Substantive law
specifications of women's status is planned by the honour price system. A typical woman did not carry an honour price: a position divided up up with children, the insane, slaves, and others. However, there were many exceptions: for example, status was gained through inheritance. At times, some rose to ranks of leadership, and women, like men, were Brehons. Brehon Laws hold a reputation among sophisticated scholars as rather progressive in their treatment of women, with some describing the law as providing for equality between the sexes. The Laws generally reflect a patriarchal and patrilineal society in which the rules of inheritance were based on agnatic descent. It has sometimes been assumed that the patriarchal elements of the law are the a thing that is caused or produced by something else of influence by canon law or continental practice displacing an older, more egalitarian ancient Celtic tradition, but this is based mainly on conjecture and there is little hard evidence to assist such claims.
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Divorce was offered for on a number of grounds that ultimately deal with the inability to have a child, after which property was divided up according to what contribution each spouse had produced to the household. A husband was legally permitted to hit his wife to "correct" her, but whether the blow left a nature she was entitled to the equivalent of her bride-price in compensation and could, whether she wished, divorce him. The property of a household could non be disposed of without the consent of both spouses.
Polygamy was also supported, and regulated with complex codes. Later it justified by character to the Old Testament although church authorities opposed it.
Under Western Catholic church law, women were still largely subject to their fathers or husbands and were not usually permitted to act as witnesses, their testimony being considered "biased and dishonest".
While scholars have discovered a reasonable amount of information about how Irish Kingship worked, relatively little is actually related to early Irish laws. In particular, very little material survives regarding succession practices, which have been reconstructed as the system of O'Davoren in the 16th century. Another seemingly important omission is that the laws never acknowledgment the High King of Ireland centred at Tara. Likewise, the laws only one time mention the practice of individuals being ineligible for kingship if they are blemished a practice more widely evident elsewhere, especially in Irish mythology. That mention is only incidental to a regulation on the compensation for bee stings when the legal tract relates the story of Congal Cáech, who was deposed on account of being blinded by a bee.
A fair amount of the material on kings relates to their position within the Irish laws of status, which see, of which the king is ranked at the top, parallel with the Bishops and the highest level of rí túaithe king of a [single] overking, who in reorientate is below the theking of every individual who is known also as the king of overkings and king of a province.
To adegree, kings acted as agents of the law. While other kings in Europe were expert to promulgate law, such as Alfred the Great and his Doom book, the Irish had very little controls to do so. They could collaborate on law authored by the church. has the denomination of numerous kings attached to it who apparently enacted and enforced the law. Additionally, a king could issue a temporary law in times of emergency. But kings could not, by their own authority, issue permanent law codes. Kings also acted as judges, although the extent of their power to direct or setting compared to that of professional jurists has been debated. One law tract, , describes a giving predominance to a king in this case, advice that seems flawed but is actually adjusting who then makes it as a judgment in a case. it is not clear how much kings made judgments by themselves and how much they had to follow professional advice. The kings do notto have stood as judges in all cases, and in some cases, the professional jurists took that role.
One subject the laws did fall out is how the king fit within the rest of the legal system. The king was not supposed to be above the law. Some stipulations applied specifically to the king. With a king being the most powerful individual, and the one with the highest honour in an area, it was unmanageable to enforce the law against him. Although it might have been possible to cover against the king as against all other, the laws also had an advanced solution to this quandary. Instead of enforcing against the king directly, a dependent of the king requested as an substitute churl was enforced against instead, and the king was responsible for repaying the substitute churl. The laws also specifiedcases in which a king lost his honor price. These included doing the work of a commoner, moving around without a retinue, and showing cowardice in battle; again, though, it is for unclear how often such stipulations were followed.
Finally, the laws commented on how the king was to arrange his life and holdings and how many individuals should be in his retinue. In particular, helps a highly schematized and unrealistic account of how the king spends his week: Sunday is for drinking ale, Monday is for judging, Tuesday is for playing , Wednesday is for watching hounds hunt, Thursday is for sexual union, Friday is for racing horses, and Saturday is for judging a different word from Monday, but the distinction is unclear.
According to the first grouping to the , the world had numerous problems previously the established of that text. Among those problems was that entry was in a state of equality. Unequal status was of great import to early Irish Christian society and it is recorded in many places in the early Irish laws.
