English Historical Review Vol. CXXIII No. 503
Advance Access publication on July 25, 2008
© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1093/ehr/cen176
Master Stephen Langton, Future Archbishop of
Canterbury: The Paris Schools and Magna Carta*
Although Master Stephen Langton was ignored by the contemporary
chroniclers, he was in his day, without doubt, the most prolific theologian
in the schools of Paris.1 He followed the three-fold pattern established
by his teacher and colleague, Pierre the Chanter, of composing his works
within the categories of biblical commentary (lectio), disputation
(questio) and preaching (predicatio). His commentaries to nearly all the
seventy books of scripture exist in one, two or three versions. His
disputations number over 200, and at least 500 of his sermons were
recorded. This output survives in at least 200 manuscripts now
inventoried but mostly unexamined for their theological content. This
impressive oeuvre—the result of at least thirty years of teaching—was
produced almost single handedly since he had few acknowledged
students who remained at Paris, and he did not benefit from the
organised collaboration that the Dominicans made available to his
successor Hugues de Saint-Cher.2 As a commentator and preacher,
Stephen followed the biblical-moral school founded at the abbey of
Saint-Victor and perpetuated at Notre-Dame by Pierre Comestor and
Pierre the Chanter. Unlike the Chanter, however, and prefiguring
Hugues de Saint-Cher, he wrote a commentary to the Sentences of Pierre
the Lombard and numerous questiones in which he entertained
speculative issues such as the nature of the Trinity and Christology. (In
his biblical commentaries, however, he expressed reservations about
* This paper was originally prepared for a colloquium at Paris in September 2006. I am
indebted to Ghislain Brunel, Conservateur en Chef at the Archives Nationales, for making the
Trésor des Chartes accessible to me and to Riccardo Quinto for supplying digital copies of
manuscripts concerning two questiones of Langton. In Britain, audiences at Oxford, York,
London and Cambridge were generous with their comments. I am also grateful to the three
anonymous readers of the English Historical Review who were extremely careful and helpful in
their advice.
1. His Parisian teaching was ignored by the contemporary chroniclers until he was named
archbishop of Canterbury or died. See, for example, Robert d’Auxerre, Chronicon, ed. O. HolgerEgger, M[onumenta] G[ermaniae] H[istorica], Scriptores, xxvi, 272; Aubry de Trois-Fontaines,
Chronica, ed. P. Scheffer-Boichorst, MGH, SS, xxiii, 886; Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois
d’Angleterre, ed. F. Michel (Paris 1840), 110; Annals of Waverley, Annales monastici, ed.
H. R. Luard (London, 1865), ii, 304. F.M. Powicke, Stephen Langton (Oxford, 1928), 23–74, is the
pioneering study of Langton’s career at Paris.
2. Only Godefroy de Poitiers and the heretical master Guérin de Corbeil can be identified at
Paris. J. W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and
his Circle (Princeton, 1970), i, 31, 32. See also Hugues de Saint-Cher, bibliste et théologien, ed.
L.-J. Bataillon, G. Dahan and P.-M. Gy (Turnhout, 2004).
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
812 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
such exercises.3) As a speculative theologian, he favoured the school of
Pierre the Lombard and occasionally disagreed with the followers of
Gilbert de la Porrée, but modern scholars have only begun to fathom
his full theological depth.
Originating from Langton by Wragby in Lincolnshire, Stephen
belonged to a family of knights of the lower nobility much like his
colleagues Pierre the Chanter and Robert of Courson. (His brother
Walter participated in the Albigensian crusade in 1211.4) His social
status, however, differed markedly from other colleagues such as the
Dane Anders Sunesen who was born to the leading family in his country
and was sent to Paris to prepare for the archbishopric of Lund, or the
Italian Lothario from the family of the counts of Segni who nourished
ambitions at the Roman curia.5 When Stephen studied and taught
theology at Paris, therefore, he could have had little premonition of a
future career as archbishop of Canterbury and primate of England or of
the political turmoil that would lead to the issuing of Magna Carta in
1215. Although Stephen was a theologian’s theologian, his writings were
not hermetically sealed from the outside world. In his commentaries, he
cites King Henry I and the martyred archbishop Thomas Becket, the
idol of the Parisian schools. His questiones explored issues arising from
the ‘war between the two kings’ (obviously Richard and Philip Augustus)
and the ‘king of France who waged an unjust war against the king of
England’. Even his more speculative questions included examples from
the political world such as the phrases ‘royal power is a force for defeating
the proud’ or ‘someone who is punished justly by the command of a
judge’.6
As a scriptural exegete, however, master Stephen’s chief task was to
treat issues that arose in the sacred text. Following the routine of the
Paris schools, he ‘lectured’ on the bible in the mornings and devoted the
afternoons to disputing questions that arose from his commentary.
Scripture contains few questions of a directly political nature, but
enough to attract the attention of Pierre the Chanter, Stephen’s teacher
3. S. Ebbesen, ‘The Semantics of the Trinity according to Stephen Langton and Andrew
Sunesen’, in J. Jolivet and A. de Libera, eds., Gilbert de Poitiers et ses contemporains. Aux origines de
la ‘logica modernorum’ (Naples, 1987), 401–36. Like Pierre the Chanter, Stephen protested that
those who investigate such questions are wasting their time. To Amos 1, 15: ‘Moab interpretur ex
patre et significat hic theologos qui cum sint ex patre supremo quadem curiositate venerantur
verba similiter cadencia et irreverenter secreta dei investigant tota die disputando de trinitate et
notionibus et quibus aliis in quibus parva aut nulla est edificatio’. Langton, Paris, BnF lat. 505, fo.
46ra. Baldwin, Masters, ii, 70 n.81.
4. P. des Vaux de Cernay, Hystoria Albigensis, ed. P. Guébin and E. Lyon (vol. ccccxxii, Paris,
1926), i, 247, 250.
5. Sten Ebbesen and Lars Boje Mortensen have studied the influence of the Chanter and
Langton on Anders Sunesen. See L. B. Mortensen, ‘The Sources of Andrew Sunesen’s Hexaëmeron’,
Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen Age Grec et Latin, l (1985), 113–203.
6. ‘regia potestas est potentia debellandi superbos’ and ‘esto quod aliquis ex praecepto iudicis
iuste puniatur’, A Partial Edition of Stephen Langton’s Summa and Questiones with Parallels from
Andrew Sunesen’s Hexaemeron, ed. S. Ebbesen and L. B. Mortensen, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen
Age Grec et Latin, xlix (1985), 185, 189.
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CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
813
and colleague. In an important study, Philippe Buc has shown
conclusively that Stephen Langton associated himself closely with the
‘anti-monarchical’ school inspired by his teacher.7 In contrast to Aristotle
who maintained that ‘man is basically a political creature’,8 Pierre and
Stephen defended the Christian notion that political power is not
fundamental to human nature but the result of original sin. For that
reason, there was no government in Paradise before the Fall, nor would
there be at the end of the world. In the Old Testament narrative
(I Samuel 8 and 9), Yahweh acceeded to the supplications of the Jewish
people by according a monarchy to Saul but only with the severest of
reservations. Government, like divorce, exists only by divine permission,
not by authority. Of particular importance to Langton’s future career,
however, was the passage from I Samuel 10:24, 25. After the ancient
Hebrews had acclaimed Saul as king, the prophet Samuel proclaimed
the law of the realm (legem regni) and inscribed it in a book that was
placed before the Lord (I Samuel 10:24, 25). Pierre the Chanter explained
that this law stated not only what the people owed to the king but also
what the king could exact from the people, concluding that kings should
not demand anything beyond what had been written down. Stephen
himself followed this interpretation and identified the law of the realm
with the book of Deuteronomy, doubtless thinking of chapter 17.9 Just
as the book of Deuteronomy had played a fundamental role in shaping
the history of the Hebrew people, so the medieval commentators
proposed that written law should control and contain the activities of
kings.
Why should the prince be obeyed, therefore, in our sinful world? For
biblical scholars the classic response is found in the brief passage of Paul
in Romans 13:1–7. In terse, nearly telegraphic, terms the Apostle outlined
a case for political power:
Let every soul be subject to the higher powers ( potestatibus) for there is no
power except from God, and those that exist have been ordained by God.
Whoever resists power resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist
will be condemned. For princes are not a terror to good works but to bad.
Would you not fear power? Then do good and you have praise for that. To
you he is a minister of God for good. If you do bad, be afraid, because he
bears a sword not without cause. He is the minister of God and takes
7. P. Buc, L’ambiguïté du livre: Prince, Pouvoir, et Peuple dans les commentaires de la Bible au
moyen âge (Paris, 1994).
8. The phrase occurs in the Nichomachean Ethics (I, 7), the first book of which became available
in Latin early in the thirteenth century and was developed in the Politics which circulated in Latin
by mid-century.
9. To Deut 17: 18–19: ‘Nota quod in Regum dicitur quod Samuel ait populo volenti facere
regem: “Hoc est ius regis ….” Hoc ius regis omnes reges sciunt; hoc autem quod hic legitur
similiter scire debent. Scilicet quod hoc est ius regis, id est legere Deuteronomium.’ Langton, Paris
BnF. lat. 14415, fo. 265va. Text in Buc, L’Ambiguïté, 283 and D. d’Avray, ‘Magna Carta: Its
Background in Stephen Langton’s Academic Exegesis and its Episcopal Reception’, Studi medievali,
3rd series, xxxviii (1997), 437, 438.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
814
MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
vengeance in wrath on him who does bad. Therefore be subject by necessity
not only because of wrath but because of conscience. For the same reason
you also pay taxes …10
At mid-century, Pierre the Lombard had assembled the standard
commentaries to the passage from the small and medium glosses to
compile what became known as the Magna glossatura to Romans, which
continued to define and update the terminology. Thus the undefined
powers become kings, princes, tribunes and centurians, the sword became
the power of judges, while taxes were the recompense for defending the
homeland and performing judgements.11 The Lombard further identified
the underlying theological import of the passage (how can evil on earth
be explained in the presence of an omnipotent and good divinity?) and
its practical corollary (how can obedience to a wicked prince be justified?)
To the practical question, he offered a short and traditional reply: ‘If the
prince, however, orders that which you ought not to do, his power may
be disregarded by fearing a greater power’. Thus a custodian must accede
to a proconsul, a proconsul to an emperor and finally to God, assuring
that the highest power, God, has final authority.12 Pierre the Chanter
copied major portions of the Lombard’s commentary but added
elucidations of his own. Obedience to a good prince, for example, was
justified ‘by authority’ but to a wicked prince ‘by permission’.13
When Stephen turned to the passage, he went directly to the Lombard’s
commentary. His interest was absorbed more by the theological question
of the origin of evil than by the practical issue of political power. Employing
the categories of ‘possibility’, ‘faculty’, ‘will’ or ‘use’, he explored the
proposition of how a bad act can come from a good God. After deploying
grammatical and logical distinctions, he concluded that a bad act is a
power that should be considered as use and comes only indirectly from
God, thus replicating the Chanter’s distinction between permission and
authority.14 Whatever its relevance for theological speculation, Romans
13, however, powerfully legitimated political power whether the actual
rulers were good or bad and permitted little scope for resistance. The
principle was further reinforced by the Apostle Peter: ‘Be subject to all
human creatures [kings, dukes etc.] because of God’ (I Peter 2: 13, 14) and
10. The major study of this passage and its medieval commentaries is W. Affeldt, Die weltliche
Gewalt in der Paulus-Exegese. Röm. 13, 1–7 in den Römerbriefkommentaren der lateinischen Kirche bis
zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen, 1969).
11. Pierre the Lombard, Magna glossatura, PL 191: 1504A, 1506BC.
12. ‘Si tamen illud jubeat quod non debes facere, hic sane contemne potestatem timendo
majorem potestatem.’ Pierre the Lombard, Magna glossatura, PL 191: 1505B.
13. ‘… a deo data tum malo tum bono vel auctoritate vel permissione, unde dominus: non
haberis potestatem in nisi etc. Boni ergo … mittuntur a deo auctoritate, mali ex permissione [ms.
promissione].’ Pierre the Chanter to Rom. 13, Paris, Bibl. Maz. 176, fo. 174va–vb.
14. ‘Nullus enim usus directus potest esse a deo, quia eius usus directus non est nisi deformare
actionem, sed aliquis eius usus indirectus est a deo, ut resistere peccato sive deprimere. Sicut in alia
facultate dicitur, quod scientia decipiendi est a deo, quia omnis scientia est a deo et tamen non eius
usus directus, quasi decipere.’ Text in Affeldt, Die weltliche Gewalt, 298.
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CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
815
other passages from the Pauline Epistles: ‘I urge that … prayers be made
for kings and all those in high position’ (I Timothy 2:1).15
Following the Lombard, Langton also turned to the specific question
of ‘What is meant by resisting the ordinance of God?’ His reply was ‘He
[the wicked prince] has the power of killing me and I know that that
power is from God; he therefore wishes to kill me; if I flee or impede him
lest he kill me, do I resist the ordinance of God? [The answer is] no, except
if I am disobedient to those things that directly pertain to the ordinance
of God, such as paying taxes and the like. Whence the sense of the
proposition: Who resists, that is, is disobedient to power in those matters
that pertain to God’s ordinance [is condemned]; but if someone abuses
the power that is given to him by God and if I know that this bad use
would constitute a mortal sin for me, I ought not to obey him, lest I resist
the ordinance of God’.16 From the Lombard’s brief suggestion, Stephen
elaborated a justification for disobeying unjust commands from a lawful
prince. He followed this solution with an example of a prelate who abuses
his power by knowingly excommunicating a person unjustly.17 In a brief
gloss elsewhere, he noted that ‘when a king errs, the people should resist
him as far as they can; if they do not, they sin’, but he concluded that this
was a gloss worthy of a disputation ( glosam disputabilem). 18
15. ‘Subiecti estote, mente sicut corpore omni humane creature…. Sive regi etc. Estote, dico,
subiecti propter deum quia non ad oculum vos subiciatis maioribus sed in rei veritate et ita propter
deum, unde apostolus ad Phil. [2, 14]: “Omnia facite sine murmuracione ….” Glossa subiecti
esto[te] “ut conversacio vestre placeat omnibus non resistatis alicui dignitati hominum, alicui
persone, et alicui principi cui deus vos subd[it]i volu[er]it quia non est potestas nisi a deo et qui
potestati resistit, ordinacioni dei resistit et per partes creaturam exponit ….” Dicit etiam ad Rom.
[13,1]: “Omnis anima sublimioribus potestatibus ….” Item cum dixit [cf. Baruc 1, 11]: “Rogate pro
pace regis Babillonis quod in pace eius pax nostra.” Item apostolus in prima ad Timotheum [I Tim.
