By Bill Leonard
On June 15, 1215, eight hundred years ago, on Runnymede field between Windsor and the River Thames, King John of England placed his seal on a parchment document soon known as Magna Carta, the Great Charter. In today’s historical theme-park which is England, they celebrated with a June 15 event attended by Queen Elizabeth, apparently of her own volition. Magna Carta souvenirs include tee shirts, inkwells, and quill pens; even a baby’s pacifier with the entire document etched into the nipple! Then and now economics reigns!
In a New Yorker article entitled “The Rule of History,” Jill Lepore explores certain narratives that have informed our understanding of Magna Carta for eight centuries. She notes: “Magna Carta has been taken as foundational to the rule of law, chiefly because in it King John promised that he would stop throwing people into dungeons whenever he wished, a provision that lies behind what is now known as due process of law and is understood not as a promise made by a king but as a right possessed by the people. Due process is a bulwark against injustice, but it wasn’t put in place in 1215; it is a wall built stone by stone, defended, and attacked, year after year. Much of the rest of Magna Carta, weathered by time and for centuries forgotten, has long since crumbled, an abandoned castle, a romantic ruin.”
As with many “watershed moments” in history, the importance, indeed, mythology, of Magna Carta took centuries to construct, with considerable theological implication. Consider these elements of the story: 1) The document grew out of disputes between the English nobility and monarchy over wars, taxes, and capricious, cruel-and-unusual punishments. 2) Resulting civil unrest led the nobles to capture London, forcing the King to the bargain table. 3) Charter demands apply primarily to the rights of the privileged gentry(The Charter’s term “free man” means nobleman only.). 4) King John attached his seal; regained London; nullified the document; and asked the Pope to follow suit. 5) The pope was Innocent III, perhaps the most politically and religiously powerful Vicar of Christ in history (and the first to claim that title.) Innocent called the Charter a “shameless presumption which dishonours the Apostolic See,” declaring it “null and void of all validity forever.” Forever? 6) Most of the document’s original demands were never implemented; many removed in subsequent revisions. 7) Magna Carta scholars generally agree that its significance increased through later reinterpretations in other eras. The New York Times cites Yale Professor Akhil Amar’s assertion that it was a text that over time would “grow and mutate and be misinterpreted as something that’s important,” endowing “it with a certain retrospective significance.” Times reporter Sarah Lyall concludes that the Charter “can still be considered deeply significant even if it was not so significant in June 1215.” Indeed, it was drawn into American democratic idealism from the colonial era to the present, generalized from medieval nobility to “we the people.”
Inhabiting 1215 would have been fascinating if you weren’t a peasant, a Jew, a woman, or a heretic. That year, bishops at the Fourth Lateran Council formally confirmed the doctrine of Transubstantiation in the Mass (the bread and wine become Christ’s very body and blood); approved the Franciscan Order (St. Francis was still alive); and required Jews to wear clothing that distinguished their ethnicity and religion. In 1215 Innocent III was waging a crusade against the heretical Cathari sect in France, for their challenge to papal authority and their alternative theological views.
Eight hundred years after that “watershed event,” some 13th century traditions remain: A Church in which theological divisions still abound, but (mostly) without armed crusades; the papacy, whose current occupant claimed name and mentorship from the name of the 13th century saint; an English monarch with considerably less direct power; and continuing religio-political disputes impacting both church and state.
If words such as “to no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice,” contribute to the Charter as “rallying cry” across 800 years as Harvard Professor Noah Feldman suggests, might its continuing energies aid American Christians in confronting: 1) A recent Catholic-based survey in which the Church is viewed as “judgmental” and its claim to “hate the sin, love the sinner,” is viewed as merely “hate the sinner.” 2) Increasingly complicated issues of religious liberty; evident in the North Carolina legislature’s action allowing county magistrates to opt out of performing weddings if their consciences cannot support same-sex marriages, even as legislators moved toward state-funding for private parochial schools, a faith-based-support long opposed by many Christians. 3) A growing movement among religious conservatives to distance themselves from an increasingly secular society by supporting a “Benedict Option,” whereby religious communities create enclaves of orthodoxy for preserving “true faith” in a new “dark ages.” 4) Christian “progressives” who celebrate the Spirit’s radical presence in the culture, while straining to gain the attention of “nones,” disengaging from religion at breakneck speed.
In today’s media-saturated society, “watershed moments” often seem a dime a dozen. Yet Jill Lapore concludes her Magna Carta essay with a timelessly sobering manifesto: “There are no certainties in history. There are only struggles for justice, and wars interrupted by peace.” From Runnymede to Constitution Avenue, the struggle continues.