annos. difinitum penitentiam agat.

Appendix II

Texts attributed to annales with and without additional qualifiers In the entries below the first number in the sequence refers to the actual division of the text of the A-Recension of the Hibernensis in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 12021.1 The numbers in brackets refer to divisions of the text of the B-Recension of the Hibernensis in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 42 (H) and in Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, T. XVIII (V). Some texts occur in all manuscripts, others only in one or two. All manuscripts are inconsistent in their orthography. Serial numbers by which texts are referenced in the present study are given in angle brackets. Texts in bold are chapter titles from the Hibernensis. Square brackets indicate sources, when these are known. 16.11 (H 19.18 V 18.18) De eo quod non facile firmatur testimonium super mortuum In annalibus Origines ait: Quando Iacob aperuit puteos patris sui Isac, quos Philistim obstruxerunt, dixerunt habitatores terræ: Cur id fecisset? Et respondens dicit: Quia patris mei erant. Illi dixerunt: Eamus ad testes et firma coram eis pretium aut sermonem, quantum et quot. 26.12 (H 29.16 V 28.16)2 De leuibus uindictis peccatorum magnorum In annalibus: Quidam gentilis in naui periclitatus fertur in hanc uocem erumpisse: Deum Ebreorum credo et adoro. Et uitam meruisse narratur. 1  The scribal numbering scheme of the manuscript is off by one because the books De quaestionibus mulierum and De ratione matrimonii are both numbered xliiii. 2  Text occurs only in the B-Recension but the title is in both recensions.

164  Appendix II 29.1 (H 32.1 V 31.1)3 De furto commendati in lege Exodus ait [Exod. 22:7–9]: Si quis commendauerit amico suo pecuniam aut uas in custodiam, et si ab eo, qui acciperat, furto sublatum fuerit; si inueniatur fur, duplum reddat. Si latet fur, dominus domus applicabitur ad Deos, et iurabit quod nec extenderit manum suam in rem proximi ad fraudem perpetrandam, tam in boue quam in assino, et quidquid damnum inferre potest; ad Deos utriusque causa perueniet, et si illi iudicauerint, duplum restituet… Originis item in annalibus Ebreorum: ‘Ad Deos’, hoc est ad sacerdotes. ‘Adplicauit’, .i. martyres, et discedet innocens. 30.6 (H 33.7 V 32.8) De iniquitate filiorum patres non contaminante In annalibus Ebreorum: Noe corripuit Cham quantum potuit, et monita patris contemsit. Hinc Noe dicitur clara uoce dixisse: Sit Cham maledictus [cf. Gen. 9:25]. Abraham separauit a se et a filio suo Issac filios concubinarum, et eiecit in extremas plagas, presciens illos male agere, et non dedit illis hereditatem, sed dona [cf. Gen. 25:6]. 30.10 (H 33.9 V 32.10)4 De eo quod maledicta sit progenies ipsa, que degenerauit a patribus bonis In annalibus Latinorum ex persona filii dicitur: Pater meus iuste uiuit, ego iniuste. Verum dicitur: Ramus aridus arbore uiridi nascitur. 31.16 (H 34.16 V 33.16) De fixis longo tempore non mutatis In annalibus dicitur: Pars, que uenit in partem tribus Dan, de terra Damasci uenit et non reuersa est. 31.17 (H 34.18 V 33.18) De eo quod dabit pater hereditatem filiæ inter fratres Originis in annalibus Ebreorum: Iacob dedit partem filiæ suæ Dinae, que uidua mansit post uirum suum. (H 39.17 V 38.18) De eo quod debet princeps facere heredem in uita sua Originis in annalibus: Noe diuissit orbem terrae filiis suis antequam moreretur. 3  The text is attributed to Origen only in H. 4  Text occurs in both recensions but the title only in the B-Recension.