2, 1, 2]: “Obsecro primum omnium fieri obsecraciones, postulationes, gratiarum acciones pro
omnibus hominibus, pro regibus et omnibus qui in sublimitate sunt …” et dicit ibi Glossa
specialiter pro regibus etiam si mali sint pro omnibus qui constituti sunt in sublimitate ut ducibus
et commilitibus etiam si mali sint. Nota quod non dicit Glossa “subiecti estote dominis”, quod
nunc loquitur de liberis, postea vero loquitur de servis …. Glossa ad vindictam vero “quod semper
ita fiat sed que deberet esse accio ducis simpliciter qui etiam si bonos, dampnat non minus ad
laudem pertinet eorum quod agit si pacienter eius tolerantur boni et sapienter eius astucie
resistunt.”’ Langton to I Peter 2: 13, 14, Paris, Bibl. de l’Arsenal 64, fo. 81rb.
16. ‘… sed quid est resistere dei ordinationi? Ecce iste habet potestatem interficiendi me et ego
scio quod illa potestas est a deo; iste vero vult me interficere; si ego fugiam vel ne me interficiat
inpediam, resistamne ordinationi dei? Non, sed si inobediens sim illis que directe spectant ad
potestatem sive ad dei ordinationem ut in tributo et huiusmodi. Unde est sensus: Qui resistit, id est,
est inobediens potestati in his qui spectant dei ordinationi etc., sed si aliquis abutatur potestate sibi
a deo data et hoc sciam, in illo malo usu, si mihi sit mortale peccatum, non debeo ei obedire nec
resisto ordinationi dei.’ Langton ad Magnam glossaturam, Paris, BnF. lat. 14443, fo. 286va, Paris,
Bibl. Maz. 269, fo. 37vb. Langton’s entire commentary on the passage is published from Salzburg,
Stiftsbibliothek St Peter, Cod. A X 19 (XIII) fo. 51a–52a in Affeldt, Die weltliche Gewalt, 296–300.
For a full discussion of the theological aspects of the text, see Affeldt, Die weltliche Gewalt, 182–98.
17. ‘Sed bene potest esse quod prelatus meus abutatur potestate sua velut si iniuste sciens et
prudens me excommunicet, ego tamen debeo parere sentencie quia hoc possum facere non
peccando, immo meritorie.’ Paris, BnF lat. 14443, fo. 286va.
18. To II Sam. 23, 39: ‘Nota glosam disputabilem que sic dicit …. Ergo quando rex delinquit,
populum debet ei resistere in quantum potest, et si non facit, peccat.’ Langton, Paris, BnF lat.
14414, fo. 72ra, text in Buc, L’ambiguïté, 361.
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816 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
In fact this disputation is found under the rubric ‘concerning the
practice of obedience’ (De usu obedientie) in a question precisely where
Langton had discussed ‘Whether obedience is owed to a prelate in illicit
matters’. A bishop knowingly renders an unjust sentence and commands
a priest to excommunicate the defendant. Should the priest obey?19 In
the lengthy and complex response, Stephen devoted most of his attention
to the technicalities of excommunication, but in the discussion he raised
the analogous issues of obedience to political authority. As a preliminary
argument, he treats the proposition that an emperor should be obeyed
over a proconsul and thus up the political chain of command, as he had
noted in his commentary to Romans 13. Equally important, he explored
the parallel obligations of subjects to obey both prelates and princes.
According to I Peter [2:18], ‘Servants be subject to your lords at all
times’, a servant is held to obey a prince when he condemns someone to
death, even though he knows the command to be unjust. If he does not,
he is disobedient.20 A more specific case is posed by the executioner
(lictor) who knows that the defendant is innocent and that the emperor
does not wish him to be killed. According to Proverbs [24:11, 12], ‘Rescue
those who are being taken away to death’, he ought to obey the emperor
more than the proconsul who has ordered the execution. Despite the
command, the executioner is not held to kill but to free him, knowing
that he is innocent. On similar grounds, Stephen raised the historical
question of Jesus’s crucifixion. Were the common people (minores)
among the Hebrews free from responsibility when they were commanded
to kill Christ? The ordinary gloss to Psalm [81:4], ‘Rescue the weak and
needy’, had specifically applied this passage to the Jews since they were
believed to have revered Christ.21
19. ‘De usu obedientie…. Queritur ergo utrum obediendum sit prelatis in illicitis. Hic videtur
quod episcopus sciens iniuste fert sententiam in aliquem, et hoc scit sacerdos cui episcopus precipit
ut excommunicet eum. Nonne sacerdos tenetur hic obedire episcopo? ….’ Langton, Questiones,
Cambridge, St John’s College 57, fo. 334va, Paris, BnF lat. 14556, fo. 242ra.
20. ‘Sed contra, nonne iste cum sciat imperatorem imperare contrarium ei quod proconsul
imperat, tenetur potius obedire imperatori? Ergo non tenetur in illicito obedire …. Sed obicitur:
sicut obedientia locum habet inter subditum et prelatum et inter subditum et principem, iuxta
illud Petri in canonica [I. Peter 2, 18]: Servi subditi estote dominis vestris in omni tempore …eadem
ratione servus principi, licet sciat quod iniuste precipiat vel condempnet istum ad mortem, aut
inobediens erit.’ Langton, Questiones (see n. 19).
21. ‘Preterea, sicut sacerdos episcopo obedire tenetur, sic et lictor principi; ergo sicut sacerdos
excommunicare, ita et lictor occidere. Contra: Scit istum innocentem esse et scit summum
imperatorem non velle ut occidatur; ergo pocius debit obedire imperatori quam proconsuli
contrarium iubenti. Preterea, non habet locum nisi in hoc casu quod Salomon dicit xxiiii capitulo
Proverborum [24, 11]: Erue eos qui ducuntur ad mortem et qui trahuntur ad interitum liberare non
cessans. Si dixeris vires non suppetunt qui inspector est cordis ipse intelligit et servatorem anime tue nil
fallit reddet homini iuxta opera sua. Ergo constat quod lictor in hoc casu potest liberare eum saltem
quantum ad hoc, ne occidat eum. Ergo tenetur non occidere. Vel, si dicas quod tenetur occidere
propter preceptum principis cui tenetur obedire, licet sciat eum innocentem, ergo eadem ratione
et minores Iudei tenebantur occidere Christum et ita in hoc non peccaverunt, quod falsum est.
Nam super illum locum [Psalm 81, 4]: Eripite pauperem egenum dicit glosa quod tenebantur liberare
Christum cum pro multitudine timeret.’ Langton, Questiones (see n. 19).
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CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
817
The two questions concerning public executioners and the Jewish people
had been debated by Stephen’s colleagues Pierre the Chanter and Robert of
Courson in the Paris schools, but they had come to contradictory
conclusions.22 Against this confused background, Stephen disentangled the
practical issues within the larger theoretical discussion. The possibilities
available to the executioner are four-fold: If it is common knowledge that
the prince has condemned the defendant unjustly, the executioner is not
held to obey. If only the official knows of the defendant’s innocence, he
should seek to elude the prince’s command by all means available. If he
cannot, he should renounce his office. If neither is possible, he must execute
his duties.23 As for the obligation of the people to free someone whom they
know to be unjustly brought to the gibbet, the common people were held
to liberate Christ according to Proverbs [24:11], ‘Rescue those from death’,
reinforced by the gloss to Psalm [81:4] ‘Rescue the weak’, because these
commands were applied to the Jewish people. Stephen’s solution was that
the common people were held to rescue Christ because they were nearly all
of the opinion that he was the messiah. (Either he was God or he was a
blasphemer, but the latter was impossible because of the miracles he had
performed.) If political authority resides in the people, they are obliged to
free him if they can, but where a higher authority is present, they should go
to him or to the king and persuade him through argument and supplication
that the defendant has been unjustly condemned. If these alternatives fail,
Stephen believed that the people had no other recourse but to obey.
(Proverbs’ command to rescue from death applied only to those violently
abducted by robbers, not to those condemned through a legal judgement,
even though the sentence was unjust.) But—and the but is of the highest
importance—if a king wishes to kill someone unjustly and without a court
sentence (sine sententia), those who know this are obliged to liberate him.24
At this point, Stephen rephrased the issue in a different context that
was pertinent to his own day. If a king unjustly wages war and the people
know the injustice, are they held to obey him? The response was succinct
22. The discussion and the texts of the Chanter’s and Courson’s questiones can be found in
Baldwin, Masters, i, 167–9, ii, 112 nn.26, 27, 30.
23. ‘… sed si in publico tenetur ei dare, etsi sciat eius peccatum. Eodem modo hoc dico: si sciat
omnis populus quod iniuste dampnavit eum princeps, non tenetur ei obedire lictor. Si populus
non sciret et ipse solus sciret, deberet eludere mandatum principis aliquo modo si posset. Si non
possit, prius deberet renuntiare officio suo. Si neutrum possit, exequatur officium suum ….’
Langton, Questiones (see n. 19).
24. ‘Solutio. Populus et omnes minores Iudei tenebantur eripere Christum quia fere omnes in una
opinione erant quod messias erat propter opera que faciebat, quia sciebant quod impossible esset quod
opera talia faceret blasphemus et in medietate erant quod crederent eum esse deum vel esse blasphemum,
nec ab illa opinione resilire debebant propter opinionem Phariseorum et tenebantur ita credere, et ideo
secus est de illo homine quam de alio propter persone dignitatem. Dicimus ergo quod ubi auctoritas est
penes populum, eum tenetur liberare et sic de populo si possent. Sed ubi auctoritas penes maiorem est,
debet ire ad eum vel ad regem et debet persuadere ei quod iniuste dampnatus est, et ita per preces et per
suasiones liberare eum si possit. Alio modo non credo quod teneatur eum liberare et auctoritas Salomonis
(Prov. 24, 11) intelligenda est ubi infertur violentia, ut si videas aliquem trahi ad mortem a raptoribus,
sed non ubi aliquis dampnatus est per sententiam, etsi iniusta sit. Sed si rex velit aliquem occidere sine
sententia et iniuste, teneatur eum populus liberare si sciat.’ Langton, Questiones (see n. 19).
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
818 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
but clear: If the matter was judged through a sentence by a court, even
though the court was partial to the prince, and even though the sentence
was unjust, the people must accept, obey and not discuss the sentence.25
Disobedience is permitted only when the matter has not been adjudicated.
The same principle is applied to the siege of a castle. If the siege has been
adjudicated by a sentence of the court, no matter how unjust, the people
cannot discuss the decision. But if the king has acted on his own will
( proprio motu) to besiege the castle wrongly and without a legal judgement,
the people will not be disobedient if they refuse to follow him.26
In a third question, Stephen sharpened the terms of debate by envisaging
a contemporary event, but he shifted the solution from full obedience to
passive obedience. ‘The king of France wages an unjust war against the
king of England, and I am [summoned as] his knight’. It is clear that
Stephen is referring to the Capetian aggressions against King Richard
during the latter’s absence in the East or perhaps even to Philip Augustus’s
conquest of Normandy—issues that were acute when he was lecturing at
Paris. Stephen divides the question into two parts: the responsibility of the
single knight and that of the entire army. ‘What do I do if the king calls me
to perform service? If I come, I sin because I obey him in matters that are
against the precepts of God. If I do not come, I cause scandal and commit
a crime against the Gospel’. What if the entire army takes this course? Here
Stephen digressed into a discussion of the division of responsibility between
the individual and the group, but the practical solution to the single
knight’s dilemma is clear: ‘I arrive as summoned, but when it comes to
taking up arms, either I retire, or I remain without taking up arms’.27
25. ‘Item si rex iniuste movet bellum contra aliquem et populus hoc sciat, teneturne parere ei?
Respondeo: si iudicatum fuerit per sententiam etsi sententia iniusta sit et curia faveat principi,
debet propter hoc populus ei favere, non discutere an sententia sit iusta an iniusta. Sed ad
faciendum ei violentiam non debet ei parere populus, nisi sententiatum sit super hoc, sicut dictum
est.’ Langton, Questiones (see n. 19).
26. ‘Dicamus quod si iudicatum esset per sententiam, licet iniusta esset sententia, quod castrum
debeat expugnare, cum populus non habeat discutere de sententia, dicimus quod debet eum
ruinare. Si vero non esset iudicatum per sententiam, sed proprio motu moveretur rex ad
expugnandum iniuste castrum, concedimus quod non erit inobediens populus propter hoc si non
iuvet nec obediat preceptum eius.’ Langton, Questiones, Cambridge, St John’s College 57, fo. 136va.
This passage was first noticed by Powicke, Stephen Langton, 95.
27. ‘Item rex Franc[orum] habet iniustum bellum cum rege Anglie, et eius miles sum. Hoc, scio,
vocat me ut veniam ei in auxilium. Si venero, pecco quia in his que contra dei precepta sunt obedio.
Si non venero, scandalizo et crimen eius prodo, quod est contra evangelium. Quid hic agendum est?
Item sit quod probabile est quod ex nullius recessu fiat scandalum, sed si omnes recedant
scandalizabitur, et prodierit sic crimen eius. Quilibet istorum tenetur recedere, quia nullus eorum ex
suo recessu scandalizat; ergo omnes tenentur ab eo recedere. Sed si omnes recedant, scandalizant et
crimen eius produnt. Ergo omnes scandalizant, et tamen nullus scandalizat, vel prodit. Cuius ergo
peccatum erit illud scandalum, et quis erit illo reus, cum nullus eorum offendat?’
‘Respondeo. In primo casu venirem vocatus, sed cum ventum esset ad arma, aut recederem, aut
manens arma non moverem. In secundo casu quilibet non scandalizat et tamen omnes scandalizant,
et hoc nomen omnes nichilominus tenetur distributive, non pro ipsa multitudine. Hoc enim nichil
est dictu quod multitudo peccat, et nullus tamen eorum peccat. Et ideo licet utrobique teneatur
terminus distributive. Tamen in singulari falsa est, in plurali vera, ut iste potest videre quemlibet,
oculum non habendo, hec vera, hec falsa: iste potest videre nullum oculum habendo.’ Langton,
Questiones, Avranches 230, fo. 261v, Paris, BnF lat. 16385, fo. 69va, vb, Vatican, lat. 4297, fo. 262v.
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This solution required further refinement in a fourth question
involving the administration of the sacraments (cited also in the first
question) where Stephen returned to the unjust war and the individual
knight. Just as a priest must give the eucharist publicly to one whom he
personally believes (without proof ) to be in mortal sin but may withhold
it privately, by the same logic a knight who is bound by oath to a king
who, in turn, attacks another prince unjustly, must support his suzerain
publicly but not privately. If it should happen that the knight is the sole
defender of the king against an adversary with ten or twenty knights,
will not the knight be a traitor if he denies aid? He can, of course, advise
the king to retreat, but Stephen maintained that the knight should
support him. Even when the knight knows his lord’s cause is unjust, he
cannot abandon him against great odds. But a battle has two movements:
attack and defence. If a king attacks an enemy whose cause is just, the
knight sins in following him, but if a knight defends his sovereign, he
does not sin even though the king’s cause is unjust.28
All this casuistry demonstrates the great weight of the Pauline
argument of Romans 13 on Stephen’s doctrine of political obedience.
