Those criminals who claimed protection at the altar were, under Gallic ecclesiastical usage, as we shall see, saved from death, but at the same time handed over as slaves to the parentes of the slain. And it is not difficult to detect the lines of thought leading to this result. In the ‘Penitentials’ attributed to St. Finian,[91] the spirit in which the missionary churches of Brittany, Wales, and Ireland, from their clerical point of view, dealt with crime very clearly appears. A layman, in addition to making composition to the injured person, should also do penance; but a cleric who possessed no property of his own could not pay the composition (s. 9, p. 110). What, then, was he to do in a case of homicide? The penitential (s. 23) lays down the rule:-- If any cleric kills his neighbour he must undergo ten years’ banishment with seven years’ penance. If after ten years he has acted rightly and is approved by the testimony of the abbot or priest, let him be received back into his country and let him satisfy the friends of him whom he has killed. Let him return to the father or mother (of the slain), if alive, saying ‘Behold I, as for your son, will do whatsoever you tell me.’ If he does not rightly do this he is not to be received--‘in eternum.’ Then in s. 53 is added, ‘If any one will propose better rules we will accept and follow them.’ To sum up the evidence of the canons, we can hardly claim to have done more than to have connected the coirp-dire of the Brehon Laws with the _pretium hominis_ of St. Patrick, and with the _pretium sanguinis_ of the ‘Canones Hibernenses,’ and with the clauses relating to homicide excerpted by the compiler of the so-called ‘Canones Wallici’ from the books of the Romans and Franks. The connection, though traceable only through ecclesiastical channels, seems to establish a continuity as regards the fixed payment for homicide between the Breton and Irish churches, and possibly the churches of the Goidelic portion of South Wales, of the fifth and sixth centuries. [Sidenote: Continuity of Irish and Breton custom as regards the ‘pretium hominis’ and payment in ancillæ.]