Appendix II  165 (H 42.4 V 41.4) De excommunicanda mensa malorum Originis in annalibus: Ezechiel excommonicauit nuntios Babiloniæ. 40.1 (H 43.1 V 42.1)5 De commendatione principis non mutanda Originis in annalibus Ebreorum ait: Moises commendauit hereditatem Iethro sacerdoti Madian in terra Channan, et firmata est [cf. Num. 10:29–32]. 46.13 (H 49.26 V 48.26) De loco poenitentiae Ad templum orauit Ezechias. Ad templum diprecabantur III pueri. Ad templum orauit Daniel. Vt Originis in annalibus Ebreorum ait: Dauid in tabernaculo poenitentiam agebat. Hinc dicit: Introibo in domum tuam, et reliqua. Aron in tabernaculo pro peccatis orabat. (H 56.3 V 55.2) De defentione proiectorum infantium æclesiæ Dei Origines in annalibus: Infans quidam templo possitus erat. A quodam sacerdote nutritus est in templo sine culpa parentum. 62.2 (H 65.2 V 64.2) De dedicatione noui edificii In annalibus Romanorum: In dedicatione æclesie Phetri magna facta est sollemnitas. (H 68.5 V 67.5) De libris non retinendis et, e contra, malis non dandis In annalibus Ebreorum demonstraretur: In tempore Ozie a duodecim tribubus quinque libri Moysi postolati sunt, sed Ozias respondit nequaquam ab armario offere debuerint.

5  Text occurs only in the B-Recension but the title is in both recensions.

Appendix III

Texts attributed to Origen (Origenes) In the entries below, the first number in the sequence refers to the actual division of the text of the A-Recension of the Hibernensis in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 12021. The numbers in brackets refer to divisions of the text of the B-Recension of the Hibernensis in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 42 (H) and in Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, T. XVIII (V). Some texts occur in all manuscripts, others only in one or two. Serial numbers by which texts are referenced in the present study are given in angle brackets. Square brackets indicate sources, when these are known. 1.17 (H1.17 V1.17) 11.1 (H 13.1 V 12.1) 13.1 (H16.1 V15.1) 15.1 (H18.1 V17.1) 15.8 (H18.8 V17.8) 16.5 (H 19.8 V 18.8) 16.10 (H 19.17 V 18.17) 17.4 (H 20.10 V 19.10)1 17.9 (H 20.13 V 19.13)

1  The first attribution occurs only in the B-Recension and second only in the A-recension.

Appendix III  167 18.5 (H 21.6 V 20.6) 21.5 (H 24.7 V 23.7) (H 24.38 V 23.38) 24.16 (H 27.24 V 26.20) [Oros., Hist. 7.4.4 (×2)] 25.2 (H 28.3 V 27.2) 26.23 (H 30.7 V 29.7) 28.4 (H31.6 V30.6) 28.5 (H 31.7 V 30.7) (H 31.11 V 30.11) 29.1 (H 32.1 V 31.1) 29.2 (H 32.3 V 31.3) 29.5 (H32.7 V31.7) 30.6 (H 33.7 V 32.8)2 30.11 (H 33.11 V 32.12) 30.15 (H 33.18 V 32.19) 31.13 (H 34.12 V 33.12) 31.19 (H 34.19,21 V 33.19,21) (H 34.26 V 33.26) [Oros., Hist. 5.15.3] 32.3 (H 35.5 V 34.5) 32.12 (H 35.15 V 34.15) 34.2 (H37.2 V36.2) 34.5 (H 37.5 V 36.5) 2  This follows a text attributed in annalibus Ebreorum.

168  Appendix III 34.6 (H 37.6 V 36.6) (H 39.21 V 38.22) 35.7 (H 38.10 V 37.10) 36.4 (H 39.5 V 38.5) 36.17 (H 39.15 V 38.15) 36.18 36.20 (H 39.20 V 38.21) (H 39.44 V 38.45) 37.2 (H 40.2 V 39.2) 37.4 (H 40.3 V 39.3) 37.15 (H 40.15 V 39.15) 39.2 (H 42.4 V 41.4) 40.7 (H 43.7 V 42.7) 41.2 (H 44.3 V 43.3) 41.4 (H 44.5 V 43.5) 45.20 (H 48.20 V 47.20) [Origenes, In Genes., homil. 4.4 GCS 29 (1920) 54] 46.8 (H 49.13 V 48.13) 47.1 48.10 (H 50.13 V 49.13) 49.1 (H 50.18 V 49.18) 49.2 (H 50.19 V 49.19) (H 52.8 V 51.7) 53.11 (H 54.13 V 53.12)

Appendix III  169 57.1 (H 59.1 V 58.1) 57.2 (H 59.2 V 58.2) 58.4 (H 60.2 V 59.2) 60.3 (H 62.4 V 61.4) (H 63.6 V 62.5) (H 68.5 V 67.5) 65.7 (H 69.12 V 68.12) 66.3