The general rule is submission to a prince even when his actions are
unjust. The chief alternatives permitted to an executioner are to resign
his duties or execute the sentence. The people have no right to rescue
someone unjustly condemned, if he has been judicially sentenced. They
are not even allowed to discuss the decision to embark upon an unjust
war. Summoned to such a war, a knight must answer the call, although
he may retire or remain inactive. If the king is overwhelmingly attacked,
the knight must support him publicly whatever the justice of his cause.
Yet the practical application of these principles nonetheless allowed
important exceptions. If the injustice of a particular condemnation is
common knowledge, the executioner may refuse to obey the prince’s
command. If the king commands a mortal sin, one has the right to
resist. Of greatest importance for the future was the exception that if
someone has been condemned without a judicial sentence, the people
are allowed to free the victim. Or if a war has been declared without a
decision of the court, the people can resist and an individual knight can
28. ‘Quibus danda sit eucharistia …. Item sacerdos in secreto non debet dare eucharistia[m] ei
quem scit esse in mortali, sed in publico, si petat, debet dare. Pari ratione miles qui iuramento
fidelitatis astrictus est regi, si sciat quod rex alium principem iniuste inquietat, in privato non debet
eum iuvare sed in publico. Contra. Ventum est ad hoc quod rex solus est cum milite, et ex parte
adversa sunt x vel xx. Nonne proditor erit miles si vitando discrimine regi neget vires? Forte dices
quod regi dicere debet ut fugiat, quod quidem verum est. Sed pono quod adeo ut Tydeus sit
animosus et velit congredi cum hostibus suis, debet eum miles iuvare. Cum sciat ipsum habere
causam iniustam, an relinquet in tanto discrimine solum? Dicimus quod in congressu duo possunt
esse actus, scilicet impetitio et defensio. Si miles iuvet regem in impetendo hostes qui iustam
habent causam, male facit. Si vero iuvet regem in defendendo, ex hoc non peccat, sicut si ille qui
est in mortali faciat bona opera ne videatur malus. Ex hoc non peccat; sed si facit ea, ut videatur
bonus, peccat.’ Langton, Questiones, Cambridge, St John’s College 57, fo. 204vb, Paris, BnF lat.
14556, fo. 220va. Tydeus was a bellicose Homeric warlord.
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820 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
abstain from active service. Most specifically, if the king’s unjust war is
offensive, his knights are not obliged to follow. A fellow theologian
could readily detect contradictions in these approaches, but in principle
Stephen Langton defended political authority even when it was unjust,
as long as it was legally adjudicated. The absence of the judicial process
became his principal justification for political resistance.
If the prince’s power is nearly without limit, what is his place in the
traditional medieval schema of sacerdotium and regnum? Coined by Pope
Gelasius I in the fifth century and revived by Pope Gregory VII at the
end of the eleventh, this formulation divided the world between two
competing spheres: the auctoritas of the sacerdotium and the potestas of
the regnum. Since auctoritas is superior to potestas, a tension occurs
between duality and hierarchy. Two scriptural metaphors were brought
into service to express the relationship. In Stephen’s commentary to Joel
2:31, ‘The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood’,
he preached a mini-sermon to prelates and princes that used these celestial
bodies to represent their respective spheres. Although the sun presides
over the day and the moon over the night, the moon has its light only
from the sun. Thus the secular power ( principatus) is derived from the
ecclesiastical. But it is questionable whether the moon accepts the light
of doctrine and the splendour of faith from the sun. Both, however, can
suffer eclipses, the sun from the moon and the moon from the earth.29
Not entirely explicit, Stephen’s metaphor well expressed the relationship
and the inevitable ambiguity between the two spheres, leaving questions
unresolved. In the midst of the discussion, he noted that before the
crucifixion two swords were brought to Jesus, eliciting his response: ‘It
is enough’. With this allusion, Langton turned to the other metaphor,
the two swords (Luke 22:38), that Bernard of Clairvaux had applied to the
sacerdotium and the regnum. The traditional explanation found in the
Glossa ordinaria was that the two swords represented the two testaments
of scripture which were deemed sufficient to combat the devil.30 To this,
however, Pierre the Chanter added enigmatically that ‘the second sword
29. To Joel 2, 31: ‘Sol convertetur in tenebras et luna in sanguinem antequam veniat dies domini
magnus et terribilis. Sermo ad prelatos et terrarum principes. Sol et luna sunt duo magna luminaria
quorum unum, scilicet sol, preest diei et alterum nocti, scilicet luna, nec habet lucem nisi a sole. Sol
est ecclesie principatus qui preest diei, id est, in spiritualibus; luna vero est principatus secularis qui
preest nocti, id est, terrenis, et sicut luna lumen recipit a sole sic principatus secularis a principatu
ecclesie. Unde in passione duo gladii domino sunt allati. Istud tamen questionis est unde potest dici
quod luna ista accipit lumen doctrine a sole et fidei splendorem. Sed cum sol iste sepe sit passus
eclipsim per lune interpositionem et luna sit passa eclypsim per umbram terre obnubilantem et solis
splendorem lune auferentem, modo ad hoc devenit res quod sol conversus est in tenebras peccatorum
et luna in sanguinem rapine.’ Langton, Paris, BnF lat. 17280, fo. 99r. B. Smalley, The Study of the
Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1952), 262, first printed and discussed this passage.
30. To Luke 22, 38: ‘Ecce gladii duo. Duo gladii promuntur unus novi alter veteris testamenti
quibus adversus dyaboli munimur insidias. Et dicitur satis est quia nichil deest ei quem utriusque
testamenti doctrina munierit.’ Glossa ordinaria. B. Smalley, The Gospel in the Schools c.1100–c.1280
(London, 1985), 112, shows how the Chanter used this text to prefer scriptural studies rather than
canon law as the basis of reform.
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was hidden because the pope hides the material but not the spiritual
sword from the emperor. He who kills by the authority of the pope
unsheathes [the pope’s] sword and thus the pope [kills]. I do not see how
this explanation can be gainsaid’. Elsewhere Pierre merely noted that the
material sword aids the spiritual and is born by the authority of the
church.31 For his part, Stephen noted ‘that the pope placed the sword on
the altar from which the emperor took it up, for he was the one to
brandish the sword but with moderation and with the guidance of the
pope’.32 These comments on the two powers were fragmentary and
uncoordinated, awaiting further treatment in a questio.33
The underlying relation between the sacerdotium and regnum was
first debated by the canonists. By the end of the twelfth century, two
interpretations emerged that may be designated as the hierocratic and
the dualist. Arguing from canonistic texts, the hierocrat Alanus Anglicus
concluded that since the church is one body, it should have only one
head; God therefore entrusted both swords to Peter and his successors.
Consequently, the emperor has his sword from the pope. Opposing this
unitary view, the dualist Huguccio maintained that the emperor has his
imperial dignity and the power of his sword not from the pope but from
God directly through election by the princes and the people. Since the
emperor existed historically before the pope and the empire before the
papacy, both emperor and pope hold their swords independently and
directly from God. Among the contemporary theologians at Paris,
Robert of Courson, Simon of Tournai and Master Martin sided with
the hierocrats,34 but Master Stephen came to the dualist conclusion,
although he phrased his questio in hierocratic terms, ‘that both swords
belong to the church’.35
Stephen divided his question into two parts. The second and longer
dealt with the practical problem of legitimising the police powers of the
bishop of Paris. As a hierocrat, Robert of Courson merely envisaged the
bishop receiving both his spiritual and temporal swords directly from
the pope.36 As a dualist Stephen had more difficulty in devolving the
31. To Luke 22, 38: ‘Duo gladii etc. … satis est mystice duo gladii promuntur, unus novi alter
veteris testamenti … alter est absconditus ut ostenderetur dominum sponte subiisse passionem.
Propter hoc exemplum dominus papa abscondit materialem non spiritualem gladium. Imperator
suum evaginat qui auctoritate pape interficit, et ita papa. Huic enim rationi non video quomodo
refragari qui possit.’ Chanter, Paris, Bibl. Maz. 298, fo. 104rb. Text also published in Smalley, The
Gospel in the Schools, 112. To Psalm 43, 4: ‘Materialis quoque gladius iuvat spiritualem et auctore
ecclesie portatur’. Chanter, Paris, BnF lat. 14426, fo. 31va. Text in Buc, L’ambiguïté, 43.
32. To Deut. 17: ‘Hoc est quod dominus papa ponit gladium super altare quem inde imperator
sumit, quia ipse vibrat gladium, sed moderamine et gubernatione domini pape’. Langton, Paris,
BnF lat. 14415, fo. 264va–vb. Text in Buc, L’ambiguïté, 44.
33. Smalley (Gospels in the Schools, 105, 106) remarks that the Chanter was strong on noting
discrepancies between the Gospels and the contemporary church, but weak on proposing reforms.
34. See Baldwin, Masters, i, 164.
35. ‘Quod uterque gladius sit ecclesie ….’ Langton, Questiones, Avranches 230, fo. 292vb, Paris,
BnF lat. 16385, fo. 116rb.
36. Baldwin, Masters, i, 164, text in ii, 110 n.11.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
822 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
bishop’s temporal sword or police powers from the king. His principal
solution was to distinguish between the power of right (iuris) and the
power of deed ( facti). Since the bishop only has the power of right but
not of deed, the execution of the material sword belongs to the king and
is exercised through the bishop’s ministers. As for the preliminary and
theoretical question ‘whether both swords belong to the church’,
Stephen constructed a more coherent argument. Naming the two
parties, the hierocrats are called the Romans and draw their support
from the Donation of Constantine. (The papacy had received the sword
from Constantine and passed it on to Charlemagne.) The Lombards or
the dualists who defend the emperor’s cause deny this. For his future as
archbishop, Stephen’s response to these two positions is noteworthy:
I reply that if the word church is taken broadly for the congregation of the faithful
(congregatione fidelium), the proposition [that both swords belong to the church]
is true because the prince of the world accepts his sword from the church and
because the faithful thus ordain that the king presides over the people for their
government. If the church is narrowly taken for prelate, then the proposition is
false. He [the king] receives it from no prelate, Roman bishop or any other. The
material sword, however, is handed down by the church, that is by the prelate of
the church, by the authority of the church not understood narrowly but broadly.
Just as the clergy elect a bishop, so all the faithful of the kingdom, both clerics
and laity, place the emperor at their head who defends the uncontaminated laws
of the laity and the peace of the church. But because the primate or the
metropolitan is the most dignified person in the kingdom, it is established that
he himself with the authority conceded to him performs this in the name of all
the faithful of the kingdom. Thus I have replied to the first question.37
Against the hierocrats who constructed a linear argument that was
founded on the papacy and passed to the prelacy, Stephen sought to
defend the dualist position by a broad definition of the church as the
congregation of the faithful ( fideles) that includes both clergy and laity.
Just as the clergy elect their prelates, so the clergy and the laity elect
their princes, thus seeking to grant a measure of independence to the
prince, but with the archbishop acting as an intermediary.38
37. ‘Respondeo. Si hoc nomen ecclesia large accipitur pro congregatione fidelium, verum est,
quia princeps seculi gladium accipit ab ecclesia, quia fideles ita ordinaverunt quod rex presit populo
ad eius regimen. Si vero stricte pro ecclesie prelato etc., falsum est. A nullo enim ecclesie prelato, vel
Romano episcopo, vel alio accipit; et ab ecclesia tamen traditur gladius materialis, id est a prelato
ecclesie, non auctoritate ecclesie ut stricte accipitur nomen ecclesie, sed large. Sicut enim clerici
eligere est episcopum, ita omnium fidelium illius regni, tam clericorum quam laicorum, preficere
sibi imperatorem, qui et pura iura laicorum, et pacem ecclesie tueatur. Sed quia primas vel
metropolitanus dignissima persona est in regno, ideo constitutum est ut ipse, sibi concessa
auctoritate, nomine omnium fidelium regni hoc exequatur. Et sic ad primum.’ Langton, Questiones,
Avranches 230, fo. 292vb, Paris, BnF lat. 16385, fo. 116rb.
38. Another dualist who may have had contact with Langton was the English canonist Richard
de Mores, later prior of Dunstable. His text was published by A.M. Stickler, ‘Sacerdotium et
regnum nei decretisti e primi decretalisti. Considerazioni metodologiche di ricerca e testi’,
Salesianum, xv (1953), 610–2.
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823
I have culled these fragmentary comments on political obedience and
the relations between the regnum and sacerdotium from hundreds of
manuscript folios of biblical commentary and comparable numbers of
disputations for their relevance to Langton’s future career as archbishop.
An infinitesimal part of his theological production at Paris, they
demonstrate the orientation of a professional theologian, not one who
is preparing for a career in the prelacy. They are, moreover, difficult to
date. One commentary was written before 1176, most after the fall of
Jerusalem in 1187, one at least after the siege of Acre in 1191 when many
prominent French barons perished. The questiones treating a French
king waging unjust wars against an English king and the police powers
of the bishop of Paris were, however, issues that were alive at Paris in the
late 1190s.39 Although these writings could have been revised during
Stephen’s exile at Pontigny from 1207 to 1213 (when he also visited Paris)
or later during his Continental travels from 1215 to 1218, his principal
audience had been nonetheless his students and colleagues at Paris.
From this mass of theological writing, I have retained five political
theorems chosen not for their coherence as political philosophy but for
their future relevance: (1) To protect his people against a wicked kingship,
Yaweh ordered the prophet Samuel to reduce the laws of the kingdom
to writing. (2) To respect the hierarchy of powers—particularly the
supremacy of God—the people have the traditional right to resist a
wicked king if he commands a mortal sin. (3) The people have a
particular right to resist a king who renders a decision without the
judgement of his court. (4) The church is defined not as the prelacy but
as the congregation of all the faithful comprising both the clergy who
elect the prelates and the clergy and laity who choose their kings, thus
offering separation to the kings. (5) The archbishop because of his
dignity has the duty to act in the name of all the faithful both clergy and
laity. The last two theorems mirror English conditions faithfully.
