Magna Carta

Magna Carta is an English charter, initially issued in 1215, and reissued later during thirteenth century in modified versions. The role of the Church in the making of Magna Carta was important in two ways. First, if we regard Magna Carta as the product primarily of a rebellion of the English barons, we have to recognize that the highest ranked churchmen—archbishops, bishops, and abbots—were also barons of the realm because they were landholders who held part, if not most, of their land directly from the crown, that is, the king. They were part of the English landholding system and were as much concerned as the secular barons in demanding that the king recognize the reciprocal obligations between lord and men. Second, the Church was also a spiritual institution that was national in some respects and international in others. The tension between the national and international interests of the Church—that is, between the king as leader and the pope as ruler, would also play an important role in producing Magna Carta.

England's relationship with the universal Christian church as represented by the papacy had been close in the early Anglo-Saxon period beginning with the arrival of Augustine. Pope Gregory I, called the Great, sent Augustine to the southeastern kingdom of Kent in the late sixth century to convert the Angles and Saxons to Christianity. For several centuries thereafter, the tie remained close, but from the late eighth century on, the relationship became weaker as the continental church suffered from the disintegration of Charlemagne's Carolingian Empire. Now lacking a strong secular protector and weakened by the struggles of the local Roman nobility to control the papal throne itself, the papacy lost its spiritual leadership and came more and more under the control of local rulers, including kings, counts, and dukes.

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