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Manuscript Index

Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 17110E (Book of Llandaff): 148 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS 10127–44: 56, 95 Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, 625 (576): 101, 133, 147 Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, 679 (619): 10, 12, 19, 91 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 279: 12, 17, 53, 90, 101, 132, 134, 135, 149 Chartres, Bibliothèque municipale, 124 [127]: 10 Cologne, Dombibliothek, 91: 54, 95 Cologne, Dombibliothek, 210: 10, 29, 51, 54, 91 Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, MS Ny. Kgl. S. 58 8º: 10, 17, 18, 55, 60 Douai, Bibliothèque municipale, 13: 135 Dublin, National Museum of Ireland, Faddan More Psalter: 115 Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, MS 12 R 33 (Cathach): 115 Dublin, Trinity College, MS 52 (Book of Armagh): 105, 115 Dublin, Trinity College, MS 57 (Book of Durrow): 115 Dublin, Trinity College, MS 58 (Book of Kells): 115 Dublin, Trinity College, MS 1316: 76 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Aug. 233: 120 Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. lat. Q. 69: 45, 97

Lichfield, Cathedral Library, MS 1 (Lichfield Gospels): 115 Livorno, Biblioteca Labronica, sine numero: 19, 20 London, British Library, Additional 35110: 49 London, British Library, Cotton Nero D.IV (Lindisfarne Gospels): 115 London, British Library, Cotton Otho E. XIII: 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 20, 55, 59, 91, 99,105, 132, 133, 134, 135, 145, 146, 147, 149 London, British Library, Egerton 609: 115 London, British Library, Royal 5 E.XIII: 131, 132, 134, 135, 145, 149 London, Lambeth Palace, 1231: 131, 132, 134, 135 Monte Cassino, Archivio e Biblioteca dell'Abbazia, 297: 19, 20, 134, 146 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4592: 18, 20, 44 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14096: 132 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14780: 94 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 27246: 43 Orléans, Bibliothèque municipale, 221 (193): 10, 12, 19, 91, 115, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136, 140, 144, 150 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. 572: 56, 59, 132, 153 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auctarium D. 2. 19 (Macregol Gospels): 115

188  Manuscript Index Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 42: 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 20, 53, 54, 59, 91, 92, 93, 101, 103, 104, 105, 115, 131, 132, 134, 135, 140, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 153 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B 512: 105 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 1603: 95 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 3182: 10, 11, 12, 19, 20, 55, 59, 91, 92, 93, 99, 101, 115, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 143, 147, 153 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 9389 (Echternach Gospels): 115 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 10290: 135 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 10588: 15 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 12021: 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 20, 59, 55, 59, 91, 92, 115, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 140, 147 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 12444: 11, 18, 44, 147 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 13386: 135 Rome, Biblioteca Vallicelliana, T. XVIII: 10, 16, 19, 20, 146, 147

Salisbury, Cathedral Library, MS. 124: 115 Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Gen. 1: 49 St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 150: 56 St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 243: 11, 12, 16, 19, 20, 91, 132 St Gall, Stiftsbibliothek, 550: 53 Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB.VI.109: 95 Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, HB VI. 112: 54 Tours, Bibliothèque municipale, 556: 10 Trier, Stadtbibliothek, 137/50: 10 Vatican Library, Palatinus lat. 68: 64 Vatican Library, Palatinus lat. 485: 54 Vatican Library, Palatinus lat. 4160: 18 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 522: 18, 20, 44 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 2195: 94 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, lat. 2233: 56 Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, Mp. th. f. 61: 119 Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, Mp. th. q. 31: 10, 17, 18, 45, 60, 153

General Index

Abbo of Fleury, abbot 41 Adomnán of Iona 15, 22, 86, 101, 114, 120, 121, 129, 147 Æthelberht of Kent 4n11 Africanus, chronographer 123 Agde, council of 29, 33, 34 Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne 142 Aix-la-Chapelle, council of (802) 139 Albericus, Bishop of Cambrai and Arras 19 Alcuin, abbot of St Martin's, Tours 44, 155 Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, bishop of Sherborne 50, 51, 52, 98, 99 Amalarius (of Metz), archbishop of Trier 45 Amolngid, head of an Irish kindred 105 Ancyra, council of (314) 27, 33, 34; canons 91, 92–93 Angilram, bishop of Metz 137 Annales Ebreorum 104, 106, 108 Annales Latinorum 104, 109 Annales Romanorum 104, 106, 107, 108 Annals of Ulster 13n18, 14, 49n7 Anonymus ad Cuimnanum (Ars Grammatica) 104, 107 Ansegis, abbot of Fontanelle 58 Anselm, bishop of Milan 41 Anselmo Dedicata 41, 43 Antioch, council of 27 apocryphal texts see Bible Apostolic Canons 25–26, 27, 40, 44, 45, 61, 66 Apostolic Constitutions 26 Arbedoc, scribe 133, 134, 135 Aridius, bishop of Lyon 31, 39 Arles, council of (314) 29, 33 Asbach, Franz 51 Atto, bishop of Vercelli 39 Augury see divination Augustine of Canterbury 48, 52, 60, 62, 94

