Medieval foundations of the second coming of democracy

Jørgen Møller & Svend-Erik Skaaning - Democracy and Democratization in Comparative Perspective

June 15, 1215, is an important day in the history of modern democracy. On this day, a number of England’s most powerful barons rallied against King John (aka Lackland) at Runnymede, a short distance to the west of London. Under the threat of rebellion, the barons forced the English king to sign the Magna Carta Liberatum, the Great Charter of Liberties. As the name indicates, the Magna Carta codified a considerable number of liberties together with habeas corpus, the right to have one’s case tried in the court system. 2 The Magna Carta thus served as a set of legal barriers against the arbitrary exercise of power by the king. Above all, it meant that the law placed limits on the power of the ruler. The charter also declared that the free subjects in the Kingdom (above all, the aforementioned barons) had the right of rebellion should the king fail to respect the legal concessions he had made. In return, the barons renewed their oath of loyalty to King John. set of legal barriers against the arbitrary exercise of power by the king. Above all, it meant that the law placed limits on the power of the ruler. The charter also declared that the free subjects in the Kingdom (above all, the aforementioned barons) had the right of rebellion should the king fail to respect the legal concessions he had made. In return, the barons renewed their oath of loyalty to King John.

The Magna Carta was actually in no way unique. Similar charters of liberties were forced upon monarchs in even the remotest corners of Western Christendom over the course of the Middle Ages. 3 The right to resistance has been dated all the way back to the Oaths of Strasbourg in AD 842 (Bloch 1971b [1939]: 451–452), an occasion at which Charles the Bald and Louis the German pledged their allegiance to one another in an alliance against their brother, Emperor Lothar I. The Oaths of Strasbourg are remarkable for including the following point: If one of the kings broke the mutual oath, their soldiers – who had also taken the oath – were bound by duty not to assist their king. This was arguably one of the earliest reflections of the modern conception of popular sovereignty4 which was to prove hugely influential in most of Western Europe in the High Middle Ages.

The importance of the precedent in Strasbourg should not be overstated, however. It was not until the 13th and 14th centuries that actual ‘charters of rights’ began spreading throughout Western Europe. In addition to the Magna Carta (1215), a number of so-called ‘golden bulls’ (aurea bullae) were issued in the 13th century. The most important of these was that of the Hungarian King Andreas II in 1222, which granted privileges to the Hungarian nobility relatively similar to those mentioned in the Magna Carta. The Aragonese Privilege of the Union (Privilegio de la unión) of 1287 and the the statute of Dauphiné of 1341 could also be mentioned as instances (Bloch 1971b [1939]: 451–452). The distinct historical status of the Magna Carta owes to the subsequent significance of the charter for English constitutionalism. On the European continent, the various charters of liberties were annulled or at the very least diluted following the advent of absolutism after the onset of the 16th-century military revolution (Downing 1992; Finer 1997b: 1298–1307). Conversely, the catalog of rights in the Magna Carta proved durable. In fact, the charter remains valid in England and Wales to this day. For example, it provides specific rights to the City of London and the Anglican Church. The Magna Carta thus assumes a prominent position in the traditional English notion of having an ‘ancient constitution’ that guarantees the time-honored Anglo-Saxon liberties (Pocock 1957).