1st Edition

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

By Roy Flechner Copyright 2021
206 Pages
by Routledge

206 Pages
by Routledge

206 Pages
by Routledge

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... Read more

Introduction

1. The Hibernensis in context

2. Early canonical collections and the Hibernensis

3. Identifying an insular tradition of ecclesiastical law

4. Irish vernacular law and church law

5. Deploying sources

6. The Bible, exegesis, and the interpretation of law

7. Reception and practice: Brittany as a case study

Conclusion

Appendix I: A Synopsis of the Hibernensis and Cop, fols. 69v–80v

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

Appendix III: Texts attributed to Origen (Origenes)

Biography

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.

'It is an excellent place for readers to become oriented not only in the Hibernensis but in the bewildering and important corpus of writings to which it belongs' - Speculum, 98/4.


'… these essays provide a useful point of reference which helps us to contextualise the development of Collectio Canonum Hibernensis' – North American Journal of Celtic Studies, 6/2.