Academic World Rocked by Discovery: The Free World Owes the Church for the Great Magna Carta

Teresa Neumann : Jun 22, 2015
Bill Muehlenberg – Barbwire

"The Church... was central to the production, preservation and proclamation of the Magna Carta. The cathedrals were like a beacon from which the light of the charter shone round the country, thus beginning the process by which it became central to national life." –David Carpenter

(United Kingdom)—As the world celebrates the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta—the historic British document that provided a modern foundation for freedom and instigated the West's long march toward democracy—news from the world of science and archaeology has turned academics on their heads. (Photo via Barbwire.com)

A report in The Medievalists, noted that the question of who all were involved with the document has been "a conundrum that has puzzled scholars for centuries" but now has been discovered.

Originally, it was assumed that the equal-rights document approved on June 15, 2015, by King John was an entirely secular venture.

But David Carpenter, a King's College Professor of Medieval History has called the new revelations "exciting discoveries and said, "We now know that three of the four surviving originals of the Charter went to cathedrals—Lincoln, Salisbury and Canterbury. Probably cathedrals were the destination for the great majority of the other original charters issued in 1215.

"This overturns the old view that the charters were sent to the sheriffs in charge of the counties. That would have been fatal since the sheriffs were the very people under attack in the charter. They would have quickly consigned the Magna Carta to their castle furnaces.

"The Church, therefore, was central to the production, preservation and proclamation of the Magna Carta. The cathedrals were like a beacon from which the light of the charter shone round the country, thus beginning the process by which it became central to national life."