Scholars generally agree that the Magna Carta of 1215 was a watershed in Western (and, more specifically, English) legal and political history and thought. Beyond this simple statement, however, there is little consensus concerning the nature and significance of the Magna Carta's achievement. One central unresolved issue centers on whether the charter represents a principled defense of human liberty or instead reflects a pragmatic statement of baronial liberties. The dispute over this question is nontrivial and reflects much more than a matter of language. If one subscribes to the former belief, which received its classic articulation in the seventeenth century (Turner Reference Turner2003, 145–82) and retains powerful resonance today (Linebaugh Reference Linebaugh2008), then the Magna Carta deserves to be accorded a foundational role in the intellectual and political history of the liberal-democratic constitutional tradition, in which the rule of law is deemed the basis for the protection of individual freedom. If, however, one adopts the viewpoint of “the modern historian” that the charter “is a statement of [specific] liberties rather than an assertion of [general] liberty,” then the document should be read narrowly as an interesting artifact stipulating elite “privileges” that were “devised mainly in the interests of the aristocracy” (Holt Reference Holt1965, 4). In other words, either the Magna Carta reflects deeper philosophical doctrines and commitments that enjoy purchase beyond their specific time and place, or it represents an expression of the immediate demands and grievances of a specific class displeased with the conduct of King John's government.

Both interpretations of the Magna Carta are supported by reasonable arguments. A primary author of the charter seems to have been Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who served as mediator between the king and the barons at Runnymede and whose Paris education bespoke a deeply learned man (see Powicke Reference Powicke1928 and Baldwin Reference Baldwin2008). Fryde recently attempted to trace how Langton's knowledge of theoretical precepts, particularly the distinction between law-abiding kingship and lawless tyranny, shaped the premises embedded in the Magna Carta (Fryde Reference Fryde2001, 100–11). Even Holt, perhaps the most influential advocate of the “modern” historical reading, avers that the “Magna Carta was intimately connected … with developing political theories of the twelfth century” (Holt Reference Holt1965, 20; see also Holt Reference Holt1985, 203–16). On the other hand, the circumstances of the charter's composition and proclamation have by now been so scrupulously studied that it is difficult to resist the conclusion that “it was the product of a particular historical situation” (Jones Reference Jones1971, 209) rather than a principled assertion of fundamental law and human freedom. Indeed, detailed analysis of the identities and affiliations of the members of the baronial party that pursued the settlement achieved in the Magna Carta has yielded a clear picture of how the document embodies a quite specific agenda (Holt Reference Holt1961). Moreover, it has been pointed out that the concept of “liberties” expressly employed by the charter still relies upon the customary feudal idea that privileges are personal (varying according to class and individual), are conferred by a superior, and may thus be removed by a superior for just cause (Turner Reference Turner2009, 187). Hence, no blanket or universal statement of civic or inherent rights on a modern scale can be attributed to the Magna Carta with any historical plausibility (Holt Reference Holt1972, 149–58). Rather, the grant of liberties in the charter should be understood entirely in terms of a concession to a small cadre of nobles with certain privileges who were ordinarily immune from direct oversight by the king. In this sense, the English magnates were ceded the freedom to use their feudal rights as they saw fit.

But this is not the only way in which the language of liberty is employed in the Magna Carta. In both the first and the final articles of the charter—and at several places in between—the text refers to another sort of liberty: the liberty of the Church. Indeed, Article 1 begins with King John's declaration that he has “in the first place granted to God and by this our present Charter confirmed, for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English church is to be free (Anglicana ecclesiastica libera sit), and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties unimpaired” (Holt Reference Holt1965, 316). The article then refers to John's proclamation, in the previous year, of a charter in which he announced his respect for ecclesiastical liberty (see Stephenson and Marcham Reference Stephenson and Marcham1972, 114–15), particularly with regard to “freedom of elections (libertatem electionum), which is thought to be of the greatest necessity and importance to the English church” (Holt Reference Holt1965, 316). Only after acknowledging the liberty of the Church does the Magna Carta make the famous grant “to all free men of our realm for ourselves and our heirs forever” of “all the liberties written forever, to have and to hold, them and for their heirs from us and our heirs” (Holt Reference Holt1965, 316).