Augustine of Hippo 33, 35, 105, 123, 125, 129, 139–140, 142 Augustinus Hibernicus 118, 120, 121, 129; see also De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae Báethgalach, of the Uí Búirechtain of Munster, judge 68 Ballerini, Pietro and Girolamo 10 Banbanus sapiens (Banbán), exegete 120 Bede, Northumbrian monk-scholar 17, 22, 51, 60, 94, 109; see also Pseudo-Bede Benedictine Rule 97, 131 Berchán son of Áed, exegete 121 Bible: apocryphal texts 112–113; Bibletexts 113–116; biblical commentaries 33, 112; biblical exegesis 8, 29, 73, 110, 111, 116–127; biblical quotations 33, 35, 37, 78–79, 82, 85, 111, 113; contradictions 127–130, 154; exegesis 8, 29, 73, 110, 111, 116–127; Irish exegesis 119–120; noncanonical books 112–113; spurious quotations 123–127, 154; see also Commentary on the Catholic Epistles; Gospels; Liber ex lege Moysi; Midrash; Mosaicorum et Romanorum legum collation; Psalms; Reference Bible; Vetus Latina; Vulgate Bibelwerk, das see Reference Bible Bieler, Ludwig 100, 101, 105, 133, 134, 136 Bigotian Penitential 52, 104 Binchy, Daniel 48, 73 Birr, council of (697) 4, 48, 49 Bischoff, Bernhard 103, 119n35 Blathmac mac Con Brettan, poet 113 Boniface, archbishop of Mainz 12n8, 13, 17, 18, 22, 48, 59, 60 Book of Armagh 105, 115 Book of Durrow 115

190  General Index Book of Kells 115 Book of Llandaff 148 Bradshaw, Henry 10–11, 13, 15, 16, 131–133 Braga, council of (572) 33 Brandub, king of Leinster 103 Breatnach, Liam 68, 72, 76 Brechán see Berchán Breen, Aidan 72 Bretha Nemed Toísech 68, 71, 72, 76 Breviary of Alaric 42 Breviatio Canonum by Fulgentius Ferrandus 27 Brigit, Saint 49 Brittany 8, 15, 59, 100, 131–132; Breton church politics 136–151; manuscripts with Breton connections 132–136; modified copies of the Hibernensis 145 Burchard, bishop of Worms 42–44 burial 7, 20, 23, 76, 81, 83–84 Caesarius, bishop of Arles 29, 33 Cáin Adomnáin (Law of Innocents) 4, 49 canon law: binding nature 5–6; classification 1–3; contradictions 18, 19, 22, 28, 30, 127–129; secular law and 1–3, 68, 87, 152, 155; see also Canones Adomnani; Canones apostolorum; Canones Hibernenses; Canones Wallici; canonical collections; Canons of Theodore; Capitula Angilramni; Capitula Dacheriana; Constitutiones; De arreis; De canibus synodus sapientum; De disputatione Hibernensis sinodi; Excerpts from a Book of David; False Decretals; insular tradition; Libri duo de synodalibus causis; penitentials; Synodus episcoporum; Synodus Patricii Canones Adomnani 62, 91, 101, 131, 145, 147, 149 Canones apostolorum 66, 74 Canones Hibernenses 91, 101 Canones Wallici 91 canonical collections vi, 24–25; authority 30–33; Carolingian era to Gregorian reform 41–46; origins and history 25–29; recensions 37–41; systematic collections 29–37; see also Apostolic Canons; Apostolic Constitutions; Breviatio Canonum; Collectio Dacheriana; Collectio IV librorum; Collectio 400 Capitulorum; Collectio Anselmo Dedicata; Collectio canonum

