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#fascinating combo of law made by universal institute like the church + unique local culture
lady-plantagenet · 3 years
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“The great peculiarity of the ancient laws of Ireland, so far as they are accessible to us, is discussed, with much instructive illustration, in the General Preface to the Third Volume of the official translations. They are not a legislative structure, but the creation of a class of professional lawyers, the Brehons, whose occupation became hereditary, and who on that ground have been designated, though not with strict accuracy, a caste”
“The ‘law of nature’ is, therefore, the ancient pre-Christian ingredient in the system, and the ‘Senchus Mor’ says of it: ‘The judgments of true nature while the Holy Ghost had spoken through the mouths of the Brehons and just poets of the men of Erin, from the first occupation of Ireland down to the reception of the faith, were all exhibited by Dubhthach to Patrick. What did not clash with the Word of God in the written law and the New Testament and the consciences of believers, was confirmed in the laws of the Brehons by Patrick and by the ecclesiastics and chieftains of Ireland; for the law of nature had been quite right except the faith, and its obligations, and the harmony of the Church and people. And this is the “Senchus Mor.” 
- Sir Henry Sumner Maine, ‘Lectures on the Early History of Institutions’; Lecture 3: Kinship as the Basis of Society
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