Collectio canonum Hibernensis

Collectio canonum Hibernensis
Folio 15v of eighth-century manuscript 210 of the library at Cologne Cathedral, showing the first chapter of the second book titled De nomine presbiteri at the initial P
Also known as	Hibernensis, the Irish collection of canons
Author(s)	Cú Chuimne of Iona and Ruben of Dairinis
Language	medieval Latin
Date	ca 725
Genre	canon law collection
Subject	church law, administration and discipline; theology

The Collectio canonum Hibernensis (English: Irish Collection of Canon law) (or Hib) is a systematic Latin collection of Continental canon law, scriptural and patristic excerpts, and Irish synodal and penitential decrees. Hib is thought to have been compiled by two Irish scholars working in the late 7th or 8th century, Cú Chuimne of Iona (died 747) and Ruben of Dairinis (died 725).

Hib is one of the oldest systematic canon law collections in Europe. It was compiled in Ireland between 669 and 748. Its compilers are believed to have been Cú Chuimne of Iona (†747) and Ruben of Dairinis (†725). The attribution of Hib to these two men is problematical, however, because it is based solely on a garbled colophon found in a ninth-century manuscript from Brittany with a Corbie and Saint-Germain provenance (now in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, Lat. 12021). The earliest manuscript witness, according to Rob Meens of Utrecht University, is an early eighth-century collection preserved in Copenhagen (KB 58); Meens in fact refers to the manuscript as a "forerunner" of the Hibernensis. Several recensions of the collection may have circulated in the early Middle Ages, but the two main recensions (called A and B), containing between 65 and 69 books (the division of books varies between manuscripts), seem to date from an early stage of the collection's circulation. Hib circulated widely on the Continent in the eighth and ninth centuries, particularly in Brittany, and had a particularly strong influence on Italian canonistic thought after the ninth century. It may have played a role in the anointment of Pepin the Short as king of Francia in 751, on the advice of Vergilius of Salzburg.

Beyond topics typically covered by canon law collections, Hib touches on prayer, consecrated places, martyrs, the ‘substances of men’, blessings, and the soul; indeed, certain chapters often verge on essays on morality. Maurice P. Sheehy said of Hib, ‘as a single document, [it] is probably the most ambitious endeavour to codify Christian life of all the medieval canonical compilations.’ A relatively small portion of the work comprises excerpts from ancient canons and decretals; far more common are citations of Scripture and the Church Fathers―Origen, Jerome, Augustine, Pope Gregory I, and Gregory Nazianzenus being most prominent among these. Its use of Greek Fathers as sources for canon law has been called ‘unique’. Not including quotations inside excerpted patristic writers, Hib contains about 1,000 quotations of Scripture, two-thirds of which come from the Old Testament.