Although Stephen Langton’s role in English politics has been amply
explored, it may now be reviewed rapidly in the light of his Parisian
teaching. Master Stephen’s elevation to the archbishopric of Canterbury
was not of his own choosing but that of his former colleague and perhaps
student at Paris, Lothario dei Segni who became Pope Innocent III in
1198. When the election to the see was disputed between the king and
the monks in 1205, Innocent decided to impose Langton, whom he had
recently elevated to the rank of cardinal, as his own choice. King John
immediately objected that the candidate had lived among his enemies
in France and was virtually unknown in England, but in a letter of 1207
the pope sought to clarify the qualifications of his protégé. Stephen had
39. For summaries of evidence of dating Langton, see Baldwin, Masters, ii, 18, 20 nn.130, 138,
139, and M. J. Clark, ‘The Commentaries on Peter Commestor’s Historia scholastica of Stephen
Langton, Pseudo-Langton, and Hugh of St. Cher’, Sacris erudiri, xliv (2005), 314–8. Professor
Riccardo Quinto believes that most questiones reflect disputes held in Paris before 1206, but were
revised and collected after 1207.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
824 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
studied a long time at Paris and was awarded the rank of master in the
fields of the liberal arts and theology for which he had received a prebend
from the church of Paris. Innocent expressed surprise, moreover, that
Stephen’s name or at least his reputation was unknown to John because
he was a native of the king’s country, held a prebend at York, and John
himself had written to him at least three times after his promotion as
cardinal to recruit him for royal service.40 (Innocent may not have
known that Langton had defended the English king against the Capetian
aggressions in his debates at Paris, as we have seen.) John’s adamant
refusal to accept the pope’s candidate was countered by Innocent’s
placing the kingdom under interdict, excommunicating the king by
name in 1209, and finally in 1213 recruiting the French king, Philip
Augustus, to force compliance. John quickly capitulated, not only
agreeing to accept Langton but also offering his kingdom to the pope as
a fief, thus gaining papal protection against the French.
As the new archbishop prepared to meet his parishioners in 1213, he
would remember the pastoral letter he had addressed to his flock in
1207 soon after his consecration.41 By this letter, long known to
historians, Stephen sought to reassure his audience of his roots in and
loyalties to the English kingdom and to inscribe himself as successor to
the glorious martyr Thomas Becket. It also offered him the opportunity
to return to the theme of disobedience to a wicked prince that he had
considered in the schools. Adopting Pierre the Lombard’s traditional
exception to the Pauline commandment to submit to the higher powers,
he specified that if the king orders what ought not to be done, his
command may be disregarded for the command of a higher power, that
is, of God. Now in his pastoral letter the archbishop applied this
principle to his English parishioners:
First, therefore, we earnestly warn you that you do not become the executor,
counsellor or minister of wickedness. By human law even a serf is not held
to obey a lord in atrocities, much less should you who profess freedom of
heart and condition. This is proved by clear example. There are those who
are recognised to preside over others, saving the fealty owed to the king, and
have received their homage. If perchance the others break their oath of
homage through the will or command of lesser lords, these are considered
disloyal and traitors. This applies also to fealty, sworn or promised to kings
and other temporal lords, saving the fealty owed to a superior lord, that is,
to the eternal lord who is the king of kings and lord of lords. Whatever is
imposed by a temporal king in prejudice of the eternal king produces,
without doubt, sedition. Therefore, my beloved children, when any rebel
persists in schism, the holy church has decreed that his vassals are absolved
40. Roger of Wendover, in Mathew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. H. R. Luard (London, 1872), ii,
517. Selected Letters of Pope Innocent III concerning England (1198–1216), ed. C.R. Cheney and W.H.
Semple (London, 1953), 87.
41. Acta Stephani Langton Cantuariensis archiepiscopi, AD 1207–1228, ed. K. Major, Canterbury
and York Society, (Oxford, 1950), 2–7.
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825
from fealty owed to him, through just retribution. Just as a schismatic tries
to withdraw the fealty of his men from the eternal lord, their fealty is thereby
withdrawn from the schismatic.42
Disrespect for the higher power is thus equated with feudal sedition and
can be sanctioned by the withdrawal of fealty, a drastic measure, to be
sure, usually proposed after the prince had been excommunicated,
which John was not in 1207.43 ‘God is my witness’, Langton protested,
‘nothing frightens me more than not to serve fealty to the king in
temporal affairs and in the time of necessity. Because we do wish to
serve him, it is our full intention to prevent him from withdrawing
from faith in Christ and the unity of the church’.44 Stephen advised the
king’s familiars and friends, as he had decided in his questiones, that if
they cannot oppose the prince directly, they should obey him passively
by warning him, undermining the advice of the wicked and reducing
the evil deeds they are unable to prevent. He reminded the knights of
the vows they had taken at their dubbing and that they received their
insignia from the church which was to be protected by their swords. (At
this point, Langton interjects the reassurance that, contrary to malicious
rumours, neither the church of Canterbury nor that of Rome had the
intention of abolishing the rights of knights over patronage and the
presentation of priests.) For everyone, the archbishop counsels patience.
However ineffectual their efforts, if they remain steadfast with a clear
conscience, they can endure interdict, knowing that their merits will be
rewarded in the end.
Stephen Langton arrived in England in July 1213, met John at
Winchester where he absolved him of his excommunication and proceeded
to London, where on 25 August he delivered a sermon to the people at St
Paul’s on the text of Psalm 27:7: ‘My heart has hoped in God and I am
helped; my flesh blooms again; of my own will I confess to him’.45 This is
the first time that he met his parishioners face to face. The sermon has
been recorded in Latin and follows the homiletic rules of the schools.
Langton divided the text in four parts and developed each part with the
technique of distinctiones, that is, the enumeration of different meanings
and scriptural contexts for each word. But the sermon is totally original
because he makes no use of the distinctiones that he had collected at Paris
or of the relevant material he had collected in his lectiones and questiones.46
42. Acta Langton, 5. F.M. Powicke, Stephen Langton, 97.
43. Fealty to excommunicated lords was discussed by the canonists, Chanter and Courson in
Baldwin, Masters, i, 211–5.
44. Acta Langton, 6.
45. Editions by G. Lacombe, ‘An Unpublished Document on the Great Interdict (1207–1213)’,
Catholic Historical Review, new series, xv (1930), 408–20 and Select Sermons of Stephen Langton, ed.
P. B. Roberts (Toronto, 1980), 35–51.
46. This conclusion is the result of comparing the distinctiones and themes of his sermons with
his sermon manuals and other theological writings at Paris.
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826 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
It is most likely that he preached in French because he makes a concerted
effort to adapt to his lay audience by employing picturesque exempla,
personal reminiscences, proverbs and vocabulary both in French and
English to show that he was conversant in the two languages. As an
academic and preacher trained in the French schools, however, he could
not resist the temptation to faire la leçon. Exhuming an old stereotype, he
scolded the English for their reputation for habitual gluttony and
drunkenness.47 Adding to this tirade, he attacked the popular opinion
that simple fornication was merely a venial sin: ‘All sex outside of marriage
is mortal sin. I say this plainly and do not wish to mince words’.
When Stephen arrived at the second part of his sermon, ‘My heart
has hoped in God and I am helped’, he turned to the problem of the
interdict that had been uppermost in everyone’s mind for six years. At
this point, the annals of Waverley reported that he was rudely
interrupted by a listener: ‘By God’s death, you are lying. Never has
your heart hoped in God, nor has your flesh bloomed again’.48 Langton
had doubtlessly anticipated the suffering of his audience because he
raised the same objection in his sermon, placing it in the mouth of a
parishioner:
Lord archbishop, you and your fellow bishops hope in God and you are
helped. We have hoped in God and we are not helped. Why have you come
to England, and the church remains silent and its doors closed? You deprecate
us and say bad things about us.
Warning them not to allow such thoughts to entice them to mortal sin,
Langton sternly retorts:
Since you are laity, you should believe your prelates and act with discretion
and counsel. The pope is the lord of all Christendom and must be obeyed.
Because you lack discretion, I shall offer an exemplum. If one’s mother has a
high fever that has been lowered by the doctors, does her son immediately
give her rich beef or fatted goose to eat? Will she be restored if she starts
dancing in a chorus?
The preacher then proceeded to apply the case of the mother to the
holy church who, oppressed by the wicked, has run a high fever for six
years. If expected to resume her functions too quickly, she will suffer
relapse. Full health will come by degrees and not until all the stolen
goods are restored. She has partially revived because the king has begun
restitution of what was unjustly stolen. Only when she is fully free will
47. For examples, see The Letters of John of Salisbury, ed. W.J. Millor, H.E. Butler and C.N.L.
Brooke (London, 1955), i, 56; Jacques de Vitry, The Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry, ed.
J.F. Hinnesbusch, Spicilegium Friburgense 17 (Fribourg, 1972), 92.
48. Annales monastici, ed. H.R. Luard (London, 1865), ii, 277.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
827
she be able to sing and dance. At this point, Stephen turns dramatically
to the crucial question of when the interdict will be lifted:
Everyone knows that if all of the gold, emeralds and rubies of the world were
offered me to lift the sentence of the interdict, I could not relax one article
for the honour of the church until complete restitution of stolen property
had been made. If someone, even the king through his messengers,
approached the Roman curia to obtain that objective, we could not nor
should we relax the sentence until the stolen property was fully restored.
You should not blame or deprecate us, but rather love and pray that we may
honour your mother church rather than succumb to greed.
Full restitution of the damages that John had inflicted on the church
during the interdict was a major issue after Langton’s return in 1213, 49
but the attention that he devoted to John’s relation to the church was
perfunctory. As defenders, kings and princes are the church’s arms to
protect her against the attacks of the enemy,50 but the king, the English
church’s arm, has been recently fractured by bad counsel inducing him
to fight against rather than for her. His healing is presently partial
because, now absolved, John has begun to aid the church, but it will
increase quickly after the splints have been removed and ointment
applied. When restitution and full health are achieved, he will defend
his mother, and she will rejoice in song and dance. This was a time for
reconciliation and negotiation, not for hectoring John.
Even Roger of Wendover, the celebrated chronicler of St Albans, may
now be reread in the light of Langton’s Parisian teaching. Roger followed
closely the archbishop’s journey from Dover to London, when he met the
king at Winchester on 20–21 July and absolved him from excommunication
and when he met with the barons at St Albans on 4 August. Then on
25 August, the day that the archbishop had preached to the people at
St Paul’s London, Roger reported that Langton permitted the collegiate and
parochial churches of London to sing the canonical hours with low voices
just as he himself had broken the silence of the interdict by preaching a
pastoral sermon. On that occasion, he drew aside the bishops, abbots and
barons of the realm and privately reported to them (Roger knew only
from hearsay) that he had obliged the king to swear at Winchester that he
would abolish the evil laws and establish the good ones. Now he had
found a charter of King Henry I which could be of service to restore the
49. For Langton’s views on restitution, see the relevant questiones in the group ‘de restitutione et
utrum sit pars satisfactionis’, in R. Quinto, ‘Doctor Nominatissimus’, Stefano Langton (d.1228) e la
tradizione delle sue opere (vol. xxxix, Münster, 1994), 256. ‘Queritur an restitutio sit pars satisfactionis
…. Respondeo sic, pars satisfactionis restitutio ideo videtur quod non dimittitur peccatum nisi
restituatur ablatum nec plene satisfactio est nisi fiat restitutio.’
50. Like John of Salisbury, Langton evokes the corporal imagery of Paul (I Cor. 12) to situate
the king in the body politic. Unlike John, however, Langton assigns him the role of arms rather
than of head. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, Bk V, section 6, ed. C.C.I. Webb (Oxford, 1909), i,
584c.
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828 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
liberties that had been missing for so long. Producing the charter, he had
it read in their midst. When this was completed, the barons were so filled
with enthusiasm that they swore to defend those liberties with their lives,
and the archbishop for his part promised to furnish them aid within his
power. By the time that the assembly disbanded, a confederation had
been formed.51 Just as in his Paris lectures Master Stephen had underlined
the importance of the Second Law (Deuteronomy) to the ancient
Hebrews to provide guidance to their king, so the archbishop now
produced a written statement of past liberties. When Pierre the Chanter
had glossed the biblical passage, he noted that such a law did not exist in
his day, but an English scribe who copied the text expostulated in the
margin: ‘Oh that we had it today’!52 Now the barons did have their law.
The coronation charter of Henry I, as it is known, was drawn up in
1100 to elicit support for a candidate who had weak claims to the throne.
The charter was of interest to bishops and barons in 1213 because it
defined specific rights. Acknowledging that the kingdom had been long
oppressed with unjust exactions, Henry promised to maintain the
liberty of the church by curbing his regalian rights over deceased bishops
and abbots and in a similar way to insure that the heirs of barons could
redeem their lands with just reliefs. In particular, restraints were placed
on royal control of wardship, marriage, dowry and testamentary power.
Other matters such as knight service and royal forests were also defined,
but throughout the charter the ancient laws of King Edward were
reaffirmed to be the law of the land. The relevance of these provisions
was fully apparent to the English prelates and barons in 1213.
In 1100 some thirty sealed originals were issued, but none, however,
has survived today. Among the extant copies, the one in Roger’s chronicle
was derived from an original sent to Hertfordshire and another of great
interest has surfaced in the Archives Nationales of Paris. The latter is
related to the copies that circulated in early twelfth-century legal codes
and were also known to the royal clerics at Westminster who compiled
the Red Book of the Exchequer.53
51. Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 550–4.
52. To I Sam. 10:25: ‘Legem regni id est quid rex a populo exigere et quid populus regi debet dari,
quam non habemus. Ergo nec reges aliquid ultra prescriptum exigere debent.’ Chanter, Paris, Bibl.
de l’Arsenal 44, fo. 360b and Oxford Bodley SC 2717, fo. 7va. ‘Utinam hanc legem haberemus’,
Oxford ms. Text in Buc, L’ambiguïté, 281; for discussion of the ius prescriptum, see 280–3.
53. It belongs to the family of the Quadripartitus and the Leges Henrici I. The latter was
incorporated into the Red Book of the Exchequer fo. 16–29 and should not be confused with another
copy on fo. 163v that was related to the original for Worcester. Another copy in British Library
Harley 458 undoubtedly played an important role in the events of 1215, but its provenance remains
uncertain. It may have belonged to Canterbury. Holt, Magna Carta (1992), 474–6. For the copies,
see Regesta regum anglo-normannorum, 1066–1154, ed. C. Johnson and H.A. Cronne (Oxford, 1961),
ii, 1, 2; F. Liebermann, ‘The Text of Henry I’s Coronation Charter’, Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, new series, viii (1894), 21–37. Liebermann (p. 23) discusses Mathew Paris’s claim
that Canterbury also possessed a copy. L. Riess, ‘The Reissue of Henry I’s Coronation Charter’,
ante, xli (1926), 321–9. I am grateful to Richard Sharpe for clarification of these relations. The Paris
text is edited by A. Teulet, Layettes du Trésor des Chartes (Paris, 1863), i, no. 34, and by Holt with
emendations and numbering of articles in Magna Carta (1992), 424–6.
