What Was The Law Of The Innocents?

Conny Waters -AncientPages.com - The Law of the Innocents was an attempt to protect non-combatants: women, children, and the clergy – to give rights to civilians.

It was introduced in 697 AD by the Abbot of Iona, Adomnán (624  – 704), and is also known as the Lex Innocentium or the 'Cáin Adomnáin'.

Left: Iona Abbey where Cáin Adomnáin, the Irish 'Geneva Convention', may have been written. Image credit:  John Naisbitt - CC BY-SA 2.0;  Right: St Adomnán depicted on stained glass in Dunlewey church. Image credit: Andreas F. Borchert - CC BY-SA 4.0

This important treeaty was promulgated amongst a gathering of Irish, Dál Riatan and Pictish notables at the Synod of Birr in 697.  Adomnán of Iona, ninth Abbot of Iona after St. Columba is credited by the dcumentäs initiation.

It is called the "Geneva Accords" of the ancient Irish and Europe's first human rights treaty. It protected women and non-combatants, extending the Law of Patrick, which protected monks, to civilians.

The Law of the Innocents laid out a series of fines for unlawful acts including wounding or slaying innocent children, clerics and women.

Abbot Adomnán, who was also the author of  of the most important book on the life of St Columba managed to get the King of Dál Riata, the king of the Picts and more than 50 Irish kings to agree to the Law of the Innocents.

The Cáin Adomnáin recounts that an angel told Adomnán to create a law that:

… women be not in any manner killed by men, through slaughter or any other death, either by poison, or in water, or in fire, or by any other beast, or in a pit, or by dogs, but that they shall die in their lawful bed …

… he who from this day forward shall put a woman to death and does not do penance according to the Law, shall not only perish in eternity, and be cursed for God and Adomnán.

Further, the treaty included the laws, among other things, to guarantee the safety and immunity of various types of noncombatants in warfare. It required, for example, that "whoever slays a woman... his right hand and his left foot shall be cut off before death, and then he shall die."

If a woman committed murder, arson, or theft from a church, she was to be set adrift in a boat with one paddle and a container of gruel. This left the judgment up to God and avoided violating the proscription against killing a woman.

The treaty also includes the laws regarding sanctions against the killing of children, clerics, clerical students and peasants on clerical lands; rape; impugning the chastity of a noblewoman and women from having to take part in warfare.

Written by Conny Waters - AncientPages.com Staff Writer

Updated on January 20, 2024

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