quadripartita; Didache; Didascalia apostolorum; Dionysiana; DionysioHadriana; Hibernensis; Hispana; Collectio Quadripartita; Collectio Sangermanensis; Vetus Gallica; Collection in Five Books; Concordia canonum Excerpta Hispana; Hispana; Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis; Hispana Systematica; Quadripartitus; Quesnelliana; Sanblasiana; Statuta ecclesiae antiqua Canons of Theodore 11, 15, 37–39, 42, 43, 52, 54, 59, 60–65, 90–91, 94, 95, 131, 147, 150; Irish material transmitted together with 54–57 Canterbury school 97, 98 Capitula Angilramni 137, 138 capitularies 1, 42, 58 Carta Maenchi comitis 148 Carthage, Councils of (398), (419), (525) 5, 21, 27, 29, 44, 90 Cassiodorus 44 casting of lots see lot-casting Catechesis Celtica 115 Cathach 115 Celestine, pope 29 Céli Dé 14, 72, 78 Chalcedon, council of (451) 26 Chalon-sur-Saôn, council of (813) 57, 58 Charlemagne, emperor 38, 58, 92, 136 Charles the Bald, emperor 137 Charles-Edwards, Thomas 14, 74, 77, 78, 129 Chronicle of Pseudo-Origen see Origen church councils 26, 28, 57, 139; acta (conciliar rulings) 1, 5, 20, 22, 24, 44, 45, 47–48, 58, 89, 90, 92; Anglo-Saxon and Irish 47–49; see also Agde; Aix-la-Chapelle; Ancyra; Antioch; Arles; Birr; Braga; Carthage; Chalcedon; Chalon-sur-Saôn; Clichy; Clofesho; Coitlouh; Constantinople; Gallic councils; Gangra; Hatfield; Irish councils; Laodicea; Neocaesarea; Nicaea; Orléans; Paris; Rome; sinodus Hibernensis; sinodus Romana; Synod of North Britain; Synod of the Grove of Victory Clichy, council of (626/7) 44 Clofesho, council of (747) 48 Codex Theodosianus 1, 42 Coitlouh, council of (848/849) 137, 144 Collectio IV librorum 43 Collectio 400 Capitulorum 42

General Index  191 Collectio Anselmo Dedicata 41, 43 Collectio canonum quadripartita 42 Collectio Dacheriana 42, 43, 131 Collectio Dionysiana see Dionysiana Collectio Dionysio-Hadriana see Dionysio-Hadriana Collectio Hibernensis see Hibernensis Collectio Hispana see Hispana Collectio Quadripartita 42 Collectio Sangermanensis 18, 44 Collectio Vetus Gallica see Vetus Gallica Collection in Five Books 41, 43, 153, 154 Columba, abbot 48, 49 Columbanus, abbot 50, 111, 128 Commentary on the Catholic Epistles 194, 107, 120, 121 Concordia canonum by Cresconius 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 43 Constantinople, council of (381) 26, 27 Constitutiones by Oda 42 Conuuioion, abbot of Redon 140, 141, 150 Constitutio Sylvestri 137 Corbie 15, 20, 31–34, 37, 45, 52, 53, 66, 91, 94, 95, 113, 147, 153 Córus Bésgnai 2, 69, 71, 76, 77, 78, 80–88, 154, 155 Councils see church councils Cresconius 20, 24, 25, 27, 28, 43 Críth Gablach 71, 76, 77 Cú Chuimne of Iona, presumed compiler of the Hibernensis 12–15, 51, 63, 98, 115, 121, 130 Cumméne, Irish cleric, 13, 51–54, 57–60, 67, 89, 99, 104, 111, 153 Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury 48 Dacheriana 42, 43, 131 d’Achéry, Luc 11 Dairinis 12–14, 98, 115, 121 Davies, Luned 16, 27, 90, 114, 115, 132 d’Avray, David 4 De arreis 102 De canibus synodus sapientum 101, 102 De disputatione Hibernensis sinodi 102, 104 De duodecim abusiuis saeculi 72 De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae 103–104 De ordine creaturarum 120 Deanesly, Margaret 94 decretals (papal letters) 4, 5, 22, 24, 26, 29, 45, 89, 140 De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae 103–104 Decretum by Gratian 46, 156 Deuffic, Jean-Luc 135