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829
On the same sheet of parchment in the Archives Nationales, the same
scribe, probably French, continued with these words: ‘This is the charter
(carta) of King Henry and the following [articles] are conceded by King
John’. Thus began the so-called ‘Unknown Charter’ that is not a proper
royal charter like its predecessor phrased in the royal ‘we’, but an
informal memorandum of notes that begins with ‘King John concedes
…’ and switches to the first person singular of ‘I ought’. As the Parisian
parchment makes explicit, these alleged concessions of John respond
directly to the specific concerns raised in the charter of King Henry. Of
the fourteen in John’s memorandum, at least five relate directly to
Henry’s provisions on reliefs, wardship, marriage, dowries and forests.
For example, John promises not to force a female ward into a disparaging
marriage but to dispose of her with the advice of her family.54 Of greatest
import, however, was the first article of the Unknown Charter: ‘King
John concedes that he will not accept anything for justice or commit
injustice and that he will not take a man without judgment (absque
judicio)’. The first two propositions were commonplaces among
canonists and theologians. Naturally injustice cannot be tolerated, and
Stephen’s colleagues at Paris reproduced the standard arguments against
the sale of justice,55 but the last proposition that focused on legal
judgement or the due process of law raised an element that was central
at Paris to Stephen’s treatment of obedience to constituted authority.
We recall that while considering the responsibilities of the executioner,
of the Hebrew people at Jesus’s crucifixion and of knights summoned to
war or to besiege a castle, the final criterion in Langton’s discussion was
the presence of a judicial sentence. If a decision had been rendered,
whether just or not, there was no recourse but to obey. Only the absence
of a judgement (sine sententia) justified resistance. The imperative of
judgement by a court had become Master Stephen’s personal
signature.56
Although Roger of Wendover did not specifically mention the
Unknown Charter, judgement by a court fits neatly into his tightly
scripted scenario of the archbishop’s role from his arrival in England in
1213 through to the issuing of Magna Carta in 1215. At the first meeting
with John on 20–21 July in Winchester, Roger noted that Langton
required John to swear as a condition for his absolution that he would
reestablish the good laws of his ancestors, particularly those of King
Edward, abolish the wicked laws and, most important, that he would
judge all his men by the just sentences of his court. At the assembly of
prelates and barons at St Albans on 4 August, the king was instructed on
54. The text is edited by Teulet, Layettes, i, no. 1153, and by Holt with emendations and
numbering of articles in Magna Carta (1992), 238–40, 427, 428.
55. Baldwin, Masters, i, 191. See also Langton’s synodical statutes (1213–14) in Councils and
Synods with other Documents relating to the English Church, ed. F.M. Powicke and C.R. Cheney
(Oxford, 1964), iii (1), 34.
56. See also, S. Painter, The Reign of King John (Baltimore, 1949), 311–5.
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830 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
how to observe the good laws of his great-grandfather and reduce the
bad laws that enabled the extortions of his ministers. When John,
however, summoned a host to pursue the rebel barons, the archbishop
confronted him at Northhampton and warned him that if he waged
war against anyone without judgement of his court (absque judicio curie
sue), he would be violating the oath taken at Winchester. Langton
threatened to anathematise John until he set a day for his barons at
court. At the next meeting with the barons at St Paul’s on 25 August, as
we have seen, Langton recalled John’s oath at Winchester to abrogate
the evil laws and restore the good legislation of Edward, thereby adding
specific content from the charter of Henry I.57 According to Wendover’s
scenario, therefore, the charter of Henry I joined the hallowed laws of
King Edward to justify the baronial program of liberties that Langton
subsequently repeated at Bury St Edmonds late in 1214 (where the
London discovery was recalled), at the New Temple in London in
January 1215 (where the Winchester oath was again recalled) and finally
at Oxford on 20 April 1215, shortly preceding Magna Carta where
certain capitula were read to the king partly from the charter of Henry
and partly from the ancient laws of Edward.58 Crucial to this program
was the archbishop’s insistence on the judicial process ( judicium sue
curie) that headed the Unknown Charter.
Ever since Roger of Wendover’s text was recopied by Mathew Paris,
his fellow monk at St Albans, it has provided irresistible subject matter
for historians of England. Among the contemporary chroniclers, Roger
provides the fullest account of Stephen Langton’s career as archbishop
of Canterbury. Because he has been found in error occasionally, recent
historians have distrusted his more colourful stories, in particular, the
discovery of King Henry’s charter at St Paul’s and the barons’ meeting at
Bury St Edmonds where they swore on the altar that they would make
war if the king did not confirm Henry’s charter. In these historians’
view, Wendover’s testimony cannot be accepted without independent
corroboration.59 That Langton’s sermon does not allude to the baronial
meeting and that the charter is not mentioned by other chroniclers until
1214 therefore appears to cast doubt on Wendover’s evidence. Yet Roger
of Wendover remains the major chronicler of the period and provides a
narrative structure and a wealth of information for the reigns of King
John and early Henry III. If he can be shown to be mistaken on occasion,
this is not sufficient reason to distrust him systematically when he is the
57. Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 550–4.
58. Ibid., 582–6.
59. For example, V.H. Galbraith, ‘Roger of Wendover and Mathew of Paris’, in V.H. Galbraith,
ed., Kings and Chroniclers: Essays in English Medieval History (London, 1982), 15–20. C. Holdsworth,
‘Stephen Langton’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Mathew and B.
Harrison (2004), xxii 520; Holt, Magna Carta (1992), 222–6, 238, 239, 420 on St Paul’s. Holt,
Magna Carta (1992), 225, 226, 406–11 on Bury St Edmonds. These views contest those of Powicke,
Stephen Langton, 102–28.
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CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
831
sole witness, unless he is clearly contradicted by other evidence—which
is not the case concerning St Paul’s in 1213. The sermon and baronial
meeting were two distinct events that could have occurred on the same
day, the one public and the other private, which the chronicler makes
clear when he reports it from hearsay.60 That Ralph of Coggeshall, the
Barnwell chronicler and the author of the Histoire des ducs de Normandie
report that Henry’s charter surfaced in the negotiations in 1214 signifies
only that they were unaware of a prior appearance.61
For my scenario, it makes little difference whether King Henry’s
charter was first produced in 1214–15 or in 1213 according to Wendover’s
script. Langton was active throughout the period. The Paris parchment,
containing both Henry’s and the Unknown Charter, is nonetheless well
accommodated by the date of 1213. At that time, the chronicler Ralph
of Coggeshall noted an agreement between the king and barons through
the mediation of the legate, the archbishop of Canterbury and other
bishops and barons. John promised to allow them to enjoy their ancient
liberties (which may have included the charter of Henry) just as he
promised in his oath at Winchester.62 The provisions in the charter can
be contextualised in 1213 as well as in 1214. The promise not to exact
military service outside of England, Normandy and Brittany responds
to the complaints of knights who forced John to abandon the expedition
to Poitou in 1213.63 Scutage became an accompanying issue then as it
was the following year when John actually succeeded in taking an army
to Poitou. In 1213, John’s maltreatment of female wards was likewise
fresh in baronial memory. The vernacular Histoire des ducs de Normandie,
sensitive to baronial concerns, reported that when Baldwin of Béthune,
count of Aumale, died in 1212, Hawise his widow and heiress to the
great barony paid the king 5,000 marks sterling to abstain from
remarriage, lest she be bestowed upon one of the king’s favourites.64 The
Paris parchment therefore contains testimony to negotiations that were
conducted perhaps as early as 1213 but certainly by 1214. One nagging
question, however, persists: how did the Unknown Charter come to
60. M.T. Clanchy, England and its Rulers, 1066–1272 (Oxford, 1998), 138.
61. Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson (London, 1875), 170; Canon of
Barnwell in The Historical Collections of Walter of Coventry, ed. W. Stubbs (London, 1873), 217, 218;
Histoire des ducs de Normandie, 145, 146. Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 585, 586 also
records its role in 1214 at Bury St Edmonds. Holt, Magna Carta (1992) claims (p. 224): ‘Coggeshall
and the Barnwell chronicler were clear that there was no demand for the confirmation of the
charter of Henry I until the winter of 1214–1215 …; indeed both are quite precise on that point’.
While the chroniclers can be ‘clear’ and ‘precise’ that the charter was known in 1214, it is less certain
that it could not have been known before.
62. Coggeshall, 167. See Painter, Reign of King John, 279, 280; Holt, Magna Carta (1992), 219–
221.
63. Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 82. Barnwell in Walter of Coventry, ii, 212. Coggeshall,
167, noted that the venture was also opposed by Langton. On the venture, see N. Vincent, ‘A Roll
of Knights Summoned to Campaign in 1213’, Historical Research, clix (1993), 89–97.
64. Histoire des ducs de Normandie, 115. See p. 149 for John’s penchant for disparaging marriages.
The Rotuli chartarum, ed. T.D. Hardy (London, 1837), i (1), 189, confirms the sum exacted. Painter,
Reign of King John, 217–9. Holt, Magna Carta (1992), 197, 198.
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832 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
Paris? Since the solution to this mystery doubtlessly lies in the events
that follow 1215, it will be treated as an epilogue.
During the two years between Langton’s return ( June 1213) and the
issuing of Magna Carta ( June 1215), the archbishop’s tasks may be
summarised as three-fold: to ensure that the king keep his promise to do
restitution, to fill the many vacancies among the bishoprics and abbacies
that had occurred during the interdict and to mediate the growing
frictions between the king and the barons. These tasks were complicated
by interference from Peter des Roches, John’s most loyal cleric, not only
bishop of Winchester since 1206 but also royal justiciar since 1213 who
served his royal master by promoting royal favourites.65 Equally difficult,
Innocent, now Langton’s spiritual superior, took an intense interest in
his protégé’s affairs but was poorly and belatedly informed. His principal
agents were his legate, Nicholas, cardinal-bishop of Tusculum, and his
personal nuncio, Pandulf, a subdeacon at the Roman curia, who was
granted the see of Norwich. For his part, King John took full advantage
of his position as papal vassal which he had obtained in 1213 and
reinforced in 1215 by taking the cross. As overlord of England and
protector of crusaders, the pope was now responsible for defending the
king’s interests. Rather than dealing with his restive barons, the king
sought to execute his long-planned Continental strategy to regain his
lost French domains. When all was lost at La Roche-aux-Moines and
Bouvines in July 1214, John returned to England to face his disgruntled
barons.
The baronial complaints referred to royal encroachments on their
liberties that were as ancient as Henry I and institutionalised by John’s
father and brother but exacerbated by John’s defects of character. By
1213, a party of opposition had formed, most visibly composed of
Northern lords, but comprising only a fraction of the total baronage.66
First reported by the chroniclers from hearsay, their grievances were
progressively committed to writing in four documents. The first two, as
has already been seen, were the coronation charter of King Henry I of
1100 (fourteen articles) that adumbrated historical precedents for the
barons’ claims and the Unknown Charter (twelve articles) that adapted
Henry’s concessions to contemporary conditions. The third, the ‘Articles
of the Barons’ (forty-nine articles, surviving in a sole copy in Langton’s
archiepiscopal archives), provided the preliminary draft to the fourth
and final version of Magna Carta (sixty-one articles) that the king
accepted at Runnymede on 19 June 1215. This final text was therefore
drafted by an accumulative procedure of compilation and rewriting.
The Unknown Charter had responded to feudal issues raised by Henry
I. Most of the concerns of the Unknown Charter, preceded now by the
65. N. Vincent, Peter des Roches. An Alien in English Politics, 1205–1238 (Cambridge, 1996).
66. Painter, Reign of King John, 296–9.
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CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
833
‘without judgment’ clause (absque judicio), were incorporated in the
Articles of the Barons and Magna Carta.67 By the time of the ‘Articles’,
however, many more grievances were added, nearly quadrupling the
document. The baronial issues involving reliefs, wardships and marriage
were elaborated, and a myriad matters involving the law, its
administration and other particularities affecting knights, merchants,
Jews, Londoners and lesser folk enlarged the scope of the enterprise.
This mass of material quickly reveals that Archbishop Langton played
a minor role in the legislation. His training at Paris did not prepare him
directly for the traditions of baronial rights or of English law, but his
specific proposals were nonetheless relevant to the eventual solutions.
The prohibition of the sale of justice inserted at the head of the Unknown
Charter was recopied in the succeeding versions (Magna Carta, art. 40).
Although a platitude among canonists and theologians at Paris, the
venality of justice was endemic to contemporary practice. In England
alone the Angevin judiciary counted the proffers or fines for hearing
pleas as a major source of income, and little was done to alleviate the
practice. The equally pertinent absque judicio clause, however, was
elaborated in the ‘Articles’ and Magna Carta to become the celebrated
text: ‘No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed
or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him,
except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land’
(art. 39) and was reinforced by the article: ‘If anyone has been disseised
or deprived by us without lawful judgment of his peers of lands, castles,
liberties or his rights we will restore them to him at once’ (art. 52).
Together these texts became the celebrated foundation for due process
in Anglo-American law.
Whatever the origins of due process in the Unknown Charter,
Langton and his episcopal colleagues had ample incentive to preface
Magna Carta with a declaration of the liberty of the church, just as
Henry I had opened his charter with a comparable affirmation. The
libertas ecclesie was, moreover, accepted doctrine at Paris. Referring to a
grant of 21 November 1214,68 John confirmed that ‘the English church
shall be free and shall have its rights undiminished and its liberties
unimpaired… and we confirm by our charter freedom of elections,
which is thought to be of the greatest necessity and importance to the
67. Langton possessed a copy of the Articles of the Barons and temporarily a copy of Magna
Carta of 1215. A. J. Collins, ‘The Documents of the Great Charter of 1215’, Proceedings of the British
Academy (1948), 237, 238, 247, 248. Holt, Magna Carta (1992), 245. Holt (Magna Carta [1992],
424–73) provides convenient cross references for tracing the evolution of the three documents. The
chief omission from the Unknown Charter was the issue of the forests. Although the provisions for
deforestation were maintained in the ‘Articles’ (art. 47) and Magna Carta (art. 47), the prohibition
of the death and mutilation penalties was postponed until the Forest Charters of 1217 and 1225.
The issues of the forest, however, were most probably discussed in the negotiations of 1215. Both
the Histoire des ducs de Normandie (150) and Roger of Wendover in Paris Chronica majora (ii,
598–602) associated them with Magna Carta. Holt, Magna Carta (1992), 514.
68. W. Stubbs and H.W.C. Davis, Select Charters … (Oxford, 1913), 282–4.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
834 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
English church ….’ (art. 1). The formula was traditional, but its necessity
was demonstrated by John’s behaviour towards Langton’s own election.
