2 - The Irish Background to the De XII abusiuis saeculi

Summary

Abstract

This chapter examines the Irishness of the De XII abusiuis saeculi. It does so with particular reference to Old Irish legal texts, in particular to the Archaic Old Irish text Audacht Moraind (‘The Testament of Morand’), believed by some scholars to predate even the De duodecim abusiuis (thereby placing it before c. AD 650 and earlier than every other Speculum Principis of the Middle Ages), and to the Senchas Már, the ‘Great Collection’ of early Irish laws. It discusses not just the parallels between DDAS and the legal texts, but the difficult question of which came first. There can be little doubt, however, about its original provenance in seventh-century Ireland.

Keywords: Early Ireland, Old Irish, Brehon law, Audacht Moraind, Senchas Már

The De XII abusiuis saeculi has long been regarded as one of the three most important Irish Latin compositions of the Early Middle Ages. It stands at the apex of Hiberno-Latin learning in the seventh century, along with the De mirabilibus sacrae scripturae [DMSS] of Pseudo-Augustine (dateable to 654/655), and the anonymous Liber de ordine creaturarum—described by the great Charles W. Jones as ‘a work of magnificent conception’—which may be derivative of the De mirabilibus or may have been its source. In the ongoing (and seemingly never-ending) debate about the nature and extent of that Hiberno-Latin learning, those three texts have provided the benchmark against which the writings of later Irish authors, and of Latin writers in England and on the continent, have been measured. Of the three, the DDAS has been adjudged to have exerted the greatest influence, principally for its importance in the development of the concept of the speculum principis. Kenney remarked of it that ‘[t]he section which especially interested … continental students was that discussing the rex iniquus. And it can be said that the unknown Irish author made a real contribution to the development of European political theory’.