Today, 15 June 2015, is the eight-hundredth anniversary of the signing by King John of Magna Carta, the Great Charter, or as I used to tell my sixth-graders, the Big Paper. Magnus, a, um is the Latin word for “great, big, large,” and charta, ae f. means “papyrus, paper, map, chart, charter, writing.” In my local library I found a little, wonderful book, 1215 The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham (Touchstone, 2004). At the end of the introduction the authors describe a visit to Runnymede they made on a dark December day when they had finished writing their book. They describe two memorials at Runnymede. How many Americans know that one acre of Runnymede is American territory, donated by the Queen and her government, by vote of the House of Commons? That in this acre are two memorials, one to President John F. Kennedy and one built by the American Bar Association, both dedicated to the ideal of liberty under law as symbolized by Magna Carta?
Here, as given by Danziger and Gillingham, are the two most famous of the sixty-three clauses of Magna Carta:
Nullus liber homo capiatur, vel imprisonetur, aut disseisiatur, aut utlagetur, aut exuletur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nec super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legal judicium parium suorum vel per legem terre.
Nulli vendemus, nulli negabimus aut differemus rectum aut justiciam.
"No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or deprived or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.
To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice." (p. xii-xiii)
The Latin of the Great Charter is beautiful and clear; a few words influenced by English and French are present (disseisiatur, utlagetur, legal, terre, justiciam), but otherwise any student of Latin recognizes the future active and passive verbs, nouns, adjectives, conjunctions, and prepositions that Cicero, Caesar, and Vergil would also know.
How excellent that this splendid anniversary falls between Flag Day and Fourth of July!
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