The principle of ecclesiastical liberty has a somewhat different connotation than the idea of feudal liberties. In particular, the medieval church claimed to enjoy a corporate form of liberty, based on its unique role as arbiter between things mundane and things heavenly. Such liberty afforded freedom from the control of secular rulers and their ministers to the Church as a whole, as well as to those people who staffed its offices and to its lands and other earthly possessions. Thus, for instance, churchmen could not be detained by temporal governors or tried and punished in their courts. Moreover, church properties were exempt from many of the financial imposts that secular authorities could demand of the laity. In addition, the Church was acknowledged as possessing the right to select its own officials without any external interference, as King John affirmed. One distinctive feature of this idea of liberty is that it pertained to the body of the Church as a mystical union, not to individual churches or their leaders. The Church possessed specific liberties because it enjoyed a general form of liberty that did not depend on any grant from a secular dominion (see Berman Reference Berman1983, 215–24). In this sense, the Magna Carta's statement of ecclesiastical liberty reflects a simple recognition of a form of freedom that already exists independently, rather than a concession that the king might rightfully withhold or revoke.

Scholars have tended either to overlook these references to the liberty of the Church in the Magna Carta or to dismiss their significance. For example, McKechnie, in his classic study, viewed the wording of Article 1's recognition of ecclesiastical liberty as “deplorably vague” (though in line with similar charters granted to the Church during the reigns of Kings Henry I and Stephen) and surmised that the mention of the subject reflected Langton's efforts to look after “the interests of the Church” (McKechnie Reference McKechnie1914, 192, 39). Howard's commentary on the Magna Carta contains only one reference to the Church, in which he suggests that King John's intended strategy was “to win over opponents in the Church by granting the Church freedom of election” (Reference Howard1964, 8). Holt traces the inclusion of ecclesiastical concerns in the Magna Carta to continental precedents and concludes that the charter “revealed ecclesiastical influences of a limited, almost guarded nature” (Reference Holt1965, 190–95). Fryde, who provides a somewhat more extensive discussion of the clauses of the Magna Carta that refer to the Church, still maintains that the reasons for their insertion were mainly practical and rhetorical (Reference Fryde2001, 97–99). Turner asserts that the Magna Carta's protection of the rights and liberties of the English Church contained “little that was new, merely committing John to promises already made in his 1214 charter” (Reference Turner2009, 183). In sum, the major scholarly literature on the Magna Carta attaches little intellectual significance to the mentions of the liberty of the Church that run through the text of the charter. The charter is treated as essentially a secular document in which religious references are wholly extraneous to its central purpose.

In the present article, I propose an alternative approach to understanding the inclusion of ecclesiastical liberty in the Magna Carta that elucidates how this idea played a role—and an important one at that—in providing a conceptual edifice for the various grievances expressed and particular liberties enumerated therein. Specifically, I argue that the priority accorded to the liberty of the Church reflects a principle that enjoyed a well-established pedigree in England—namely, that the good order of the realm as a secular community depended upon royal respect for the liberties of the Church. Thus, it was accepted as axiomatic that a ruler who does not keep faith with God and His Church will soon find that his subjects will not keep faith with him. In short, ecclesiastical liberty forms the foundation of and prerequisite for temporal political harmony, so that a prince who denies the Church its proper freedom undermines his own capacity to govern. This theoretical precept was propounded with special force by John of Salisbury, a Paris-educated churchman who served at the court of the Archbishop of Canterbury beginning in 1148 and later became a key supporter of Thomas Becket's struggle to defend the Church against King Henry II (Nederman Reference Nederman2005). John is perhaps best known as the author of the Policraticus, a massive and complex work composed between 1156 and 1159 that is often considered to be one of the preeminent English contributions to the so-called Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Nederman Reference Nederman, Mews, Nederman and Thomson2003). But John also wrote and disseminated a number of other texts, including two collections of letters that serve as commentaries on ecclesio-political affairs in England and throughout Europe from the early 1150s to the early 1170s.