That it both prefaced and concluded the Great Charter underlines its
importance.
Among the items added by the Articles of the Barons was the principle
of common counsel (commune consilium) that adumbrated the broader
principle of the ‘community of the realm’. For example, ‘no scutage or
aid is to be levied in our realm except by the common counsel of our
realm …’ (art. 12), to which Magna Carta added a procedure for its
implementation: ‘And to obtain the common counsel of the realm for
the assessment of an aid … or a scutage, we will have archbishops,
bishops, abbots, earls and the greater barons summoned individually by
our letters … and we will also have summoned generally through our
sheriffs and bailiffs all those who hold from us in chief ’ (art. 14).69 At
the end of Magna Carta the drafters concluded: ‘All these aforesaid
customs and liberties which we have granted to be held in our realm as
far as it pertains to us towards our men, shall be observed by all men of
our realm, both cleric and lay …’ (art. 60) Common counsel for aids
and scutages had roots deep in Anglo-Norman government, but the
broader concept of the ‘community of the realm’ that included both
clerics and laity was slowly merging in thirteenth-century England and
was not well defined in Magna Carta.70 Stephen’s concept of the
‘congregation of the faithful’ (congregatio fidelium), formulated in his
disputations at Paris, accorded with the community of the realm. Here
the church was viewed in its expanded (large) sense, not as limited to the
prelacy, but as consisting of both the clergy under their prelates and the
people under their king.
If the archbishop’s direct contributions to Magna Carta were limited
to specific items, the prominence of his name in the Charter nonetheless
confirms his overall responsibility. Numerous chroniclers took notice of
his leadership in mediating between the king and barons as the
negotiations intensified in 1214 and 1215.71 Equally important was his
subsequent role during the reign of Henry III. Since the pope forbade
him to return to England before peace had been settled, he was absent
when the Charter was renewed in 1216 and 1217, but he was instrumental
in obtaining the reissues of 1223 and 1225, the latter of which became the
69. d’Avray, ‘Magna Carta: Its Background’, 423–32, relates Langton’s vague allusions to unfair
taxation in his biblical lectures with the propositions in Magna Carta concerning scutages and
aids.
70. W. Ullmann, Principles of Government and Politics in the Middle Ages (London, 1961), 175–9;
B. Tierney, ‘Religion and Rights: A Medieval Perspective’, Journal of Law and Religion, v (1987),
170–4; Holt, Magna Carta (1992), 279, 522.
71. In addition to the celebrated accounts in Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 582–6 and
the Histoire des ducs de Normandie, 149, 150, see also the Continuation to Coggeshall, 109, Annales
monastici, iii, 43 and the Barnwell chronicler in Coventry, ii, 221–3. C.R. Cheney, The Papacy and
England, 12th–14th Centuries (London, 1982), 311–41 and Pope Innocent III and England, Päpste und
Papsttum (vol. ix, Stuttgart, 1976), 226–86.
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CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
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definitive text. Thanks to the interventions of Langton and his fellow
bishops, the Great Charter received the support of the churchmen who
punished infringements by excommunication.72
The euphoria generated at Runnymede in June 1215 deteriorated
rapidly in the succeeding months. John disavowed the agreement backed
by his protector Innocent III who annulled the charter and
excommunicated the barons. When Langton refused to publish the
sentence, he was suspended from his functions and left for Rome,
ostensibly to attend the Fourth Lateran Council in November 1215, but
also to plead his cause.73 When peace had been achieved between the
king and barons, the pope’s letter commanding the excommunications
arrived in July. The archbishop doubtless thought that it could be
ignored on the grounds that the pope was misinformed. At Paris,
Stephen’s colleagues had wrestled with comparable perplexities that had
recently occurred. For example, Robert of Courson noted that the pope
had dispatched a legate to France with instructions to the bishops to
excommunicate the barons and knights who followed the king in the
‘war between the kings’. Meanwhile a new factor had arisen that might
have affected the pope’s decision had he been aware of it. Should the
bishops carry out the pope’s expressed command or seek to determine
his underlying intent? Rehearsing arguments pro and con, Robert
concluded that the barons and knights could ignore the pope’s order if
they felt their cause to be just. More practically, he advised the legate to
await further instructions in case the pontiff should change his mind.74
Since the distance between England and Rome made such situations
endemic, the archbishop doubtless felt justified in adopting his
colleague’s solution.75 Modern historians, like the pope, have reproached
Langton severely for the failure of the negotiations. He appears to have
been incapable of pleasing either the king or the pope, his old friend
and patron, thus proof of his incompetence, if one were needed, but, in
fact, Stephen played the role that he had foreseen at Paris. Exercising the
highest dignity in the kingdom, the metropolitan served the whole
congregation of the faithful that contained both clergy and laity.
Between sacerdotium and regnum he remained fundamentally a mediator
who defended both parties’ independence. Just as John’s vassalage to the
papacy had disgusted him, so he refused to obey a papal command that
72. D.A. Carpenter, The Minority of Henry III (Berkeley, 1990), 295–300, 382–8. Councils and
Synods, ed. Powicke and Cheney, ii (1), 138, 159. d’Avray, ‘Magna Carta: Its Background’, 432–4. As
usual, Roger of Wendover bears major responsibility for reporting the 1223 confirmation. Wendover
in Paris, Chronica majora, iii, 75, 76.
73. Holt, Magna Carta (1992), 371–4. The events are well portrayed in the papal letters: Select
Letters of Innocent III, ed. C.R. Cheney, nos. 75, 80, 82, 84, 85. See also Coggeshall, 174, and
Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 629, 630. See the appraisal of H.G. Richardson, ‘The
Morrow of the Great Charter: An Addendum’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, xxix
(1945), 188–98.
74. Baldwin, Masters, i, 214.
75. Select Letters of Innocent III, ed. C.R. Cheney, nos. 84, 85. Holt, Magna Carta (1992), 227.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
836 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
was badly informed. Neither the pope’s nor the king’s man, he asserted
his own independence. His final success was not in political action but
in contributing to the monumental Charter.
Master Stephen Langton’s training at Paris had prepared him for a
career as a professional theologian. Isolated principles of scripture,
however, anticipated his future stance as archbishop of Canterbury.
Although the Pauline doctrine of submission to the higher authorities
(Romans 13) powerfully sanctioned King John’s autocracy, Langton had
devised safeguards against its excesses. In particular, if the prince proceeds
without a legal judgement of his court, his action must be resisted. The
principle of due process which Langton forged in his disputations and
which prefaced the Unknown Charter was indelibly incorporated into
Magna Carta to become a lasting contribution to English law.76 Of the
four articles of Magna Carta in 1215 that survive on the Statute Books
today, three (art. 1, freedom of the Church, art. 39, due process and art.
40, sale of justice) were enunciated by Stephen Langton at Paris.
Due process, however, did not receive elaborate discussion in Langton’s
theological treatises. Corroborated by no explicit scriptural authority in
the biblical commentaries, it arose only as an exception to the casuistry
of obeying an unjust prince in the disputations. Nor was the principle
original to Langton. It was fundamental to Roman law, was reexpressed
in imperial constitutions as early as the eleventh century and was
interpolated into two late twelfth-century English legal codes.77 Most
important, Langton’s sine sententia was simply the schoolmen’s equivalent
of the Anglo-Norman absque judicio that had been long in practice.
Since the assizes of Henry II the royal justices in eyre had been teaching
free Englishmen—both barons and knights—the advantage of due
process in the king’s courts. Its ubiquity is suggested by a popular tale
recounted by Gerald of Wales in which King Henry II was instructed by
St Peter and the Archangel Gabriel to obey seven commandments
among which was ‘no one is to be condemned to death without judgment’.78
Philip Augustus had inserted the principle into his ordinance for ruling
the Capetian domain in 1190.79 From 1200, the immediate problem was
76. For the influence of Langton’s teaching on Magna Carta, see the suggestions of Powicke,
Stephen Langton, 94, 95 and P. B. Roberts, Studies in the Sermons of Stephen Langton (vol. xvi,
Toronto, 1968), 123–30 and the hesitations of Holt in Magna Carta (1992), 280–2, 295. On the
long-term significance of the due process clause, see F.M. Powicke, ‘Per iudicium parium vel
per legem terrae’, in Magna Carta Commemoration Essays, ed. H. E. Malden (London, 1917),
96–121.
77. L. Fowler-Magerl, Ordo iudiciorum vel ordo iudicarius: Begriff und Literaturgattung, Ius
commune, Sonderhefte (vol. xix, Frankfort, 1984), 13; Ullmann, Principles of Government and
Politics, 162 and F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1903), i, 554, 635. Holt, Magna
Carta (1992), 75–8, 93, 94.
78. Giraldus Cambrensis, De principis instructione, in Opera, ed. G. F. Warner (London, 1891),
viii, 183–6. The seven commandments parallel the programme of the Unknown Charter. J.C. Holt,
‘The Barons and the Great Charter’, ante, lx (1955), 1–24, demonstrates the ubiquity of the concept
preceeding 1215. See also Holt, Magna Carta (1992), 72, 73.
79. Recueil des actes de Philippe Auguste, ed. H.-F. Delaborde (Paris, 1916), i, no. 345.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
837
John’s current violation of the principle. Spurred by the king’s behaviour,
Langton was a facilitator, if not an innovator, who reinforced the
baronial programme with his Parisian teaching. For Roger of Wendover
especially due process was the archbishop’s hallmark from his entry into
England in 1213. Not only was it among the conditions for John’s
absolution at Winchester and reiterated at Northhampton but also it
reappears continuously in Roger’s narrative following its incorporation
into Magna Carta.80 Doubtless, it arose at the siege of Rochester in 1215
when John wrested the castle from the archbishop’s custody.81 Innocent
annulled Magna Carta by pronouncing a defined and condemning
sentence and absolved the archbishop from suspension when Langton
submited to judgement.82 Wendover’s specious versions of John’s
condemnation in both Philip Augustus’s and the papal courts—belatedly
revealed in 1216—were undoubtedly introduced to show that the king
was judged by due process.83 The victory of the loyalist barons over
Prince Louis’s forces at Lincoln was viewed as a just judgement in the
heavenly court.84 As king, Louis VIII refused in 1223 to return Normandy
to the English unless King Henry was prepared to bring suit in the
French court, and in 1226 the French barons sought the release of the
counts of Flanders and Boulogne because no one in France should be
deprived of their rights except by judgement of the twelve peers.85 After
1215, the formula surfaces frequently in Innocent’s letters and even in
King John’s own mandates.86
80. The chronicler of Waverley recognised the principle in 1215, Annales monastici, ii, 282.
81. Coggeshall (173) states explicitly that Langton refused to deliver the castle nisi per judicium.
Wendover (in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 606, 621) states that John rendered the castle ‘que ad ejus
custodiam de jure antique spectabant’. The two chroniclers, however, were not fully informed of
the charters and royal letters dating back to Henry I that set the complex modalities of the
archbishop’s custody of Rochester and that are now available to modern historians. See I. W.
Rowlands, ‘King John, Stephen Langton and Rochester Castle 1213–15’, in Studies in Medieval
History presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. C. Harper-Bill et al. (Woodbridge, 1989), 267–9, and Holt,
Magna Carta (1992), 361, 362.
82. ‘per sententiam diffinitivam damnatam cassavit’, ‘quod staret judicio pape … a sententia
suspensionis absolutus est’, Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 616, 648.
83. ‘coram eo convictus, damnatus fuit per judicium in curia ipsius regis’, ‘idem rex
condemnatus fuit ad mortem in curia regis Francorum per judicium parium suorum’, Wendover
in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 651–3, 657. On the improbability of these alleged judgements, see
C. Petit-Dutaillis, Le déshéritement de Jean sans Terre et le meutre d’Artur de Bretagne (Paris, 1925)
and C.R. Cheney, ‘The Alleged Disposition of King John’, in The Papacy in England, no. XII.
Although allegedly taking place between 1202 and 1213, these condemnations were reported by the
chronicler in 1216 to provide justification for Prince Louis’s invasion.
84. ‘Credendum est itaque confusionem hanc Ludowico ac baronibus Anglie justo Dei accidisse
judicio’, Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, iii, 25.
85. ‘sicut ostendere paratus erit in curia sua, si rex Anglie ad eam voluerit venire et ibidem juri
parere’, ‘nullus de regno Francorum debuit ab aliquo jure suo spoliari nisi per judicium duodecim
parium’, Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, iii, 77, 118.
86. For example, ‘rex non deberet absque judicio spoliari’, in The Letters of Pope Innocent III
(1198–1216) concerning England and Wales, ed. C.R. Cheney and M. G. Cheney (Oxford, 1967), no.
1018; also in Wendover, in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 617. For John, see especially V. H. Galbraith,
Studies in the Public Records (London, 1948), 136, 137, 161, 162, and the selection in Holt, Magna
Carta (1992), 234, 492, 495, 499.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
838 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
As a postscript to Stephen Langton’s role in Magna Carta, some
detective work is required to account for the Unknown Charter at Paris.
Initially found in the French archives by an English Royal Commission
early in the nineteenth century, it lay buried in their unpublished reports.
The French archivist Alexandre Teulet had edited it in 1863 in his
comprehensive Layettes du Trésor des Chartes (vol. I, nos. 34 and 1053), but
it was John Horace Round who ‘discovered’ it thirty years later in 1893 as
he was examining the reports of the Royal Commission in London.87
The subsequent flurry of attention to the document in England naturally
focused upon dating and situating it in the context of Magna Carta, but
there was little interest in explaining its presence in Paris.88 To date,
morever, no attempt has been published to explore the archives themselves
for traces of the arrival of the ‘Unknown Charter.’
The French royal archives originated under Philip Augustus and were
deposited in a secure place after 1194, most likely in the royal palace in
Paris. After Louis IX returned from his first crusade, he constructed a
sacristy adjoining the Sainte-Chapelle that housed the Trésor des
Chartes, as the royal archives were henceforth named. Stored in chests,
these early documents consisted uniquely of incoming letters addressed
to the king. When other collections arrived from fiefs that escheated to
the crown, the chancery began to deposit these documents in the Trésor
as well, thus altering the nature of the archives as a repository exclusively
devoted to incoming communications.89 Since this ambitious project
contained at least 550 pieces by the end of Philip’s reign, it became
necessary to establish internal fonds or sub-collections.90 Undoubtedly
87. J.H. Round ‘An Unkown Charter of Liberties’, ante, viii (1893), 288–94.
88. G.W. Prothero, ‘Note on an Unknown Charter of Liberties’, ante, ix (1894), 117–21; Hubert
Hall, ‘An Unknown Charter of Liberties’, ante, ix (1894), 326–35. Asked to comment on it, the
French specialist Charles Bémont identified the scribal hand as French, perhaps from the Capetian
chancery, but he had ignored the document when he published his own Chartes des libertés anglaises.
