Cáin Adomnáin
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The Cáin Adomnáin (Law of Adomnán), also known as the Lex Innocentium (Law of Innocents) was promulgated amongst a gathering of Irish, Dal Ríatan and Pictish notables at Birr in 697. It is named after Adomnán of Iona, ninth abbot of Iona after Columba.
This set of laws were designed, among other things, to guarantee the safety and immunity of various types of non-combatant in warfare. It requires that
whoever slays a woman ... his right hand and his left foot shall be cut off before death, and then he shall die ...The laws also provided sanctions for the killing of children, clerics, clerical students and peasants on clerical lands, for rape, for impugning the chastity of a noblewoman, prohibited women from battle, and more besides. It should be noted that many of these things were already crimes, either under the common Irish laws, or, in the case of special protections for clerics, from the Cáin Phátraic (Law of Saint Patrick), albeit with lesser penalties.
As with later clerical efforts, such as the Peace and Truce of God movement in millennial France, the law may have been of limited effectiveness. Fergus Kelly notes that no cases relating to the Cáin Adomnáin have been preserved.Kelly, p. 79. Thus, we do not know whether the harsh penalties which it mandates, which may have contradicted the general character of Irish law, were actually enforced.Kelly, pp.234–235: "the law texts of the Senchas Már collection consistently favour reparation by payment rather than the death penalty for murder and other serious offences (by either sex)."
Various events are supposed to have inspired Adomnán to introduce these laws, but it may also be that as Columba's biographer, he was inspired by the Saint's example.Cf. Adomnán, Life, II, 24 and II, 25.
See also
Notes
Reading
- Adomnán of Iona, Life of St Columba, edited & translated Richard Sharpe. London: Penguin, 1995. ISBN 0-14-044462-9
- Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law. DIAS, Dublin, 2005. ISBN 0-901282-95-2
External links
- [translation] of the Cáin Adomnáin by Kuno Meyer at the Internet Medieval Sourcebook.
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