The ''Corpus Iuris Hibernici'' (cited as ''CIH'') is a six-volume collection of the sources for the study of
early Irish law
Early Irish law, also called Brehon law (from the old Irish word breithim meaning judge), comprised the statutes which governed everyday life in Early Medieval Ireland. They were partially eclipsed by the Norman invasion of 1169, but underwe ...
(known as Brehon law) edited by
D. A. Binchy. It presents a transcription of the manuscripts (
Old Irish
Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic (, Ogham, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ; ; or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic languages, Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive written texts. It was used from 600 to 900. The ...
and Latin) relevant to this study.
The ''CIH'' was intended as a replacement for the ''Ancient Laws of Ireland'' (1865-1901), a series which relied on more limited sources and suffered from unscholarly and unreliable editorial work (with the exception of that done by
Robert Atkinson). Prior to Binchy's work, the best sources for early Irish law were the unpublished transcripts of
John O'Donovan John O'Donovan may refer to:
*John O'Donovan (scholar) (1806–1861), Irish language scholar and place-name expert
*John O'Donovan (politician) (1908–1982), Irish TD and Senator
*John O'Donovan (police commissioner) (1858–1927), New Zealand pol ...
and
Eugene O'Curry
Eugene O'Curry (, 20 November 179430 July 1862) was an Irish philologist and antiquary.
Life
He was born at Doonaha, near Carrigaholt, County Clare, the son of Eoghan Ó Comhraí, a farmer, and his wife Cáit. Eoghan had spent some time as a ...
, which circulated in scholarly libraries in a few (often incomplete) copies. Because of this, scholars like
Rudolf Thurneysen
Eduard Rudolf Thurneysen (14 March 1857 – 9 August 1940) was a Swiss linguist and Celticist.
Biography
Born in Basel, Thurneysen studied classical philology in Basel, Leipzig, Berlin and Paris. His teachers included Ernst Windisch and ...
were forced to rely on O'Donovan and O'Curry to correct errors in the published version, but nonetheless referred to the ''Ancient Laws of Ireland'' in their published footnotes for reasons of accessibility.
Though the ''CIH'' was highly rated for its editorial work, it received some criticism for its difficulty of use. Critics pointed out that it had no translations, no explanatory notes, few cross-references, and a table of contents which only listed the manuscripts transcribed.
[ ]Myles Dillon
Myles Patrick Dillon (11 April 190018 June 1972) was an Irish scholar whose primary interests were comparative philology, Celtic studies, and Sanskrit.
Early life
Myles Dillon was born in Dublin on 11 April 1900, one of six children of John a ...
called the work "austere".[ ]Fergus Kelly
Fergus Kelly is an academic at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. His research interests centre on early Irish law-texts and wisdom-texts.
He graduated in 1967 in Early and Modern Irish from Trinity College Dublin. He spent a year in th ...
's ''Guide to early Irish law'' (1988) and Liam Breatnach's ''Companion to the Corpus iuris hibernici'' (2005) took on the task of identifying, describing, and making comprehensible these texts. Breatnach has identified 102 individual texts in the ''CIH'' and has incorporated elsewhere published texts (such as the archaic legal poem published previously by Binchy) into the corpus.[
]
Bibliography
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References
External links
List of the manuscripts used in the ''Corpus Iuris Hibernici''
at Brehon Academy.
{{Early Irish law
Early Gaelic legal texts
Early Irish law
Textual scholarship
1978 non-fiction books