Charles Bémont, ante, ix (1894) 33, 35; Chartes des libertés anglaises (1100–1305), Collection des texts
pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement de l’histoire (Paris, 1892). In 1905, H.W.C. Davis offered the
hypothesis that it may have been the report of a French spy whom Charles Petit-Dutaillis identified
as Philip Augustus’s agent in England. H.W.C. Davis, ‘An Unknown Charter of Liberties’, ante, xx
(1905), 719–26. C. Petit-Dutaillis, ‘An Unknown Charter of Liberties’, Studies and Notes supplementary
to Stubbs’s Constitutional History Down to the Great Charter, trans. W.E. Rhodes (Manchester,
1908), i, 116–26. In 1910, Ludwig Reiss constructed an elaborate scenario that envisaged the justiciar
Peter des Roches sending a copy of Henry I’s coronation charter to John while he was in Poitou in
1214 to which was attached some notes for John of the promises that he had made with the barons
in 1213. The French captured the document and deposited it in their archives. L. Riess, ‘Zur
Vorgeschichte der Magna Charta’, Historische Vierteljahrschrift, xiii (1910), 449–58.
89. J. W. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the
Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1986), 407–12.
90. For example, the negotiations legitimizing Philip’s children by his concubine, Agnès de
Méran in 1201. It was identified by Charles V’s archivist Gerard de Montagu’s alphabetical inventory
of the principal fonds of the Trésor des chartes, Paris, AN, Registre JJ 124, fo. 21r: ‘L’, ‘Lettre de
LEGITTIMACIONE librorum regis Philippi tunc quos habuit de filia ducis Merannie in viiio’.
Undoubtedly, this fond consisted of the charters in the present Paris, AN J 632, nos. 1–14. On the
early organisation of the Trésor des Chartes, see O. Guyotjeannin et Y. Potin, ‘La fabrique de la
perpétuité. Le Trésor des chartes et les archives du royaume (XIIe–XIXe siècle)’, Revue de synthèse
(2004), 15–32. I am particularly grateful to Yann Potin for help in preparing this study.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
839
the earliest and largest of these fonds was devoted to communications
from England. Gérard de Montagu, archivist of Charles V, described it
as a large iron-bound chest located to the left of the altar with a
designation on the lid. It contained a repertory of old and new books
touching English treaties and affairs.91 In the torturous negotiations
following the treaty of Brétigny in the 1360s that determined the ransom
of King Jean le Bon, the French chancery compiled its earliest inventory
(Registre JJ 117) of the contents of the fonds d’Angleterre that provides our
first glimpse into archival practice and permits a comparison with the
current Trésor de Chartes. The present state of the Trésor is the work of
the archivist Pierre Dupuy in the seventeenth century. In the eighth
volume of his inventory, he created a category labelled Angleterre and
arranged the charters in chronological order, placing them in twentyfive layettes.92
For comparative purposes, we may select a sample of forty items from
this fonds comprising the earliest original documents in the present
Trésor until the end of Philip Augustus’s reign (1223). The fourteenthcentury inventory is divided into seven layettes labelled A to G and
numbered with Roman numerals within each part.93 Of the forty items
in the inventory, only one charter is clearly missing, suggesting that the
strongbox was effective in keeping the archives intact until the time of
Dupuy.94 On the other hand, if the present holdings are compared with
those in the inventory, only six items were omitted from the latter,
suggesting that the inventory was nearly complete.95 From these
comparisons, we may conclude that the fourteenth-century inventory
and Dupuy’s present fonds d’Angleterre were practically identical for the
reign of Philip Augustus.
91. Paris, AN, Registre JJ 124 fo. 6r: ‘Lettre de faitis et tractatibus ANGLIE. In magno coffro
ferrato ad partem sinistratam altaris ubi scriptellum anglia et est signatum super coopercusum. Et
ibi invenietur repertorium particulare librarum antiquarum et novarum tangentium tractatus et
negocia anglicanos, et tractatus novissimus factus inter regem Johannem et regem Anglie in
quodam libello super hoc confecto ….’
92. Boxes numbered from Paris, AN, J 628 to J 652. In the last four (J 653 to 656), he placed
papal bulls, undated rolls, letters and registers. Teulet, Layettes, i, lxiii.
93. Paris, AN, JJ 117, fo. 1r: ‘C’est l’intitulation des letters estans ou tresor des privileges du roy
de France faictes par les roys de France et d’Angleterre et pluseurs autres illeuc nommez.
Premierement en la leyete signee par A estant ou grant coffre d’Angleterre.’ The other divisions
follow with the same formula. Except that it was seven-fold, a significant number, the rationale
behind the division is not immediately clear.
94. In Paris, AN, J 628, JJ 117, fo. 5v: ‘G, iiii. Lettre de l’omage de Alienor royne d’angleterre du
ducé d’acquitainne et du conté de poitiers et est lige. mc iiiixx ix,’ [sic]. This clearly important
charter is no longer in the Trésor.
95. The six include: Teulet, Layettes, i, nos. 34 and 1153 ( J 655, Angleterre, pièces sans date, no.
31bis). No. 1194 ( J 655, Angleterre, pièces sans date, nos. 11 and 31), no. 1273 ( J 653, Angleterre, bulls,
no. 1) and no. 1274 ( J 696, Bulles. Mélanges, provisions, no. 1). Teulet, Layettes, I, no. 1032 ( J 655
Angleterrre, pièces sans date no.14) contains a proposed alliance with the Welsh prince Llywelyn
ap Iorwerth and belongs to Philip Augustus’s campaign of 1212–13. ‘Confederacio Loelini principis
Norwallie cum domino rege Francorum, sine data’, in The Acts of Welsh Rulers, 1120–1283, ed.
H. Pryce (Cardiff, 2005), no. 235 (dated May to June 1212). R.F. Treharne, ‘The Franco-Welsh
Treaty of Alliance in 1212’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, xviii (1958–60), 60–75.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
840 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
In addition to the register, the second archival feature is the
endorsement on the backs of the charters of the Trésor that provides
summaries in Latin including the date.96 In contrast, the inventory
consists of French translations of the endorsements which follow the
Latin texts closely, including the mistakes, thus suggesting that the
compiler of the inventory made little effort to verify the text or the date.97
It is difficult to arrive at firm paleographic conclusions about the scribes
who composed the endorsements, but certain observations are clear.
Although many of the endorsements were written by the same hand, a
number of scribes nonetheless participated in the enterprise as would be
expected over time. More significant, the scribe of the inventory did not
write the endorsements. A third feature is the inventory’s practice of
assigning Roman numbers within each of the seven layettes to the
individual items. Numbers are likewise found on the backs of the charters
that correspond in most cases to those in the inventory.98
These three features were, of course, standard archival practice.
Although other possibilities suggest themselves, it appears likely that
multiple scribes first endorsed the charters with Latin summations and
the date. This could be done both over time and by single scribes
endorsing blocks of charters, thus accounting for the divergent hands.
In the fourteenth century, the compiler of the inventory sorted each
charter to a layette, assigned it a number and translated the endorsement
and the date into French in the inventory.99
How does the single parchment containing Henry I’s coronation
oath and King John’s responses in the Unknown Charter fit into this
context? To facilitate a response, this document should be associated
96. The six not found in the inventory all contain endorsements. The date consists exclusively
of the Incarnation taken directly from the charter. No attempt was made to convert the regnal
dates of the English royal charters.
97. To compare the Latin endorsement with the inventory translation, see the important charter
of Count John in 1194: AN, J 628, Angleterre I, no. 1: ‘i. Littera Johannis comitis Morithonie fratris
Ricardi regis Anglie super convencionibus quas habuit cum domino rege Philippo. mocolxxxiiio [sic]’.
AN, JJ 117, fo. 1v: ‘B ii. Item la letter de Jehan conte de Marthome frere du roy Ricart d’Angleterre
sur les convenances qu’ilz ont au roy Philippe’. For an example of a mistake, see below no. 99.
98. Among the 30/35 correct numberings, I have included a few that were close misses, such as
the above charter of Count John. Other numbers are also found, sometimes two or three and
sometimes cancelled, thus suggesting that the charters underwent various classifications. Rarely is
there indication of the layettes (A to G) to which the numbers were assigned.
99. It is, of course, not impossible that the inventory came first, but that would require the
compiler to choose the charter, assign its number, compose a summary in French for the inventory
and then hand the charter to another scribe to make a Latin translation of the French summary.
There is one charter that contains both an anomaly of form and a mistake in content that might
support this procedure. The scribe of the endorsement began in Latin then switched to French
which duplicated the text of the inventory. Compare the inventory, AN, JJ 117, fo. 2r. ‘B xxviii.
Lettre de Ricart roy d’angleterre per la quelle il conferme ce son fils henri avoit donné et est sanz
date’, with AN. J 655, no. 1, ‘Lettre confirmat Ricardi regis Anglie per quam confirmat et que son
fil Henri avoit donné et est sanz date’. Besides the numerous anomalies, both texts are mistaken as
to the identity of Henry who is obviously Richard’s father and not his son. See Teulet, Layettes, i,
no. 361. It is also possible that the endorser did switch to French or that he left it unfinished and
the compiler of the inventory completed it in French. Too much weight can be placed on this
eccentric example.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
841
with two other items, copies of the Magna Carta that the young king
Henry III confirmed at Bristol on 12 November 1216 shortly after the
death of King John. They are also located in the Trésor des Chartes but
one is missing the preamble. Like the Unknown Charter, the two copies
carry endorsements. Our first finding, however, is negative. The single
parchment containing Henry’s and the ‘Unknown’ charters and the two
copies of Magna Carta of 1216 were not included in the inventory of the
fourteenth century.100 Pierre Dupuy was the first archivist to record
these three items.101 Before we can dismiss these pieces as not belonging
to the Trésor before the fourteenth century, however, we should first
consider the archives’ development as now revealed in the inventory
and the extant charters of the Trésor. Both series contain very few items
before 1194,102 but after the important charter of Count John of that
date, the volume increases markedly until 1204 (the conquest of
Normandy) when the charters diminish quickly.103 Thereafter, the fonds
d’Angleterre was limited to the major truces between Philip Augustus
and John and Henry III. In this last period are found four additional
charters that pertain to the unsuccessful expedition to England in 1216–
17 by Louis, eldest son of Philip Augustus. Two of these charters consist
of confirmations in 1218 by Pope Honorius III of the agreement between
Louis and King Henry, and they were not included in the fourteenthcentury inventory.104 The two other charters, however, were endorsed,
100. AN. J 655 no. 11 (complete copy): ‘Transcriptum super quibusdam statutis regni Anglie
regni Henrici regis Anglie anno primo’ and no. 31 (truncated copy): ‘In quodam rotulo—quedam
consuetudines Anglie que videntur facere ad consuetudines Normannie’; Teulet, Layettes, i, no.
1194. N. Vincent, ed., The Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, Papal Legate in England,
1216–1218, Canterbury and York Society, lxxxiii (Woodbridge, 1996), no. 37. The inventory (AN.
JJ 117, fo. 4v) contains the following item: ‘D xli. Lettre du roy d’Angleterre que ses ordenances
soient tenues, sans date’. Despite the temptation to see this notice as pertaining to the copies of
Magna Carta of 1216, it is not a translation of either of the endorsements as was the practice and it
ignores the date in one of them. It stands between letters dated 1259 and 1287.
101. AN, J 655 no. 11: ‘Coppie de certains statuts faicts par le Roy Henri le 3e pour le
gouvernement de son royaume. Regno anno primo.’ No. 31: ‘Deux rolles contenant d’anciennes
lettres de quelques roys d’Angleterre à l’entrée de leur règne ordonnant plusieurs choses pour le
bon ordre de l’estat et remettons beaucoup de droicts aux ecclésiastiques, barons et autres de leurs
royaumes … sans date’. I am grateful to Yann Potin for this text.
102. For example, two charters from Henry II and Richard: Teulet, Layettes, I, nos. 354 and 361.
A third charter, no. 371 (AN, J 178, Anjou, no. 24) was a vidimus from 1254. It was placed in the
inventory (AN, JJ 117, fo. 6r as: ‘G lx. Le transcript des letters de Philippe roy de France et de Richart
roy d’Angleterre de l’inquisition du doit que le conte d’Anjou a à Tours. Mccliiii’. The endorsement
reads: ‘xx. Transcriptum litterarum regis Philippi Franc’ et regis Anglie Ricardi de inquisitione inter
quod comes Andeg’ habebat Turon’ moccoliiiio. Capta inter litteras Anglie in scrineto G et ponita in
litteris Andeg’ quia tangit comitatum Angegaven’ ut videtur’. The final sentence indicates a transfer
from the English chest to the Anjou fonds after the inventory better to accommodate the charter.
103. Perhaps other fonds were established (for Normandy, for example) that absorbed new
charters or it is even possible that negotiations with England in fact decreased.
104. Teulet, Layettes, i, no. 1273. (AN. J 653, Angleterrre, Bulles, no. 1): ‘De pace inter
primogenitum regis Francie et regem Anglie quem et eius regnum dictus primogentitus Enrici
impugnabat. xliii’. A companion to Honorius III’s bull is found in Teulet, Layettes, i, no. 1274 (AN.
J 696, Bulles, mélanges no. 1): ‘Papa decernit litteras apostolicas contra Lodowicum regis Francie
primogenitum missas robur aliquod non habere si pacem tractatam inter ipsum et regem Anglie
quem et eius regnum dictus primogenitus impungnaverat seu vaverit’.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
842 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
assigned a number and included in the inventory. They consist of a
letter of 1217 from the papal legate, Guala, who absolved Louis’s
excommunication and another letter of the same date from Nicholas de
Clairmont, papal penitentiary, concerning the clerics who had
accompanied the French prince.105 Although not included in the
inventory, the parchment containing the Unknown Charter and the
two copies of Magna Carta of 1216 nonetheless exhibits archival links
with the letters of Guala and Nicholas. Not only were all three endorsed
according to standard practice106 but also the endorsement of the
truncated copy of Magna Carta of 1216 was performed by the same
hand as that of the two inventoried charters of Guala and Nicholas.107
Since the un-inventoried charters were not directly relevant to French
diplomacy, they may have been omitted. Their endorsements, however,
permit them to join the other charters that were inventoried and stored
in the great English chest in the sacristy. The failure of the inventory to
note them is no more an argument against their inclusion than it would
have been against the bulls of confirmation of Honorius III. It appears,
therefore, that the clerics of the Trésor constituted a sub-dossier relating
to Louis’s expedition that included the parchment with Henry’s and the
Unknown charters and two copies of the Magna Carta of 1216. What
was Louis’s interest in these documents?
The letters of Guala and Nicholas respond directly to this question.
