Bretha Crólige

Bretha Crólige (Old Irish for "Judgements on Blood-lyings"^[1]: xvi) is an early Irish legal tract on the law of illegal injury and the institution of "sick-maintenance".

The beginning of Bretha Crólige (National Library of Ireland MS G 11, p. 441)

It is the 33rd text in the Senchas Már. It directly precedes Bretha Déin Chécht, a sister-tract on illegal injury.

Manuscripts

A single manuscript preserves Bretha Crólige (National Library of Ireland MS G 11), alongside three other texts from the final third of the Senchas Már.^{[2]: 90, 303} D. A. Binchy produced an edition of this copy, with translation and commentary, in 1938.^[3]: 18 Binchy calls this manuscript a "remarkably good copy".^[4]: 1 Other manuscripts contain fragments of the text or commentaries on it.^[4]: 2

On the basis of some internal inconsistencies, Rudolf Thurneysen suggested the existing text of Bretha Crólige was the composite of two separate texts. Binchy rejected this hypothesis.^[4]: 69

Contents

Bretha Crólige deals with the law of illegal injury and the institution of "sick-maintenance" in early Irish law. After a party has been illegally injured, they are given nine days to recover. After these nine days, if the injured has recovered but has a lasting disability, the culprit pays for the disability; if the injured will not recover, the culprit pays a large fine called the crólige báis ("blood-lying of death"); if the injured will recover but has not yet, the culprit is forced to pay "sick-maintenance" (othrus). In "sick-maintenance", the injured is taken to a neutral party and nursed back to health, with all expenses paid by the culprit.^{[5]: 129–130, 271} For any injury or disability, the size of the fine taken from the culprit depended on the status of the injured.^[5]: 8

Bretha Crólige is the 33rd text of the collection of legal texts called the Senchas Már, placed in the final third of that collection.^[2]: 304 The compilation of the Senchas Már is generally dated between the late 7th and early 8th century CE.^[1]: 33 The Senchas Már has two tracts dedicated to sick-maintenance: one is Bretha Crólige; the other is Slicht Othrusa ("The Course of Sick-Maintenance"), a text of only 35 words which directly precedes Bretha Crólige in the Senchas Már.^{[6]: 167 [2]: 303} A sister-tract on illegal injury, Bretha Déin Chécht, directly follows it.^{[2]: 303 [3]: 18}

The problem of the date at which sick-maintenance ceased to be applied is an open question. The early 8th-century text Críth Gablach tells us that sick-maintenance had ceased to be taken; yet the contemporary Bretha Crólige describes this law as if it were a live institution.^{[6]: 163–165} As Fergus Kelly puts it, this discrepancy may "betray a difference of date, [...] reflect differences in local custom, or merely [reflect] a conflict of opinion between law-schools".^[5]: 2

Binchy suggested that sick-maintenance was a feature of Indo-European law on the basis of comparison with Indian and Germanic laws. His suggestion was elaborated by Calvert Watkins through comparisons with the Hittite laws.^[7] Lisi Oliver has argued that the institution of sick-maintenance in Anglo-Saxon law was borrowed from Irish law (rather than the two institutions sharing a common Indo-European heritage).^[8]: 319

Beyond their value as a source for early Irish law, Bretha Crólige and Bretha Déin Chécht reveal much about the extent of medical knowledge and the kinds of treatment available in the period.^[9]: 234 The other available medical manuscripts reproduce medicine of a much later date (mostly borrowed from Arabic sources).^[10]: 5