Statutes of Kilkenny

With the Kilkenny Statutes ( Statute [s ] of Kilkenny) of 1366, the English Crown as its object the separation of the English upper classes of the population of the conquered or to be conquered Ireland.

The statutes were at a meeting of the Irish Parliament in Kilkenny, chaired by the son of King Edward III. of England, Lionel, Duke of Clarence, adopted. Essentially, the purpose was thus to separate the English way of life of the allegedly barbaric of the Irish population. Above all, they wanted to the family of the alleged mixing with men's Preventing the ( explicitly so-called ) enemy nation. By creating unconnected possible social spheres of the contrast between the Gaelic - irokeltischen native population on the one hand and the society of the original Anglo-Norman conqueror should be cemented on the other. In this way, referring to the English crown to secure their domination structurally. Some of the 35 provisions remember it quite to the practice in the 19th and 20th century apartheid policy.

The ban all sorts of undesirable forms of behavior - strange is, inter alia, the prohibition of pernicious held Gaelic folk Sports Hurling (Art. 6) - shows, however, that the ideal of separation of sub- launchers and subjugated in social reality had long been undermined by an opposite practice. The statutes thus reflect less the social and cultural reality in late medieval Ireland as the norm.

Source

• Edmund Curtis / R. B. McDowell ( eds. ), Irish Historical Documents. 1172-1922, New York / London 1922, No. 17
• Online version in English with Link to the French-language original