Fryde has speculated that Archbishop Langton was familiar with the Policraticus and adopted its ideas about the difference between the true king and the tyrant in framing the Magna Carta (Fryde Reference Fryde2001, 105–10), concluding that “John of Salisbury made the idea that the King is subject to law accessible … John of Salisbury's ideas also inspired the Magna Carta” (Reference Fryde2001, 111). Certainly, there is good evidence that the Policraticus, as well as John's letter collections, circulated widely in England after his death (Linder Reference Linder1977a; Linder Reference Linder1977b; Bollermann and Nederman Reference Bollermann and Nederman2009). Turner has criticized Fryde's attributed lineage, however, on the grounds that it ignores many other alternative sources also available to Langton and the barons (Turner Reference Turner2009, 12–13). There is an even more obvious objection to be posed: the Magna Carta simply does not employ the language of “king under law” versus “tyrant above law” that Fryde ascribes to it. Rather, the charter's main intellectual matrix is constructed upon the language of liberty, as already noted. Thus, it seems somewhat inaccurate to attribute any influence on the Magna Carta to John of Salisbury on the basis of the distinction he articulated between the king and the tyrant. More promising, by contrast, is the view that John's defense of the freedom of the Church, which is a dominant theme of the Policraticus and his other works, may have played a significant part in the understanding of liberty on display in the Magna Carta.

The following article examines this issue to shed light on the supposed dichotomy between liberty and liberties. I argue that the character of the liberty asserted in the Magna Carta shares some important qualities with John's theory. More specifically, I claim that the Magna Carta echoes John's position that ecclesiastical liberty enjoys an independent basis distinct from particular grants of liberties, one which licenses a more corporatist conception of political order than the practical, feudal interpretation permits. Colloquially speaking, the ability of the Church to perform its spiritual tasks unimpeded constitutes the glue that holds together the bonds of society. When this liberty of the Church is disturbed, the very presence of peace and justice in a kingdom is eroded, so that the health of the body politic is endangered. Whether or not it is possible to identify any direct influence of John's thought on the Magna Carta (through Langton and his clerical colleagues), his doctrine can help us to understand how the charter's insistence upon the Church's liberty provides some important clues to its intellectual assumptions about the relation between earthly and spiritual authority.

The primacy of the Church and its officers in the political life of the earthly community is underscored by John in his well-known conception of the body politic. The Policraticus articulates a complex and influential version of the organic metaphor for the political community. John compares the ruler to the head, the counselors to the heart, the various administrators and officials to the several organs and limbs, and the peasants and artisans to the feet (Reference Nederman1990, 5.2, 67–68).Footnote ¹ Within this scheme, the priesthood enjoys a special position: “that which institutes and molds the practice of religion in us and which transmits the worship of God … acquires the position of the soul in the body of the republic … just as the soul has rulership of the whole body so those who are called prefects of religion direct the whole body” (Reference Nederman1990, 5.2, 66–67). Metaphorically, no body (secular community) can exist without the animation provided by the soul (Church): “It is the nature of the body to be alive and active, to yield to the soul's impulses, and to obey it as by a sort of harmony with it … the soul derives life from the fact that it possesses activities in its own realm, undoubtedly receives its impulses from God, [and] obeys Him with complete devotion … As long therefore as the body is alive in all its parts, it is entirely subject to the soul, which is diffused not part to part but exists as a whole and functions in each and every part” (Reference Pike1938, 3.1, 153). By analogy, the Church necessarily forms the core of a properly constituted earthly polity.

The duty of the king, then, is first and foremost to direct his subjects toward the practice of virtue and the worship of God by revering the priesthood and submitting to its guidance. In this vein, John asserts that “the prince is therefore a sort of minister of the priests” (Reference Nederman1990, 4.3, 32), in the sense that the former aims to realize in secular affairs what the latter seek in the spiritual realm—namely, the realization and imposition of divine justice. In the well-ordered body politic, the officers of both the Church and the temporal government strive “to procure the salvation of themselves and others by rooting out and correcting vices or by implanting and increasing virtues,” albeit with the proviso that “those who minister to [God] in the sphere of human law are as much inferior to those who minister in divine law as things human are to things divine” (Reference Dickinson1927, 5.4, 79). Kings and priests perform coordinate tasks, but the goals associated with the clergy render them senior partners in their relationship with earthly rulers.