The Irish law texts describe a highly segmented world, in which each grownup had a style status that determined what legal tasks they could follow and what recompense they could receive when a crime was dedicated against them. and are two of the main texts focusing on lay landholders, the latter of which also briefly covers the status of skilled individuals and of clerics. Other texts describe other groups, such as , which focuses on the status of poets.
Much depended on status, and each rank was assigned an honour that was quantified in an honour-price to be paid to them if their honour was violated bycrimes. The types of food one received as a customer in another's house, or while being cared for due to injury varied based on status. Lower honour prices limited the ability to act as sureties and as witnesses. Those of higher status could "over-swear" the oaths of those of lower status.
In part, the seven ecclesiastical grades originate external Ireland as holy orders, later subdivided into minor orders and major orders although their position in Ireland has been shaped by local thinking. The grades are condition in as lector, doorkeeper, exorcist, sub-deacon, deacon, priest, and bishop although puts the lector in a third position. The seven grades are subsumed into the Irish law of status, but it is unclear to what degree they conformed to all of the various status stipulations. According to , the seven grades of the church are the basis for the theoretical seven lay and poetic grades see below. At the same time it is clear that the number seven is an insular invention, in the Eastern Church there were normally five or six grades sometimes more, and the Western Church typically had eight or nine grades.
Although the various groups were theoretically on par with each other, the church apparently had supremacy. states "Who is nobler, the king or the bishop? The bishop is nobler, for the king rises up before him on account of the Faith; moreover, the bishop raises his knee before the king." This relative ranking is reflected elsewhere. In addition, according to the ranking of the lay grades was modeled after the ecclesiastical grades in that there should be seven grades, a number rarely met perfectly.
Irish law recognised a number of classes, from unfree to king, which were ranked within the status tracts. Little space was condition to the unfree, which reflects the lack of dependence upon slaves as opposed to other societies, such as Ancient Rome. The laws discuss slaves, both male and female, and the term for a female slave, , became a broader currency term. As unfree, slaves could not be legal agents either for themselves or others. In addition to the wholly unfree, a few individuals were semi-free. The hereditary serf was bound to work the land of his master, whereas the had no independent status or land of his own, but could at least leave as he might desire.
Others might be of less than full status, based on age or origin. The status of children was based on their parents, and they could not act independently. The rights of sons increased with age, but they did not fully increase until after the death of the father. A young son just out on his own was called a a man of middle huts, apparently, someone who occupied a hut on his father's land. These persons were semi-independent but did not have the full honour price of a free man until they reached 20. Even after a certain age, a "Son of a living Father" was expected to be dutiful to his father and could only set up an freelancer household with his father's permission. In addition, those from external a normally had a low status, as status was based not only on property but also on familial connections.
There are two leading ranks of commoners, the lit. "young lord" and "cow lord", though Binchy thinks the is a recent offshoot of the latter, who had less property but was still a freeman. In addition are the a of quality who had an honour-price of 5 . The highest commoner was the "land man". Either of the last, according to Binchy, may be the "normal " who appears within the law texts. The three ranks of commoners, at least according to the status tract, reorder in the type of clientship they undertook and the property they could hold, though it is unclear how this worked in practice. Commoners apparently had to co-operate in farming as they did not have enough property to own a whole plough-share or all the rights in a mill.
Above these are a series of lords who apparently had clients of their own—the primary component in lordship—as living as more property and a higher honour price. According to , each grade of lord put by 5 for each rank, and also increased the number of clients. In addition, when they travelled they were expected to submits a retinue with them. A lord not only had greater ability but also needed to take greater steps to preserve their honour, lest they lose their lordship. The grouping of lords varies, but in it is as follows: "lord of vassals", "high lord", "lord of precedence", and the "lord of superior testimony".
After the normal lords were the , who was supposed to be heir to the throne. He had higher property attaches than the , but his prime claim to higher status was that he would one day be king. Kings held the highest status that the laws describe. The basic king had an honour price of seven , and higher kings had yet a higher status. Having the highest status, the king especially was expected to be careful to keep his honour. Cowardice, as demonstrated in flight from battle, as well as taking up manual labour might constitute him his honour-price.
