FLEXI aims to find out how law was transmitted and reproduced by scholars rather than by a centralised authority in medieval Europe, by studying the late medieval Irish legal ‘Digests’.
FLEXI involves research in the fields of intellectual history, law in medieval Ireland, palaeography, comparative legal history and digital humanities.
By combining linked data model and network analysis, comparative legal history and natural language processing methods, FLEXI examines the structure and connections of the texts besides their contents, focusing especially on their compilatory principles and intellectual networks. It will revolutionise how we use medieval documents to understand intellectual life and textual reproduction.
The project investigates how the fluid, multifarious law texts were produced and reproduced and accepted as sources of law in medieval Europe, using four sets of late medieval Irish law texts called the ‘Digests’ as its main object of study. The Digests contain texts quoted from diverse sources, and organise them into a systematic review of the legal tradition.
FLEXI traces and measures the sources used in these digests quantitatively, using linked data model and network analysis to reveal their compilatory principles and text reuse patterns. This is an innovative approach to probe the intellectual universe of the jurists. It evaluates the variation within the digests and examines the interpretative techniques by which the jurists justified and harmonised the variation.
FLEXI looks for possible influences from other legal traditions such as the Canon Law and the Civil Law, which may have informed the organising principle of the digests. We also question the education that the jurists who composed or wrote these digests received – both home and abroad – and how it could have affected the form of the digests.
Finally, FLEXI tests and develops software for automated detection of parallel texts (text reuse) for early Irish texts. The toolkit and software developed by FLEXI will offer a long- needed digital solution to the processing of early Irish texts, because it can quickly identify similar texts from the vast corpus of Irish materials, thus revealing intertextual relationships hidden from the human eye.
FLEXI is supported by the (opens in a new window)European Union (ERC 2022 StG), grant agreement number 101076246
(opens in a new window)DOI 10.3030/101076246
Duration: September 2023 - August 2028
09 July 2025
Fangzhe Qiu, a presentation: (opens in a new window)The Structure of the Late Medieval Irish Legal Digests
Andrew Ó Donnghaile, a presentation: (opens in a new window)The intellectual landscape of the medieval Irish legal digests: filiation, affiliation and education
Eachiarn Erbnen, a presentation: The Copy of O'Davoren's Glossary in MS Trinity College Dublin, 1317 (H2.15b): Palaeographical Characteristics and Intertextuality
10 June 2025
Andrew Ó Donnghaile and Fangzhe Qiu, a presentation: (opens in a new window)Synthesis and Reproduction in the Late Medieval Irish Digests
25 January 2025
Andrew Ó Donnghaile, a presentation: Citizenship in early medieval Ireland? Legal rights and inter-territorial perspectives
11 December 2024
Fangzhe Qiu, a presentation: The use of poetic forms in early Irish law texts
16 October 2024
Fangzhe Qiu, a presentation: Early Irish law as historiography
31 August 2024
Fangzhe Qiu, a presentation: Introductory narratives in early Irish law: a change in style in the late Old Irish period? (to be published in the Proceedings)
30 April 2024
Andrew Ó Donnghaile, a presentation: The FLEXI Project: Jurists and textual transmission in medieval Ireland
26 April 2024
Fangzhe Qiu, a presentation: Mar aderid na dligthi-so: construction of textual networks in late medieval Irish ‘digests’
14 November 2023
Fangzhe Qiu, a lecture: Early Irish law: progress to date and challenges ahead
We are the people behind FLEXI.
Fangzhe is an associate professor in the School of ICSF. His research interests include Celtic historical linguistics, Early Irish law, and early Irish literature. He also has a keen interest in generative syntax, corpus linguistics and tuxedo cats. He is the Principal Investigator of FLEXI.
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Cassandra is the Research Assistant on this project and a first-year PhD student at Maynooth University. Her research interests include the following, especially as they pertain to medieval Ireland: visual culture, intellectual networks, historical linguistics, and translation studies. Her further interests include visual arts, music, dogs, and ensuring Celtic Studies is accepting and accessible.
Andrew Ó Donnghaile is the Irish law postdoctoral researcher on the project. His research interests include early Irish law, medieval insular political and military history, and medieval Irish horsemanship, informed by a reconstructive practical approach. He is also involved in researching and reconstructing Eurasian warfare and horsemanship, and he currently practices Eurasian equestrian martial arts.
Héléna D.M. Lagréou is the postdoctoral researcher on the project. Her research interests include medieval criminal law and justice, with a focus on the ius commune (including Roman law), canon law, and secular legal systems of England, France, Ireland, and Italy, in their historical and cultural contexts. Outside of her research interests, she is involved with research on contemporary death penalty cases, and has a keen interest in Victorian era oddities.
With over a decade of experience in the games and tech industry as a senior software engineer, David is developing our technology from tools to NLP models. His interests include the Irish language, music, ecology, sci-fi, disability justice and politics.