St. Patrick’s ‘pretium hominis’ of ‘seven ancillæ.’
St. Patrick, in his ‘Confessions,’[81] treats the pretium hominis as a well-known unit of value. These are the words of St. Patrick:—
Vos autem experti estis quantum erogavi illis qui judicabant per omnes regiones quas ego frequentius visitabam; censeo enim non minimum quam pretium quindecim hominum distribui illis.
You know by experience how much I have paid out to those who were judges in all the regions which I have often visited; for I think that I have given away to them not less than the pretium quindecim hominum.
Further, in the ‘Tripartite Life’ St. Patrick is represented as putting the alternative between the death of a transgressor and the payment of seven cumhals (‘Aut reum morti aut VII. ancillas reddere debet’).[82] The evidence for this coirp dire and its payment in ancillæ seems to be thrown back by these passages to the fifth century.
Evidence of the ‘Canones Hibernenses.’
Further, when we turn to the series of ‘Canones Hibernenses’ published in Wasserschleben’s work, Die Bussordnungen der abendländischen Kirche (p. 136), we find repeated evidence that the ‘pretium hominis,’ or ‘pretium sanguinis,’ of seven ancillæ, was a well-recognised unit of payment in ecclesiastical quarters more or less connected with the Irish and Breton Churches.
The first group of these Canons is headed ‘De disputatione Hybernensis Sinodi et Gregori Nasaseni sermo de innumerabilibus peccatis incipit.’
The first clause of this group imposes a penance for parricide of fourteen years in bread and water and satisfaction; or half this only if there was no intention.