FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Magna Carta Myth

Rant Number 341 25 February 2009

Aristocratic, anti-Semitic, popish, clericalist, misogynist, elitist and reactionary. Not exactly terms of commendation in our enlightened age. Who, what do they designate? Jean Marie Le Pen’s National Front? Holocaust-denying Bishop Williamson? Islamophobic Dutch MP Geert Wilders? Mein Kampf? False. They properly describe that milestone of Western human rights, Magna Carta – what else?

‘900-year struggle for Britain’s freedoms and rights’, the bombast of the Taking Liberties exhibition (logo: a clenched fist) at the British Library announces. Most famous amongst its ‘key icons of liberty and progress’ is indeed Magna Carta. Sealed by King John at Runnymede in 1215. A seminal document of English constitutional practice, my Oxford English Dictionary says. And a smart Italian lady with whom I chatted the exhibition enthused: ‘You wonderful British…you showed all Europeans the way out of medieval darkness.’ Pretty flattering. But it is all rubbish. From beginning to end. Some people are like parrots. They simply echo any stuff and nonsense. Had they read the Great Charter, it’d make them sit up.

The august document consists of 63 clauses. ‘The English Church shall be free’, the first runs. ‘It shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired’. Just in case you don’t get it: ‘free’ means free from royal interference, not from papal authority. A freedom the monstrous syphilitic tyrant, Henry VIII, later usurped. Today the Church of England is so utterly unfree that its bishops are appointed by the monarch – in fact, by the Prime Minister! Thus Pope Benedict turns out to have excellent legal entitlement to the English Church – he only has to appeal to Magna Carta!

Anti-Semitic. I kid you not. Clauses 10 and 11 take a swipe at Jewish money-lenders. ‘If a man dies owing money to Jews, his wife will have her dower and pay nothing towards the debt from it.’ Whatever the reason back then, that wouldn’t do today. And King John’s grandson, Edward II, may have had those articles in mind when he expelled the poor Hebrews from England in 1290. Not quite kosher, nah!

‘Heirs may not be given in marriage to persons of lower social rank.’ Clause 6. Probably a popular sentiment with all parents in all ages. Would I wish my lovely boy, Linus, to marry anyone called Tracy or Sharon? A shop-girl or a waitress? If I said ‘yes’, I’d be a bloody liar. Stone me to death, I won’t pretend. My hypocrisy has limits, unlike my snobbery. But, groan… hardly a progressive position, I concede it.

Clause 54 is a pearl. ‘Nobody will be arrested or jailed on the appeal of a woman for the death of any person, except her husband.’ I don’t figure the suffragettes Taking Liberties makes so much of would have rejoiced at this. Casts a bit of an aspersion on women’s testimony, to put it mildly. Misogyny rampant. And in a text hailed as a beacon of modern rights. What a hoot!

Clause 57 mentions de passage ‘taking up the Cross’. Meaning crusaders. That would do wonders for religious dialogue, no doubt.

Equality. A fundamental value of our time. Yet Magna Carta flatly denies it. ‘Earls and barons shall be fined only by their equals’, the 21^st article states. Indeed, until the 19^th century British aristocrats were tried by their peers, in the House of Lords. Similarly, secular courts could not investigate priests or nuns. A nice privilege not abolished until 1827, under George IV. I wish it hadn’t. Priestly perks appeal to a priest. Although, on second thoughts…would I really fancy being tried by the Establishment-fawning Anglican clergy I know? La samaha Allah! All things being equal, I’d rather opt for a sharia court. Fairer, I bet you.

All right. Time to take the bull by the horns. The aforesaid isn’t what turns Magna Carta’s modern fans on. Clauses 39 and 40 do. ‘No free man shall be seized or imprisoned…except by the lawful judgment of his equals, or by the law of the land…to no one will we deny right or justice’. The origins of habeas corpus, no less. But what does ‘free man’ mean? As Ms Claire Breay, author of an eye-opening booklet on the Carta, ably points out, ‘the peasantry who constituted the mass of the population were firmly outside its remit.’ Even less were serfs and slaves. Hence revered doctrines and dogmas like democracy and human rights find no support in that much mythologised document. Moreover, habeas corpus was never sacrosanct or absolute. In Britain it has often been suspended, notably during the French Revolution, in wartime and more recently in Northern Ireland. It seems raison d’etat can trump even the Latin of Magna Carta, when force majeure dictates…

If Magna Carta was so central to the English historical consciousness of freedom and rights, you’d expect that majestic English genius, Will Shakespeare, to celebrate it. Or, at the very least, to mention it. Not so. The Bard’s Life and Death of King John says not a word about it. The monarch does battle against the evil cleric Pandulph, the papal legate, but that’s hardly surprising, as John’s quarrel with Pope Innocent III got him an excommunication in return. Of course, Shakespeare was intent on glorifying the absolutism of the ghastly Tudor dynasty - the Welsh’s greatest revenge on their English overlords. It would not have done to portray an English king as subject to lesser forces in his own realm. Come to think of it, the great Will had a few points in common with Dr Goebbels. Poetry apart, some of his plays ooze the most outrageous political propaganda. Nothing new there. Great artists, from Virgil to Chaucer and Goethe, have often sucked up to the powers that be. Even geniuses have to eat.

Magna Carta should be more aptly called ‘Parva Carta’, small charter, as its actual significance was minor. Later ages have built it into a myth. Fine, providing you know the actual truth. Myths are what human beings need. King Arthur is a myth for romantics and medievalists. Democracy, equality and the rights of man are myths for the multitudes. Unicuique Suum. To each his own.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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