Throughout the Policraticus, John emphasizes that a crucial precondition for the Church to serve its role as the main source of correction and education in moral and spiritual matters is its possession of liberty. Why is this so? John insists strongly on an intimate connection between liberty and virtue. Virtue, he says, “does not arise in its perfection without liberty, and the loss of liberty demonstrates irrefutably that virtue is not present. And therefore anyone is free according to the virtue of their dispositions and to the extent that one is free, the virtues are effective” (Reference Nederman1990, 7.25, 176). The reason for this connection stems from John's view that the Church's function in guiding people away from vice and toward virtue presupposes the ability of priests to speak freely and openly about the requirements of ethical and spiritual rectitude. He counsels that the pious Christian must exercise “patience” with the moral criticisms offered by clerics. “The best and wisest man is moderate with the reins of liberty and patiently takes note of whatever is said to him,” John observes, “and he does not oppose himself to the works of liberty, so long as damage to virtue does not occur. For when virtue shines everywhere from its own source, the reputation of patience becomes more evident with glorious renown” (Reference Nederman1990, 7.25, 176–77). The patient man respects the liberty of churchmen to reprove him in matters of behavior and faith: “The practice of liberty … displeases only those who live in the manner of slaves.” In other words, good men tolerate correction by their spiritual guides, because “whoever loathes and evades [criticism] when fairly expressed seems to be ignorant of restraint” (Reference Nederman1990, 7.25, 179). In sum, respect for the liberty of the Church and its ministers is an absolute requisite for the primary purpose of the body politic—the promotion of moral goodness and salvation—to be realized.

As a consequence, John condemns those rulers who “disturb the immunities of sacred things”—that is, who attack the liberty of the church—on the grounds that engaging in such conduct “is to rebel against God Himself and as it were to condemn Him to slavery” (Reference Dickinson1927, 5.5, 80). The faithful king confirms “in their entirety the privileges of churches, priests and all sacred places” and respects ecclesiastical liberty by protecting clerics from violence and desecration while also guaranteeing their freedom from secular jurisdiction and law (Reference Dickinson1927, 5.5, 81–82). “The will of a true ruler,” John maintains, “depends on the law of God and does not prejudice liberty” (Reference Dickinson1927, 8.22, 394). The ruler's failure to act in a manner consistent with the liberty of the Church, in turn, inevitably produces public discord and the destruction of the political community, which represents a punishment for his impiety: “Beyond doubt whoever suppresses the liberty of the Church is punished either in his own person or in his offspring” (Reference Dickinson1927, 7.20, 311). Loss of control over public patrimony and the political destabilization that results, sown from the discontent of subjects and authorized by God himself, reflects for John the sure outcome that princes who disrespect ecclesiastical liberty can and should expect.

In this regard, John cites the example of King Stephen (1135–1153), whose reign devolved into an open civil war that historians have often termed “The Anarchy.” Stephen had usurped the English throne from the daughter of the preceding king, Henry I (1100–1135), contrary to his sworn oath to observe her legitimate claim to the crown. John maintains that “because God is truthful, the faith which he [Stephen] did not keep with God or his earthly lord, he no way found among his subjects. Indeed, loyalty was meted back to him in the same measure that he himself first meted it out to others” (Reference Nederman1990, 6.18, 120). In John's view, it was not so much Stephen's refusal to keep his sworn promise that led to his downfall, as it was his decision, in June 1139, to arrest, imprison, and dispossess several powerful bishops whom he feared were plotting against him, in clear violation of the liberty of the Church (for the historical details, see Bollermann and Nederman Reference Bollermann and Nederman2008). John remarks that Stephen's “worst deed was that he put his hands on the anointed in contempt of God…. The seizure of the bishops was … the beginning of his evil deeds and the more recent acts of the man were always worse than the previous ones” (Reference Nederman1990, 6.8, 120). The violence and chaos of Stephen's reign, John concludes, ought to be attributed directly to his disrespect for the freedom enjoyed by clerics from secular courts and punishments (which the king had indeed promised in an 1136 charter upholding the liberty of the Church). Rulers who degrade ecclesiastical liberty and thus undermine the foundations of the political community are invariably destroyed by their actions as a form of divine vengeance.

