The Magna Carta

by R. Anthony Kugler

When the English nobility summoned King John to the fields of Runnymede in 1215, they had already composed a set of demands. Their list was in Latin, as is the name by which their agreement with John has come to be known: Magna Carta, or the "Great Charter." This fact raises an interesting question: Why would people communicate with their own king in a language that was not their own, a language that had to be studied for years by anyone who used it?

The answer is somewhat more complicated than the question implies. The king's subjects fell into two distinct linguistic groups-the common people who spoke English, and the nobility, descendants of the Normans who came to England from France with William the Conqueror in 1066, who generally spoke French at home. Latin bridged the gap between the two, precisely because it had to be studied and because it had changed very little over time. Latin was then a fixed point of reference in a world full of language barriers and rapid linguistic change. As such, it was highly suitable for use in scientific treatises, law books, and charters great and small. Latin, in short, made the Magna Carta accessible, even as it does today. A student who knows a little Latin will have an easier time with it than with some of Shakespeare's plays.

The Magna Carta consists of a short preface and 63 articles that vary in influence and importance. Several, such as the ban on foreign mercenaries (hired soldiers), reflect John's immediate situation, and are thus of interest primarily to historians of his reign. Others add to our understanding of medieval life in general. Among the latter are articles on the relationship between a nobleman and his peasants, and the proper management of the king's forests. But the most significant articles are those that later generations, both in England and elsewhere, came to see as the first expressions of an individual's rights in society.

Consider, for example, what is perhaps the most famous article of all, Article Thirty-Nine: "No free man shall be...put in prison or deprived of his possessions except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land." This principle, namely that the king could no longer throw a man into his dungeons without a valid reason, was the basis for the passage in British Parliament of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679. This law inspired, in its turn, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It is important to remember, however, that the medieval concept of freedom is not our own. To John and his contemporaries, a "free man" was a person who was free from the ties that bound peasants legally to the land of their noble masters. Thus, while Article Thirty-Nine gave nobles, churchmen, townspeople, and merchants some measure of protection from the king, the peasants, who were the great majority of the population, could still be treated with contempt. This would not change for many years.

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