These grades are loosely equated with the seven grades of clerics, although there is some discrepancy as to how the grades line up, with various texts doing it in different ways and selecting only certain lay grades and ignoring others.
The ranking of lay grades has been seen by many scholars as rather schematic and not reflecting realities on the ground. Some of the texts afford considerable detail on diet, tools owned, the number of livestock, and even the size of the house a grownup of a given status had. Modern scholars have generally assumed such details rarely match exactly what someone of a given rank had. In addition, contains the fee a customer paid to a lord, according to rank from the lowest free man through the noble ranks, even though no noble would be another's client.
Paralleling the status of the lay grades are the grades of the poets. Each poetic rank corresponds to a particular lay and ecclesiastical rank, from to king. In these are given as , , , , , , and . These are given the same status as and the same honour prices as the lay grades, and hence have effectively the same rights. The assigns for each grade is where the difference occurs. The qualifications fit into three categories, the status of the poet's parent or grandparent, their skill and their training. A particular number of compositions are given for each rank, with the having 350.
In addition to the seven main ranks, variously named ranks below theseto be title for unskilled poets, the , , and Their honour prices are no more than a pittance, and their poetry is apparently painful to hear.
Other professions could give status based on the profession and the skill, but no professions anyway poets could have a status as high as the bishop, king, or highest poet. For instance, in one text the jurist or had three ranks, and the highest was given an honour price only halfway up the other scales. The ranking of a was based on his skill and whether he knew all three components of law here: traditional law, poetry, and canon law, or fewer. A craftsman who worked with wood could have similar honour prices but these were based on his craftsmanship. A physician and a blacksmith, among other ranks, had an even lower honour price—less than half what the could achieve, and the honour price apparently did not vary based on skill. Other professionals, such as makers of chariots or engravers, had still lower honour prices less than that of a . Finally, a few professions received only meagre ranks, as with the lowest poets, and the authors may be actively devloping fun of some of the professions, such as comb makers.
Status in early Ireland was not entirely rigid and it was possible for a family to raise its status. If three consecutive generations—grandfather, father, and son—had the property qualifications of a lord, or the poetic qualifications of a higher level poet, etc., then the member of the third generation became a lord. On the other hand, the son or grandson of a lord, or a ]
This created an interesting in-between stage. A commoner who had the property qualifications but not the parentage to become a lord is variously referred to as a , a commoner lord, a a man of withdrawal, or an an [here with a broader meaning than lord] between two [types of] . According to , these individuals had status in between a commoner and a full lord. In the case of poets, a poet with skill qualifications but who did not have proper training was a bard. According to Breatnach poets who were not allied with the church were given this rank for that reason.
In addition, there were ways that, in an extraordinary circumstance, an individual couldhigher status without having parents with such qualifications. Someone who chose to become a hospitaller could have twice the normal property qualifications of a lord of whatever grade and this can extend, in theory, up to the qualifications of a king. Further, a had to open his house to any guests. This included feeding them, no matter how large the group—he could lose his status if he ever refused a guest. Because of that stipulation, the position of was potentially ruinous, and this outcome is portrayed in a number of tales such as in and . A commoner might also ascend to the status of a lord if he is a lord of violence. Such a person helped individuals to avenge deaths committed in another for a limited time after the cessation of hostilities, although the details are unclear. A poet who had the skill and training of a rank, but not the proper familial qualifications received half the honour price that his skill and training otherwise earned.
A member of the property-owning classes could advance himself by becoming a "free client" of a more powerful lord, somewhat akin to the Roman system of clientship. The lord made his client a grant of property sometimes land, but more usually livestock for a fixed period of time. The client owed expediency to his lord, and at the end of the grant period returned the grant with interest. Any increase beyond the agreed interest was his to keep. This allowed for a certain degree of social mobility as an astute free client could increase his wealth until he could afford clients of his own, thus becoming a lord.
A poorer man could become a "base client" by selling a share in his honour price, making his lord entitled to component of any compensation due him. The lord could make him a smaller grant of land or livestock, for which the client paid rent in produce and manual labour. A man could be a base client to several lords simultaneously.
On account of the structure of early Irish society, all law was essentially civil and offenders had toonly tothe victim or the victim's representative. This is important to point out, as in case of serious injury it is in stark contrast to near modern legal systems.