The dual themes that good secular order depends upon the maintenance of ecclesiastical liberty and that God punishes those people (including monarchs) who oppress the Church, though figuring most prominently in the Policraticus, are ideas to which John returned throughout his career. In an 1160 letter addressed to King Henry II, composed on behalf of his employer Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, John points out that when potentially divisive issues such as ecclesiastical vacancies arise, the “Christian prince” demonstrates his piety by deferring to the judgment of the Church. By contrast, John asserts that if a ruler conspires to interfere with or manipulate business that properly belongs to the clergy, “he calls down upon himself the all-powerful hand of the Most High” in the form of “discord between peoples [that] beyond all doubt brings ruin upon kingdoms” (Reference Millor, Butler and Brooke1955, 215–16). The message is clear: to flaunt the sacred principle of ecclesiastical liberty is to risk not only the opposition of subjects, but also political upheaval. John emphasizes, however, that King Henry II had thus far respected the rights of the Church: “We have found such unity and concord among your subjects that it is clear from sure and manifest signs that their faith is securely founded on the rock of the Church” (Reference Millor, Butler and Brooke1955, 216). Whether or not this remark is hyperbole, John's position as a high-placed administrator in the English Church permitted him to reiterate the lesson of the Policraticus that public order depends upon the prince's deference to the liberty of the Church.

Upon the death of Theobald in 1161 and Becket's subsequent ascension to the archbishopric, King Henry II commenced a full-scale assault upon the Church's claim to be free of secular control. In John's second letter collection, which documents the events of the 1160s to the martyrdom of Becket, he directly and repeatedly associates the liberty of the Church with the cause of the archbishop against the king. John declares that “there is no more righteous cause than those who fight for the Church's liberty (pro libertate ecclesiae)” (Reference Millor and Brooke1979, 236–37). In the archiepiscopal role as primate and defender of the English Church, John insists that Becket's stand is based on principle, not on personal advantage: “He does not seek immunities only for himself, which he could easily have won, but claims freedom (libertatem) for all” (Reference Millor and Brooke1979, 526–27). The appeal to ecclesiastical liberty appears in virtually every letter that John wrote in support of Becket's activities during the mid-1160s. In turn, John asserts that King Henry's persecution of the English Church will ultimately imperil his ability to maintain his own government. John reiterates the view expressed in the Policraticus that rulers who incur the wrath of God by oppressing the Church will encounter his displeasure and be laid low (see Reference Millor and Brooke1979, 428–31). John predicts that “those who depart from the peace of God will doubtless perish. Can one find it written of any of the Church's persecutors that he escaped the vengeance of the right hand of God, who punishes the powerful with greater power? And so our lord the English king … and his heirs (I say it with sorrow) must be greatly afraid that their kingdom will be rent asunder, and that the power which they wrongfully use against the Church will lose its force” (Reference Millor and Brooke1979, 452–55). This is not an empty threat, John continues, since examples from both ancient times and recent experience yield the same conclusion: the use of royal power to destroy the liberty of the Church leads to a king's downfall if he does not repent and change his ways (Reference Millor and Brooke1979, 454–57).Footnote ²

Do we have good reason to suppose that John of Salisbury's view that the presence of ecclesiastical liberty formed the necessary prerequisite for secular political order filtered through the Magna Carta? One indication that this connection is plausible stems from a statement in Article 1: “We wish it thus observed, which is evident from the fact that of our own free will before the quarrel between us and our barons began, we conceded and confirmed by our charter, freedom of elections … and obtained confirmation of this from the lord pope Innocent III” (Holt Reference Holt1965, 316). In other words, the Magna Carta hints that a precondition of resolving temporal difficulties in the kingdom depends upon the restoration of the proper status of the Church's liberties. Without the prior establishment of good relations between the king and the English Church, we may infer, it would be impossible to achieve any viable resolution to the conflict between King John and his discontented nobles. This claim only makes sense under the assumption that, for the parties involved in drafting and promulgating the Magna Carta, the priority of ecclesiastical freedom formed the absolute presupposition of public order within the kingdom, which was that no king can maintain the loyalty and support of his subjects without showing deference to the liberty of the Church. Such a position reflected the profound belief of medieval Christians such as John of Salisbury in the religious foundations of good government. Of course, the reliance upon ecclesiastical liberty in the Magna Carta by no means approaches the universalistic claim of human freedoms that more modern readers have sought to ascribe to it. But neither can the liberty of the Church be reduced to the conception of baronial liberties that historical scholarship attributes to the charter. Rather, the centrality of the doctrine of ecclesiastical liberty to the Magna Carta represents an alternate principle of freedom—requiring the acceptance of a specifically Latin Christian worldview—that is nonetheless historically grounded in the teachings and practices found among the English in the High Middle Ages, as articulated with particular clarity by John of Salisbury.