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MAGNA CARTA – THE CRATER OF A DORMANT VOLCANO

800 years ago, on June 15th 1215, a peace treaty known as Magna Carta was concluded at Runnymede meadow between Windsor castle, Staines and the Thames for the prevention of a bloody civil war. Its parties were King John himself (who sealed but did not sign it) and 36 noblemen and high church officials led by Archbishop Stephen Langton. The treaty comprised of 3550 words and 63 articles was in fact a declaration in which the king granted important rights and liberties to his subjects and announced drastic restrictions to his own power. The solemn royal promise shines to this day like an unshakable sword driven into the rock of the human thirst for dignity and justice.

The Charter was born in England not of some unique achievements of English legal thought and practice but, just the opposite, of the intolerable tyranny and arbitrary rule of the king. It was that despotism and cruelty which fired the volcano of the barons’ indignation and fury against King John that forced him to compromise at Runnymede. Out of the depth of that crater the flames of sacred individual liberties flared high up into the sky. Yet in that June day of 1215 it was to the credit of all parties that they chose victory by law over victory by arms.

Magna Carta is a peace achieved by the rule of law.

The Charter is the dawning of a new constitutional civilization because:

First, it proclaims the absolute power of law over everybody including the monarch. This is an express departure from Ulpian’s ancient Roman principle in Digesta 1.3.31: Princeps legibus solutus est = The monarch is not bound by laws. It is replaced by the majestic art.40 of the Charter: To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.

Second, art.39 solemnly pledges immunity to the free man and his property except by the lawful judgment of a lawful court.

Third, in art.61 the king accepts his violations of the Charter to be removed by the 25 barons-guardians even by force exercised against his own person. This was a contractual security by legitimate self-enforcement.

In 1215 Magna Carta did not proclaim power to the people because it addressed only the free man: church elite, barons, knights and other noblemen, i.e. 10 – 20% of the English population. The Charter did not affect the majority of dependent peasants and other feudal subjects. But it was the seed from which English democracy grew and it later became the cornerstone of the Commonwealth value system.

There is a curious coincidence in treating foreign merchants at times of peace and war between the Charter’s art.41 and art.9-10 of the Bulgarian Prince Ivanko’s Treaty with the Genoese in 1387.

English settlers in America used the Charter as a spiritual banner in their struggle for independence. That is why the US Constitution is sometimes called the Elder Daughter of Magna Carta, a kinship that explains and justifies its juxtaposition with the Charter in this the present publication.

Magna Carta is one of the reasons why the British Isles saw no revolution like the French one.

For the first time the Bulgarian reader is given the chance to read the Charter in Professor Alexander Shurbanov’s competent Bulgarian translation based on Professor David Carpenter’s English version with constant reference to the Latin original. This publication would have been impossible without the moral encouragement and financial support of the America for Bulgaria Foundation.

The past eight centuries have turned Magna Carta into a constitutional icon, a legend and a symbol of freedom by law. There still is a glow over the crater of 15th June1215 indicating that the volcano is only dozing and that really and truly “IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD”.

15.06.2015                                                                                                                      Valentin Braykov