Diarmait mac Cerbaill, high-king of Ireland 48 Didache 25–26 Didascalia apostolorum 26 Dionysiana 16, 25–29, 32, 34, 37, 38, 41, 43, 45, 90, 92, 93, 95, 153, 154 Dionysio-Hadriana 38, 39, 41–43, 91, 92, 94, 139, 140, 143, 150, 153, 154 Dionysius Exiguus 21, 26, 74, 92 Discipulus umbrensium 50, 52, 60 divination 32–37, 138, 140n48 Dumville, David 100, 145 Easter controversy 51, 62, 64, 65, 111, 131 Ebo, archbishop of Reims 58 ecclesiastical law see canon law Echternach Gospels 115 ecumenical councils see church councils Egbert, priest 51 Egbert, archbishop of York, 3, 52, 56, 58 Egerton Gospels 115 Elliott, Michael 50n17, 51 Eoda, priest 51 Etherius, bishop of Lyon 31, 39 Etchingham, Colmán 78 Etymologiae by Isidore 20, 33, 68, 112, 154 Eucherius, bishop of Lyon 116–117 Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea 106, 109, 123 Eutropius 106 Excarpsus Cummeani 53, 57, 59, 60, 153 Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum 100, 145 Excerpta Hispana 28 Excerpts from a Book of David 61 Exegesis see biblical exegesis Exsuperius, bishop of Toulouse 111 Faddan More Psalter 115 False Decretals of Pseudo-Isidore 41, 137, 143, 150, 153 Fer Dá Chrích, abbot of Dairinis 14 Ferns 103 Finsterwalder, Paul 51 Fintán, saint 49 First Synod of Patrick see Synodus episcoporum fish-weirs 104, 147–149 Fleuriot, Léon 100 florilegia 17, 18, 45, 50, 53, 90, 101, 105, 113, 134, 149, 153 fontes formales 43, 53, 90, 95, 96, 154 fontes materiales 24, 43, 90, 153, 154

192  General Index Fornán, of the Uí Búirechtain of Munster, bishop 68 Fowler-Mayerl, Linda 16 Fragmenta Gildae 17 Frantzen, Allen 58 Fulgentius Ferrandus 27 Gallic councils 27, 29, 33, 34, 44, 47 Gangra, council of 27 Gennadius of Marseille 27 Geraint (Gerontius), king of Dumnonia 52, 99 Gesta sanctorum Rotonensium 140 Gildas 50, 52, 53, 61, 101, 115; De excidio Britanniae 127–128, 131; Preface on Penance 61 Glatthaar, Michael 18 Gorman, Michael 120, 121 Gospels 114, 115 Gratian 46, 156 Gregory I, pope 4, 5, 29, 48, 50, 52, 60, 62, 65, 94, 122, 145 Gregory II, pope 38, 141 Gregory of Nazianzus 45, 103, 104, 107, 145 Gregory of Tours 44 Grosjean, Paul 94, 120 Gwenogvryn Evans, John 148 Haddan, Arthur 100, 114, 136 Hadrian, abbot 45, 50, 97 Hadrian I, pope 38, 92, 137 Haelhucar, abbot 133, 135, 136 Halitgar, bishop of Cambrai 57, 58, 67, 153 Hatfield, council of (672) 48 Heahfrith, priest 50 Heclocar see Haelhucar Hellmann, Siegmund 15, 16 Helogar (Helocar), bishop of Alet, abbot of Saint-Meen 136 Herren, Michael 120 Hertford, council of (672) 44, 99 Hibernenses 101–103 Hibernensis: authorship and date 13–15; Bible see biblical quotations; biblical exegesis; Irish origin 11–13; recensions 15–20; reception in Brittany; satellite texts 90–92, 94, 95, 150; sources of the Hibernensis; structure and contents 20–23; undivided text of 17–19; see also insular tradition; law Hispana 16, 21, 24–25, 27, 28, 40–43, 90, 140 Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis 28

Hispana Systematica 28 Hisperica Famina 131 Historia Brittonum 108 Hormisdas, pope 26 Howlett, David 14 Hrabanus Maurus, archbishop of Mainz 58 Humiliae de uacca rufa 104 Hywel Dda, Welsh king 44, 52 Innocent I, pope 27, 29, 111 insular tradition: borrowings between texts 51–53; connections between authors and compilers 49–51; intersection of texts in their manuscript transmission 53–60; mutual influences 66–67, 152; synods of Britain and Ireland 47–49; unique insular themes 60–66 Iona 12, 13, 51, 65, 98, 114, 115, 121 Irish apocrypha 112–113 Irish Augustine see Augustinus Hibernicus Irish councils 48–49, 101–103, 109 Irish law see law Isidore, bishop of Seville 20, 28, 33, 68, 106, 112, 139, 140, 142; see also Pseudo-Isidore Iunobrus, scribe 134 Jaski, Bart 72 Jerome (Hieronimus) 33, 105, 106, 111, 112, 116–118, 122, 127, 129, 139, 140, 142 John II, pope 29, 44 John VIII, pope 135 Kelleher, John 109 Kelly, Fergus 70–71 kinship, 76, 83, 87–88, 155 Körntgen, Ludger 58 Laidcenn, exegete 119–121 Lambert, count 137 Laodicea, council of 27, 33, 45 Lapidge, Michael 97 law: authors 68, 71; definitions 4–6; Indo-European heritage 69–70; Irish 12, 68–76, 154; jurisprudence 4, 6, 30, 45, 46, 127, 152; law schools 71; native institutions 71–75, 77; see also Bretha Nemed Toísech; Breviary of Alaric; Cáin Adomnáin; canon law; Codex Theodosianus; Córus Bésgnai; Críth Gablach; De duodecim abusiuis saeculi; Lex Romana Visigothoru; Míadṡlechta; Mosaicorum et Romanorum legum

