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Life
| [Daniel Anthony Binchy; Daniel A.]; Irish scholar; ed. UCD and Munich; served as Irish Minister to Berlin, 1929-32; studied Celtic law under Rudolf Thurneysen; issued Church and State in Fascist Italy (OUP 1941, rep. 1970); ed. Críth gablach (1941), a 7th or 8th c. compilation on the law of persons in verse, known by its catalogue number as H.3.18; |
| ed. Corpus Iuris Hibernici, 6 vols. (1979), a comprehensive collection of ancient Irish law; wrote on Irish law, notably in ‘The Linguistic and Historical Value of the Irish Law Tracts’ (1943), seeking to relate ancient Irish law with Sanskrit prototypes in the Rigveda, espec. the law of the ‘appointed daughter’ (or banchomarba/female heir) - an aetiological conjecture now largely discredited; |
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appt. Snr. Prof., DIAS; he was a close friend of Frank O’Connor; the jurist William Binchy and the novelist Maeve Binchy are his son and dg.; with Osborn Bergin and R. I. Best, he is famously the subject of a comic verses by Flann O’Brien; the author Maeve Binchy was a neice. DIW OCIL
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Works
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| See also Liam Breatnach, A Companion to the Corpus Iuris Hibernici [Early Irish Law Ser., 5] (Dublin: School of Celtic Studies/DIAS 2005), xv, 499pp. |
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Bibliographical details Corpus iuris hibernici ad fidem codicum manuscriptorum recognovit, ed. D. A. Binchy, 6 vols. (Baile Átha Cliath: Institiuíd Ard-Léinn Bhaile Átha Cliath [DIAS] 1978), xxviii [“Introductory matter”; issued as a separate booklet], 2,343pp. [26 cm.]; incorporates Text in Old Irish and annotations in English; also “List of manuscripts according to present location” [p.xxvi]. |
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Commentary
Myles Dillon & Nora Chadwick, The Celtic Realms [History and Civilisation] (London: London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1967), p.155: ‘Dr Binchy has drawn attention to the resemblances in certain points between the Irish and Indian law-books. In both countries the law consists of canonical texts, invested with a sacred origin, and interpreted exclusively by a privileged caste. There were law-schools in each with varying traditions of interpretation. The relations between pupil and teacher (Irish felmac and fithithir; Sanskrit sísya and guru) were similar, with eventual right of succession. The Hindu sapinda, a family group of four generations, descendants of a common great-grandfather, seems to have the same significance and functions as the Irish derbfine and the Welsh gwely. The basic family unit was the same in both systems […; &c.]’ (Bibl., Binchy, ‘The Linguistic and Historical Value of the Irish Law Tracts’, 23, 27, 30, Proceedings of the British Academy, XXIX, 1943 [q.p.]; here p.11). Further [comparing Indian and Irish legal systems]: ‘We can even claim agreement in the number of forms of marriage, form Binchy has suggested that two of the Irish “unions” are a later development’ [cites Studies in Early Irish Law, p.vi] (p.12; and see footnote 2: ‘I am heavily indebted to Dr. Binchy for advice about [the] similarities beween Hindu and Irish law’ (idem.). The authors further write: ‘In an illuminating article Professor Binchy has recently set the ceremonial with which Medb is traditionally invested in a wider context, demonstrating its archaic character and its relationship to royal investiture of other Irish kings, and to kings in other parts of the world which imbued them with divine powers.’ (citing Ériu, XVIII, 134f.)
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Donnchadh Ó Corráin, ‘Early Ireland: Directions and Re-directions’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 1, 2 (Autumn 1994), pp.1-15: calls Binchy the ‘former of opinion’ in relation to the idea that early Irish literature is rooted in orality rather than in literary tradition [see further under Ó Corráin.]
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Quotations
‘The Diplomacy of the Vatican’, [article] in International Affairs, Jan. 1946): ‘The Vatican as a religious Power and the Vatican as a political Power cannot really be separated, but for a great many purposes they have to be distinguished [...] The relation between politics and morality is an extremely difficult problem, and I do not believe that the Papacy, any more than any other Power, has succeeded in solving it. One result of this is that papal pronouncements on questions of international morality have to be made with an eye to the repercussions of such statements on the interest of the Church not merely in the world as a whole but in one particular area; hence the tendency so often noted in such pronouncements, to enunciate only the most general principles. Again the necessity of considering the interests of the Catholic Church as a whole in a changing society leads to what may be called flexibility - or, if you prefer, opportunism - in various aspects of papal policy. More important still the wider view which is generally taken in the Curia often comes into conflict with local nationalism.’ (Rep. in The Bell, May 1946; quoted in Sean O’Faolain, The Irish 1947, p.115, ftn., where it is called ‘a very interesting essay’.)
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‘Two Blasket Autobiographies’: ‘I have often wondered about the nature of the difference, at once so subtle and so infinite, between the people of the Gaoltacht [sic] and the bulk of their compatriots whose mother tongue is English ... in reality they belong to quite a different world. Tralee, Cork and Dublin are almost as ‘foreign’ to the Blasket Islander as London or Glasgow. Indeed, by a curious irony of circumstance, they are much more remote from him than Springfield, Mass., where so many of his kith and kin ale congregated. In a sense he is a stranger in his own land, singularly indifferent to the questions which agitate his English-speaking countrymen. He knows little of the wrangles of our politicians (each group of whom vies with exalting him to the skies), almost as little as he knows of that political nationalism which owes its introduction to the descendants of English colonists and its progress to the spread of the English tongue.’ (Studies Vol. 23, 1933 [q.pp.]; cited in Luke Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture, Field Day, Cork UP 1996, p.97.)
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References
There is a wikipedia entry on Binchy [online]; see also bibl. item in Denise Inglis, Celts Bibliography, in Ibiblio/Gaelic [online] and other such listings.
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