ON THE DATING
OF THE EARLY BRETON LAWCODES
BY
David N. DUMYILLE
A dozen years ago, in a now classic article,1 Professor Léon Fleuriot presented a remarkable case that the texts long known as Canones Wallici 2 were neither ecclesiastical nor Welsh but rather two collections of secular Breton laws3 whose origin he dated to the approximate period A.D. 520 x 560. Since 1971 his major thesis has gone unchallenged and no attempt will be made here to controvert his classification of the work or his arguments in favour of a Breton origin. Fleuriot’s arguments on these points are, however, of uneven quality, while nonetheless impressive in sum, and it may be advantageous to review part of the case before scholarly literature comes to embody excessive certainties or new errors.4
The arguments presented for a Breton, rather than a Welsh, origin for these laws are five in number.5
1. L. Fleuriot, ‘Un fragment en Latin de très anciennes lois bretonnes armoricaines du vie siècle’, Annales de Bretagne 78 (1971) 601-60. Most of the points in the following discussion relate to pp. 601-18 of Fleuriot’s paper. I should like to record my thanks to Professor Fleuriot for generously reading and commenting on a draft of this paper. Likewise, I am obliged to Dr P. Sims-Williams and Professor E. A. Thompson for their comments, and to Professor M. P. Sheehy for his unstinting gift of considerable assistance with the texts of the Collectio Canonum Hibernensis.
2. Critically edited by F. W. H. Wasserschieben, Die Bussordnungen der abendlän¬ dischen Kirche (Halle a. S., 1851), pp. 124-36, and, with English translation, by Ludwig Bieler, The Irish Penitentials (Dublin, 1963), pp. 136-59 (text and translation) and 247-50 (notes). There are two different recensions of the work, labelled ‘A’ and ‘P’ by Bieler and which he prints separately.
3. To some extent, as Fleuriot noted, his thesis was anticipated by Wasserschieben, Die Bussordnungen, p. 8, who described the work as ‘eine alte Volkrechtssammlung’, and by Frederic Seebohm, Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law (2nd edn, London, 1911), pp. 105-14, who considered this to be a product of the Breton Church. But it has been left to Fleuriot to work out the case more comprehensively.
4. W. Davies, ‘Land and power in early medieval Wales’, Past and Present 81 (1978) 3-23, at p. 17(-18), n. 45, notes that while ‘the date remains difficult to determine’, ‘it is highly unlikely to be later than the sixth century, a date preferred by all modern commen¬ tators’. Cf. also her paper, ‘The Latin charter-tradition in western Britain, Brittany and Ireland in the early mediaeval period’, in Ireland in Early Mediaeval Europe. Studies in Memory of Kathleen Hughes, edd. Dorothy Whitelock et al. (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 258-80 (at 276). As will appear, I should prefer to stress the difficulties rather than the agreement of the (few) modern commentators.
5. Fleuriot, ‘Un fragment’, pp. 607-18.
