Adomnán's Lex innocentium and the laws of war by James W. Houlihan

Abstract

Reviewed by: Adomnán's Lex innocentium and the laws of war by James W. Houlihan Courtney Selvage (bio) James W. Houlihan, Adomnán's Lex innocentium and the laws of war. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2020. ISBN: 978–84682–849–2. 240 pages. €50 (cloth). This volume, a published version of Houlihan's Ph.D. dissertation recently completed at University College Dublin, is a welcome addition to the corpus of research on the cáinlaw promulgated by Adomnán in 697. Of immediate note is the decision to refer to the law as Lex innocentium rather than its more commonly used title, Cáin Adomnáin. This is based not only on the way the law is referred to in the Annals of Ulster in the year of its promulgation, but in recognition that the law was promulgated with the purpose of 'protecting innocents' and of its historical place in the laws of warfare. Meyer's 1905 edition of the text and Ní Dhonnchadha's 2001 translation are reproduced in the appendix. The introductory chapter begins with an analysis of the concept and context of Adomnán's law—that is, as a law written distinctly for the protection of innocents: women, children, and clerics. The concept is presented with a discussion of the legal terms jus ad bellum 'the right to go to war' and jus in bello 'right behaviour during the course of war'—both modern coinages, and not in regular use, as the author explains, until after World War ii (12–13). While it may seem strange to apply these recently coined terms to a law composed in the seventh century, the author asserts that it might be understood as an in bello law in parallel to modern humanitarian law. It is his view that a presentation of the law within the context of modern international law may provide some understanding of Adomnán's ideas in the composition of his text. He further indicates that, in consideration of the historical contexts of war and violence from late antiquity to the later Middle Ages, the concept of jus ad bellum dominated, making Adomnán's law a particular outlier. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the 'attitudes of warfare and violence in the early medieval West' (27). This is a necessary discussion, considering the early Christian attitudes towards violence, especially towards innocents, as well as Augustine's views on just war and medieval interpretations of his thought and interest in jus ad bellum. On this basis, Houlihan determines that 'Augustine's attitudes to warfare appear to have had little or no effect on Adomnán's thinking' (47). Instead, as he states, Adomnán's concern was with in bello, and the category of 'non-combatants' who would be protected under his law. The chapter then discusses the position of non-combatants in the 'Barbarian laws', the laws of the Germanic people, admitting tenuous connection to Adomnán's law, but this does provide some insight as to the concerns of contemporaneous legal texts. Finally, the chapter briefly discusses some accounts on mass violence in war which occurred roughly contemporaneously with Adomnán, including one from Bede on a killing of a large number of monks by the Northumbrian king in 603. [End Page 128] Chapter 3 further expands on the ideas presented in chapter 2, as it presents an analysis of contemporaneous Irish attitudes towards violence. The evidence considered includes representations of violent affairs in the portion of the Chronicle of Ireland supposedly composed at Iona during Adomnán's time as abbot; archaeological finds of female burials marked with significant bodily trauma; the protection of innocents in other examples of early Irish secular and canon law; the penitentials and hagiography; and other literary texts and sagas, with particular focus on the concept of díberg 'marauding'. The author makes the most comparison with the sellach-text, part of Senchas már, arguing that it might be seen as the template upon which Lex innocentium was based. We are then given a biography of Adomnán in chapter 4, the core of which does not deviate significantly from other publications on the abbot. Adomn...