The first recorded the final resolution to Louis’s military adventure of
1216–17.108 After King John had reneged on the terms of Magna Carta
and resumed hostilities, the rebellious barons invited Louis—just as
Pope Innocent had invited Philip Augustus in 1213—to come to their
aid by offering the English crown. As protector of his vassal, now turned
crusader, the pope instructed his legate Guala to excommunicate Louis
and his followers. Landing in May 1216 with an impressive army and a
clerical entourage, Louis’s initial success was soon undercut by John’s
unexpected demise. The English barons thereafter split between the
Capetian and John’s nine-year son, Henry III. After a major defeat at
105. Teulet, Layettes, i, no. 1240 (AN, J 655, Angleterre sans date, no. 5): ‘xli. Littera Gual’
cardinalis apostolice sedis legati super absolutione Ludovici primogeniti regis Francie et eorum qui
cum eo hostiliter intraverint Angliam contra sententiam sedis apostolice, sanz date’. AN, JJ 117, fo.
6r. ‘G xlii. ‘Lettre d’absolution pour l’ainsne fil roy de France et de ceux qui entrerent avec lui en
Angleterre contre la sentente du pape, sanz date’. Teulet, Layettes, i, no. 1241 (AN, 655, Angleterre
sans date, no. 6): ‘xxxix Absolutio clericorum qui transie[runt] cum Lodoico in Angliam et ipse
interdictum celebrarunt, sine date’, AN, JJ 117, fo. 66r. ‘G xxxix Absolucion des clers qui passerent
avec Ludoic en Engleterre, sans date’.
106. The endorsement of the first pertains to the charter of Henry I, however, and not that of
the Unknown Charter. Teulet, Layettes, i, nos. 34 and 1153, AN, J 655, Angleterre sans date, no. 31bis,
‘Promittit rex Anglie H. tenere contenta in ista cedula suis baronibus et episcopis et aliis’. Teulet,
Layettes, i, no. 1194, AN, J 655, Angleterre sans date, no. 31 (truncated), ‘In quodam rotulo: Quedam
consuetudines Anglie que videntur facere ad consuetudines Normannie’ and AN, J 655, Angleterre
sans date, no. 11 (complete), ‘Transcriptum super quibusdam statutis regni Anglie regni Henrici
Regis anglie anno primo’.
107. I am grateful to Ghislain Brunel for confirming this observation.
108. Teulet, Layettes, i, no. 1240. Vincent, Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala, no. 59.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
843
Lincoln, Louis abandoned the expedition and made peace with Henry’s
regents in September 1217.109 In return for Louis’s acceptance of the
provisions of the treaty of Lambeth, Guala, the papal legate, published
the terms of Louis’s absolution from excommunication in an open letter
to the French prelacy of 27 September 1217 that was, as we have seen,
duly preserved, endorsed and inventoried in the Trésor des Chartes. The
letter outlined the conditions for reconciling Louis’s lay followers, but
his clerics were given special treatment that followed in the letter of
Nicholas of Clairmont, the papal penitentiary. Louis’s interest in the
coronation charter of Henry I, the Unknown Charter of John and
Magna Carta, should be clear. As the invitee of the rebellious barons, he
naturally wished to be kept informed of the baronial program expressed
in these documents. The chronicler of Barnwell asserted that Louis had
united with the barons who sought to abolish John’s wicked customs.110
Whether or not he actually confirmed Magna Carta while in England,111
he agreed in the treaty of Lambeth to return exchequer rolls in his
possession and ‘the charters of liberties that were drawn up by John at
Runnymede’.112 Louis inadvertently contributed to Magna Carta’s
survival as well. His invasion undoubtedly forced the regents of young
Henry to adopt the Charter’s major provisions in 1216 to secure baronial
support against the Capetian.113 This may explain why it was the 1216
version that was copied, but it may simply have been the only one or the
latest one available when the prince departed. The clerics of the Trésor
endorsed one of the copies with the same hand as the letters of Guala
and Nicholas.
The presence of the second document of brother Nicholas in the
Trésor is equally instructive. In an open but undated letter, the papal
penitentiary elaborated the treatment that was reserved for the French
clerics who had followed Louis and unlawfully performed divine
services during the interdict.114 The penance consisted chiefly of ritual
whippings to be administered periodically throughout the year. Among
the clerics whom Guala excommunicated, four were well known:
Master Simon Langton, Master Elias of Dereham, Master Gervase of
Howbridge and Master Robert de Saint-Germain.115 Robert was a
cleric of the king of Scotland, Gervase, dean of St Pauls London, the
clerical center of rebellion against John, Elias, a cleric and steward of
109. C. Petit-Dutaillis, Etude sur la vie et le règne de Louis VIII (1187–1226) (vol. ci, Paris, 1894),
97–183; J. Beverley Smith, ‘The Treaty of Lambeth, 1217’, ante, xciv (1979), 562–79.
110. Barnwell in Coventry, ii, 239.
111. Petit Dutaillis, Louis VIII, 115.
112. Collins, ‘The Documents of the Great Charter’, 238.
113. Petit-Dutaillis, Louis VIII, 182, 183.
114. Teulet, Layettes, i, no. 1241. Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala, ed. Vincent, no. 142. Its
date is doubtlessly shortly after Guala’s letter.
115. Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 655; Histoire des ducs de Normandie, 197. See also
Guala’s refusal, Recueil des historiens de la France, xix, 636; Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala,
ed. Vincent, no. 141.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
844 MASTER STEPHEN L ANGTON, FUTURE ARCHBISHOP OF
Archbishop Stephen Langton, and Master Simon was the archbishop’s
brother.116
As the younger sibling of Stephen (who predeceased him by two
decades), Simon is of exceptional interest because he was the trusted
agent both of the archbishop and the French prince. Invariably cited
with a master’s degree, the nature of his education is unknown, but like
his brother he was canon of the chapter of Paris to which he bequeathed
his library117. After Stephen’s disputed election in 1207, Simon received
safe conducts from the king to conduct negotiations, but it is evident
that his shuttle diplomacy bore no results by 1209 when John was
excommunicated.118 When Langton crossed the Channel in July 1213,
Simon accompanied him and became a regular witness to his charters
and was most likely the archbishop’s chancellor.119 In 1214, the canons
of York sought to oppose the royal candidate and elect Simon as their
archbishop, a choice that was naturally untenable to both the king
and the pope.120 By that time, Stephen had dispatched Simon to Rome
to plead the archbishop’s case against the legate’s ecclesiastical
appointments.
Whether Simon took advantage of John’s safe conduct to return to
England in June 1215 is not known,121 but he was sighted on Louis’s boat
in May 1216 within the flotilla of the French invaders. The author of the
Histoire des ducs de Normandie explained Simon’s presence by his outrage
at having been denied the see of York,122 but the cleric had strong ties
with the Capetian as well. Since 1213 he and Robert de Saint-German
had enjoyed a regular wage from the prince’s household, and according
to Wendover, he acted as Louis’s chancellor throughout the expedition.123
Just as Stephen did in 1213, Simon and his three colleagues preached to
the people at St Pauls where master Gervase was dean.124 When it
116. See Powicke, Stephen Langton, 135–8. Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala, ed. Vincent,
xlviii, lxii, lxiv. N. Vincent, ‘Master Elias of Dereham (d.1245): A Reassessment’, in The Church
and Learning in Later Medieval Society. Essays in Honour of R.B. Dobson, ed. C.M. Barron and
J. Stratford, Harlaxton Medieval Studies (vol. xi, Donington, 2002), 128–59 and ‘Master Simon
Langton, King John and the Court of France’ (unpublished). I am grateful to the author for
sharing this important work with me.
117. Cartulaire de Notre Dame, ed. B. Guérard (Paris, 1850), ii, 495, 496. The titles of the books
do not reveal any particular interests of the collector beyond the customary biblical and theological
texts.
118. Rot. lit. claus. i, 109b; Rot. lit. pat., 79a, 80a, 82a, 85a, 89b–90a. C.R. Cheney, Pope Innocent
III and England, 302, 316–9.
119. Acta Stephani Langton, ed. Major, xlix–l, nos. 25, 27, 30, 31, 34–37.
120. Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 634–5. Select letters of Innocent III, ed. Cheney, no.
81.
121. Rot. lit. pat. 142b.
122. Histoire des ducs de Normandie, 167.
123. R. Fawtier, ‘Un fragment du compte de l’hôtel du prince Louis de France pour le terme de
la purification 1213’, Le Moyen Age, 3ème série, iv (1933), 344, 345. Wendover in Paris, Chronica
majora, ii, 654.
124. Wendover in Paris, Chronica majora, ii, 654, 655. Histoire des ducs de Normandie, 171,
172, 197.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
CANTERBURY: THE PARIS SCHOOLS AND MAGNA CARTA
845
became necessary for Louis to withdraw, this coterie of loyal clerics
became the focus of the negotiations. In the first draft of June 1217,
absolution was accorded to Louis’s followers both laymen and clerics,
but when the legate refused to include the masters, Louis broke off the
negotiations. The final agreement of September, however, repeated the
former terms but omitted the excommunications. In their place were
issued the two letters of Guala and Nicholas that specified the penance,
and we have seen that they were eventually kept in the Trésor des
Chartes.125 (The two bulls of Pope Honorius III in January 1218
confirmed the proceedings.126) Philip Augustus himself interceded
directly with the pope for the rehabilitation of Simon.127 Returning
with Louis to France, Simon Langton faced exile from England for a
decade, in all likelihood prolonged by the loyalist barons.128 He retained
his canonry from the chapter of Notre-Dame and his pension from the
royal household.129 When he finally returned to his native land in 1227,
the year before his brother’s death, a post of archdeacon was awaiting
him at Canterbury and the Roman curia had elevated him to a honorary
subdeacon.
A comparable role was played by Simon’s colleague, Master Elias of
Dereham, long-time steward and cleric of Langton, who collaborated
with the archbishop through the negotiations leading to Runnymede
and joined Louis’s English expedition in 1216. Likewise excluded from
the peace of 1217, until Louis interceded for him personally, he returned
to England in 1219 and worked for the archbishop until 1228.130
The clerks of the Trésor des Chartes had reason to include the letters
of the legate Guala and brother Nicolas in their chest and inventory
because these documents brought closure to the sanctions against Louis
de France, Master Simon Langton and Master Elias of Dereham, his
125. RHF, xix, 636; The Letters and Charters of Cardinal Guala, ed. Vincent, nos. 56, 141, 142;
Thomas Rymer, Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae … (London, 1816), i (1), 148; Histoire des ducs de
Normandie, 197, 205–7; Petit-Dutaillis, Louis VIII, 158–62, 170–3.
126. Teulet, Layettes, I, nos. 1273, 1274, formerly in AN, J 653, Angleterre, Bulles, no. 1, the latter
in J 696, Bulles, Mélanges, no. 1. Regesta Honorii papae III, ed. P. Presutti (Rome, 1888–95), nos.
1000, 1001.
127. Pressutti, no. 1377. The Pope in turn granted Simon permission to seek prebends in France.
Pressutti, no. 1397.
128. Rymer, Foedera, i (1), 171. See the interpretation of N. Denholm-Young, ‘A Letter from the
Council to Pope Honorius III, 1220–1’, ante, lx (1949), 88–96.
129. Compte générale of 1234, drawn on the prévôté of Paris. RHF, xxii, 566.
130. Elias may have made another contribution through his connections with the St Albans
chroniclers. As rector in the nearby church of Harrow by 1233, he was definitely known to Mathew
Paris and perhaps supplied him with official documents surrounding Magna Carta. It is equally
possible (but not yet demonstrated) that he supplied information that Roger of Wendover used to
trace Stephen Langton’s role in the formation of Magna Carta. Beginning in 1204, Roger was
composing his chronicle in 1231 and continued until 1234. Among Roger’s valuable sources that
await investigation, therefore, may lie Elias of Dereham. J.C. Holt, ‘The St Albans Chroniclers and
Magna Carta’, in J. C. Holt, ed., Magna Carta and Medieval Government (London, 1985), 284–6;
Vincent, ‘Master Elias of Dereham’, 139–43, 146, 147; A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England
c. 550–1307 (Ithaca, 1974), 359.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)
846
most active and loyal clerics in the venture of 1216–17. As brother and
steward of Archbishop Stephen, the two masters were previously
involved in the negotiations of 1213–14 that produced the charter of
Henry I, and the Unknown Charter, all in preparation for the final
version of Magna Carta in 1215. As chancellor of both the archbishop
and the Capetian prince, Simon would have been responsible for
drafting the copies that were ultimately brought to France. His position
in Louis’s chancery would also account for the French scribal
characteristics of the documents. Elias of Dereham played a comparable
role in England by distributing copies of Magna Carta of 1215.131 Simon
himself had numerous opportunities for transporting them from
England and depositing them in the Trésor (in 1214 or 1215, for example),
but the most likely time would have been on his return to France in
1217, accompanied by Elias, when the Magna Carta version of 1216 and
the letter that assured their own absolution had become available.132
Finger or genetic prints are, of course, lacking as proof, but the preceding
scenario presents circumstantial evidence for resolving how copies of
the charter of Henry I, the Unknown Charter and Magna Carta of 1216
arrived in France. Along with Guala’s and Nicholas’s letters, these pieces
fit comfortably in the great chest marked ‘Anglia’ to the left of the altar
in the sacristy of the royal palace. The presence of Simon Langton and
Elias of Dereham reinforces Stephen Langton’s role in the negotiations
resulting in Magna Carta. Not only was he responsible for preserving
the Articles of the Barons but, along with Louis, also for the survival of
the Unknown Charter. That the Unknown Charter bears Stephen’s
signature of absque judicio = sine sententia, exemplifies the influence of
his Paris teaching on the reforms that resulted in Magna Carta.
Considered separately, these linkages may appear slight, but taken
together they form a coherent picture.
Johns Hopkins University
JOHN W. BALDWIN
131. Rot. Litt. Pat. 180b. Holt, ‘The St Albans Chroniclers’, 285. Vincent, ‘Master Elias of
Dereham’, 141. He may also have been responsible for the ‘Salisbury Magna Carta’; J.C. Holt, ‘The
Salisbury Magna Carta’, in Holt, Magna Carta and Medieval Government, 261, 264.
132. Hubert Hall (with the tentative concurrence of Charles Bémont), ‘An Unknown Charter
of Liberties’, ante, ix (1894), 334, 335, attributes it to a fabrication in 1217 produced by Louis’s
chancery in France to strengthen the prince’s claims against John. My scenario agrees with the date,
not of its composition, but of its transport to France and would see the document as an earlier
result of the negotiations of Stephen Langton with the possible collaboration of his brother
Simon.
EHR, cxxiii. 503 (Aug. 2008)