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. [Sidenote: 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. The next clause imposes for ordinary homicide seven years’ penance in bread and water. Clauses 8 and 10 fix the ‘prætium animæ’ of a pregnant woman (including woman and child) at twelve ancillæ. [Sidenote: _Ancilla_ of same value in silver as the Brehon _cumhal_.] Clause 9 fixes for us the silver value of the _ancilla_ and seems to show that it was the same as the silver value of the cumhal in the Brehon Laws. The clause is as follows:-- XII. Altilia[83] vel XIII. sicli (? XII.) prætium uniuscujusque ancillæ. Ecclesiastical usage retained to some extent the use of Roman phraseology. The siclus or sicilicus, as we have already seen, was the didrachma of two Roman _argentei_ or silver drachmæ. And as the drachma after Nero was one eighth of the Roman ounce, so the _siclus_ was one quarter. The Altilia was the ‘fattened heifer’ possibly of Irish custom.[84] Twelve fattened heifers or sicli equalled therefore three Roman ounces--_i.e._ the exact silver value of the cumhal of the Brehon Laws. Here, therefore, in these so-called Irish Canons the ancilla seems to be reckoned at the Brehon silver value of the cumhal. Having gained this point we proceed to examine the other clauses. In title III., headed ‘_Synodus Hibernensis decrevit_,’ are the following:[85]-- [Sidenote: Seven ancillæ the price of a man’s life.] Sanguis episcopi vel excelsi principis vel scribæ qui ad terram effunditur, si colirio indiguerit, eum, qui effuderit, sapientes crucifigi judicant, vel VII. ancillas reddat.