It is perhaps possible with help from another set of canons to obtain further evidence of Celtic usage as to the fine for homicide, and what is still more to the point, to trace it back to the Continental side of the Channel.
The so-called ‘Canones Wallici’ of perhaps the Breton Church.
At the end of the Latin version of the Dimetian Code of South Wales are appended as part of chapter XLIX. several clauses which do not belong to the Code and are quite inconsistent with its provisions. These clauses are carelessly extracted, with variations, from a set of canons which, from their thus partly appearing at the end of the Latin version of the Dimetian Code, have come to be known as the ‘Canones Wallici.’
The oldest MS. of this document is referred to the 8th century, and the canons themselves are referred by Haddan and Stubbs to the 7th century.[90]
It is not at all clear that, notwithstanding the name they have acquired, they are of Welsh origin.
The intercourse between the missionary monks and churches of Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland was so intimate that there is no difficulty in understanding how a Welsh scribe or copyist falling upon these canons should add extracts from them to a Latin copy he was making of the Dimetian Code. Whether of Welsh origin or not, some of them may have been used, amongst others, by the Church in South Wales.
It may seem presumptuous to doubt their Welsh origin after the opinion expressed both by Wasserschleben and such competent authorities as Haddan and Stubbs, to whose labours the student is so greatly indebted. But that opinion is doubtfully expressed, and reference is made by them to the fact that two of the three MSS. describe the collection of canons not as ‘Canones Wallici’ but as ‘excerpta de libris Romanorum et Francorum,’ and ‘excerpta de libris Romanis et Francorum’ while the third, of the 8th century, does not seem to have any heading but ‘Incipit justicium culparum.’ Haddan and Stubbs assign the origin of these canons to that period (c. A.D. 550-650) during which both the Welsh Church and the Welsh Principalities appear to have become organised, i.e. to the period following St. Patrick and St. Finian, during which the monastic churches of South Wales were the channel of intercourse between the Breton and Irish Churches. This collection, according to the same authority, may date from the 7th century.
The Canons may have been meant for use on both sides of the Channel. And as they are ‘excerpta’ from books of the Romans and Franks, they seem to originate from the Continental side, however much they may have been used in Wales.
When we come to examine them, they bear every evidence of being ‘excerpta,’ and we know from the excerpta of Isidor what different materials may be brought together in such a collection. There is no continuous plan or order apparently running through the whole. And certain of the canons, chiefly those relating to homicide, seem to be marked off from the remainder by the payments being made throughout in ‘ancillæ’ and ‘servi’; whilst in most others the payments are made in libræ argenti or in libræ stagni, or occasionally in solidi, unciæ, and scripula.
The safer course may be, therefore, to treat them, not as a consistent and single set of canons, but as excerpta from various sources.