General Index  193 collatio; natural law; Roman law; royal legislation; secular law; Senchas Már; suretyship; Urraicecht Becc; Welsh laws; Cáin Adomnáin Leiden Glossary 45, 97, 98 Leo I, pope 27, 29 Leo IV, pope 39, 58, 67, 132, 137–143, 145, 150, 153 Leyser, Conrad 5 Lex Romana Visigothorum 42 Libellus responsionum 4, 5, 17, 52, 54, 59–62, 65, 94, 95, 96; Irish material transmitted together with 55–57 Libellus Scottorum 50–51, 60 Liber de statu monachorum Aegypti 105 Liber decretorum by Burchard 42–43 Liber ex lege Moysi 17, 113 Liber Iubilaeorum 112 Liber Questionum in Evangeliis 128, 131 Libri de Heredibus 104 Libri de regula monachorum 105 Libri duo de synodalibus causis by Regino 39, 42, 43 Libri Patricii 105 Lichfield Gospels 115 Lindisfarne Gospels 115 Llandaff, Book of 148 Lóegaire mac Néill, legendary king 13, 75, 105 London, council of (845) 47 lot-casting 33–37, 123 Louis the Pious, emperor 131, 136, 137 Maassen, Friedrich 43 Mabillon, Jean 136 MacCarthy, Bartholomew 13 MacNeill, Eoin 109 Macregol Gospels 115 Máedóc, saint 103 Máel Ruain, founder of Tallaght 14 Máel Tuili, of the Uí Búirechtain of Munster, poet 68 Maeloc, scribe 134 Mag Léna, council of 48 Mag nAilbe, council of 48 Mahen, bishop of Dol 135 Manchéne, exegete 121 Maurists 11 Meens, Rob 19, 58, 59 Míadṡlechta 76 Midrash, Jewish exegesis 126 monastic Rules 131 Mordek, Hubert 31, 44 Mosaicorum et Romanorum legum collatio 36

Muirchú, hagiographer 99 Munier, Charles 27 Munster Circle of exegesis 121 nativist /revisionist divide 70 ‘natural law’ 78–81 Neocaesarea, council of (315) 27, 91, 92 Nicaea, council of (325) 26, 27 Nicholson, Edward 13 Nominoe, Breton ruler 136–137, 140, 143, 150 Nothelm, archbishop of Canterbury 59, 60 Ó Corráin, Donnchadh 71, 72 O’Dwyer, Peter 14, 72 O’Rahilly, Thomas 109 Oda, archbishop of Canterbury 42, 155 Old-Irish Penitential 52, 77 Origen 104, 107, 120; see also Pseudo-Origen Orléans, council of (511) 33 Orosius 30, 106, 107 Paenitentiale Vindobonensis B 53 papal letters see decretals Paris, council of (829) 57 pastoral care 81–82 Patrick, saint 11, 13, 52, 61, 75, 78, 80, 103, 105, 145 Patristic names 103–104, 125 Pelagius 115 penance 42–43, 50, 51, 77–78 penitential communities 78 Penitential of Halitgar, bishop of Cambrai 57 Penitential of Cumméne 51, 60 Penitential of Vinnian 61, 91, 101, 128, 131 penitentials 4, 42, 51–53, 57–59, 61, 62, 153; see also De arreis; De canibus synodus sapientum; De disputatione Hibernensis sinodi; Excarpsus Cummeani; Excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum; Old-Irish Penitential; Paenitentiale Vindobonensis B; Penitential of Cumméne; Penitential of Halitgar; Penitential of Vinnian; Poenitentiale Remense; Poenitentiale XXXV Capitulorum; Sangallense Tripartitum; Synodus Hibernensis; Synodus Luci Victoriae Pietri, Charles 4 Poenitentiale Remense 53 Poenitentiale XXXV Capitulorum 53 Praetextus, bishop of Rouen 44

