Bilingualism in the Cambrai Homily

Abstract

The Cambrai Homily (Cambrai, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 679 [s. viii2] ff. 37rb–38rb) is a short prose homily found between two chapters of the Collectio canonum Hibernensis; as the Homily is incomplete, it has been suggested that it was copied from a stray leaf inserted into the exemplar of the Collectio. The Homily itself is estimated to date to the seventh or first half of the eighth century. More salient for the purpose of this anthology, however, is the fact that the Homily code-switches between Latin and Old Irish. Some claim that this text provides us with the earliest record of continuous Irish prose; as such it has long been an important source for early Irish linguistics, as well as evidence for sermons in the seventh-century Irish Church. Nevertheless, the aspects of code-switching between Old Irish and Latin in the Cambrai Homily remain underexplored. This article provides an assessment of existing perspectives on the relationship between Latin and Old Irish in this homily, and offers a fresh interpretation of the code-switching that takes place.