Cáin Adomnáin

[1] The legal symposium at the Synod of Birr was prompted when Adomnáin had an Aisling dream vision wherein his mother excoriated him for not protecting the women and children of Ireland.

Three texts of these legislations have come to us, the earliest being Cáin Adomnáin - Lex Innocentium - proclaimed by Adomnán, abbot of Iona, at the synod of Birr in 697.

[3] The Cáin Adomnáin includes a guarantor-list featuring 91 political and ecclesiastical figures from Ireland, Dál Riata, and Pictland, which has been shown to be near contemporaneous to the promulgation of the Law in 697.

[5] Adomnán was related to this king, and it has been suggested that an alliance with Uí Néill royal power helped ensure widespread support for the Law.

Various factors, including Marian devotion in seventh- and eighth-century Ireland,[3] are supposed to have contributed to inspire Adomnán to introduce these laws, but it may also be that as Columba's biographer, he was prompted by the saint's example.

[13] Adomnán's initiative appears to be one of the first systematic attempts to lessen the savagery of warfare among Christians, a remarkable achievement for a churchman on the remote outer edge of Europe.

In it, he gave local expression, in the context of the Gaelic legal tradition, to a wider Christian movement to restrain violence.

[16] There are annalistic examples of the justice of the Cáin Adomnáin being applied, such as here by Cenél nEógain High King Niall Glúndub, for whom the O'Neill Clan of Ulster are named.