194  General Index Prouerbia Grecorum 131 Psalms 22, 33, 35, 36, 114–116, 119, 121, 122, 125 Pseudo-Bede 58 Pseudo-Clement 29 Pseudo-Isidore 41, 120, 137 Pseudo-Origen 105–110, 121, 123, 129 Pseudo-Thomas 112 pseudonyms 103–104, 118, 125, 127 Quadripartitus 42 Quesnelliana 26 Rabanus see Hrabanus Reference Bible (Das Bibelwerk) 79–80, 112, 120, 129 Regino, abbot of Prüm 39, 42–44, 58, 67, 153 Reynolds, Roger 21, 140, 143, 153 Rhŷs, John 148 Roman law 42, 43 Roman rite 65, 131 Romani 101–103 Rome, council of (721) 92 royal legislation 3–4, 25, 71, 87 Ruben of Dairinis, presumed compiler of the Hibernensis 12–15, 63, 98, 115, 121, 130 Rufinus 106 Rushworth Gospels see Macregol Gospels Saint-Meen 136 Salomon, king of Brittany 137, 143 Sanblasiana 45, 98n27 Sangallense Tripartitum 53 secular law 1–3, 68, 87, 152, 155; see also law Second Synod of Patrick see Synodus Patricii Senchas Már 69, 71, 72, 74, 76; PseudoHistorical Prologue 75, 78, 80 Sharpe, Richard 17, 103 sinodus Hibernensis 86, 101–104, 145 sinodus Romana 102–104, 145 Siricius, pope 29 sortition see lot-casting sources of the Hibernensis 7–8, 24, 43, 53, 109–110; Anglo-Saxon and British 98; Chronicle of Pseudo-Origen 105–109; fontes formales 43, 53, 90, 95, 96, 154; fontes materiales 24, 43, 90, 153, 154; insular material 96–101; Irish councils 101–103; Irish sources 99; satellite texts 90–92, 94, 95; unidentified sources of

likely Irish origin 103–110; see also Annales Ebreorum; Annales Latinorum; Annales Romanorum; Humiliae de uacca rufa; Liber de statu monachorum Aegypti; Libri de Heredibus; Libri de regula monachorum; Libri Patricii; Veritas Ebreorum; Vita monachorum; Vita monachorum Aegypti; Vita sanctorum Spanish councils 28; see also Braga; Toledo Stacey, Robin Chapman 69–71 Stancliffe, Clare 52 Statuta ecclesiae antiqua 20, 21, 24, 26, 27, 33, 43, 90 Stephen of Ripon 52 Stokes, Whitley 132 suretyship 66, 73–74, 155 Sylvester, pope 137 Symmachus, pope 29 synod see church councils Synod of North Britain 61 Synod of the Grove of Victory (Synodus Luci Victoriae) 61, 100, 101 Synodus episcoporum 52, 61, 66, 73, 74, 101, 102, 131 Synodus Hibernensis 49, 101, 102 Synodus Luci Victoriae see Synod of the Grove of Victory Synodus Patricii 52, 101, 102 Synodus sapientium de decimis 75, 82, 83, 101, 102, 141 Tailtiu, council of (562) 48, 49 Tallaght 14 Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury 45, 50, 51, 53, 58, 60, 67, 97, 98, 153; see also Canons of Theodore Thurneyson, Rudolf 13, 15 Tírechán, hagiographer 105 tithes 82–83, 141, 150 Toledo, councils of 28 tonsure 64, 99, 105, 131 Tours, council of (567) 44; (813) 58 Tribur, council of (895) 44, 155 Uí Búirechtain 68 Uí Néill dynasty 48 urim vetumin, biblical instruments of sortition 36 Urraicecht Becc 71, 76 Veritas Ebreorum 104 vernacular law see law

General Index  195 Vetus Gallica 15, 16, 18, 20, 31–34, 37–38, 45, 52, 66, 94–96, 113, 140, 153, 154, 156 Vetus Latina 8, 114, 115 Vigilius, pope 44 Vinnian, Irish cleric and author of penitential 50, 52, 61, 91, 101, 128, 131 Vita I S. Brigitae 49 Vita monachorum 105, 145 Vita monachorum Aegypti 105 Vita sanctorum 146 Vitas Patrum 105 Vulgate 8, 36, 113–115

Ware, James 11 Wasserschleben, Hermann 11, 132 Welsh laws 52, 148 Whitby, council of (664) 47 Wilfrid, bishop of York 52 Willibrord’s Calendar 51 Worcester 53, 147, 152 Wulfstan, archbishop of York 42, 52, 53, 152, 155 Würzburg Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 104, 107, 120 Zosimus (Pope) 29

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