Purchased for $ 27.50 (just over $ 150) after World War II, a faded and water -spotted manuscript, guarded at the Harvard Law Library since 1946, has attracted little attention over the decades.
This is about to change.
Two British academics – one of them came across the document by chance – found that it is an original 1300 version of the Magna Carta, not a copy, as it was believed until then. The medieval document is considered one of the pillars of modern civil liberties.
Only six other authentic copies of that same year still exist.
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“I never in my life I imagined discovering a magna letter,” said David Carpenter, a medieval history professor at the London King’s College, describing the moment he discovered in December 2023.
Estimating the value of the manuscript is difficult. But the price paid-less than $ 30 (equivalent to about $ 170 today, corrected by inflation)-should make it one of the biggest bargains of the last century. A 710 -year copy of Magna Carta was sold in 2007 for $ 21.3 million (about $ 121 million).
Nicholas Vincent, professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia in eastern England, helped authenticate the text. He pointed out that the document, which establishes legal limits to the power of the rulers, reappears at a time when Harvard faces strong pressure from the Trump administration.
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“We are dealing with an institution under direct attack on the state itself, so it is almost providential that this has surfaced right now and in this place,” he said.
“You and I know very well what it is!”
Providential or not, the discovery was largely a work of chance.
Carpenter was at home in Blackheath in southeastern London, examining digital images from the Harvard Library to his next book, when he opened a file titled HLS MS 172 – Harvard Law School’s Code of Manuscript 172.
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“I arrive at 172 and I see a single parchment sheet of Magna Carta,” he said. “And I think, ‘My God, it seems to me – because I read – an original.’
He sent an email to Vincent, who was working on a library in Brussels. “David sent with the question, ‘What do you think is that?'” Vincent recalled. “I answered in seconds: ‘You and I know very well what that is!’”
The two academics confirmed the authenticity of the manuscript after Harvard photograph him with ultraviolet light and submit to spectral image techniques-which reveal details invisible to the naked eye.
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Compared to the other six known original copies of 1300, they identified total correspondence in the text and dimensions (489 mm x 473 mm). Calligraphy was also compatible, with a capital “e” at the beginning of the word “Edwardus” and elongated letters in the first line.
“It’s the best kind of discovery that can happen to a librarian,” said Amanda Watson, deputy assistant of the Harvard Law School Library. “Our daily job is to digitize, preserve and make available documents like this to people like David Carpenter.”
Watson explained that the document has been displayed a few times, but, being part of a larger collection, was not exposed permanently. The library has not yet decided to become the public manuscript to the public, but Watson said he “can’t imagine” that he will be sold.
“In the United States, having things at age 700 is special,” added Jonathan Zittrain, professor of international law and president of the Harvard Law School Library.
To “She from the ground”
The Magna Carta – “Great Letter” in Latin – has been used over the centuries to justify a variety of causes, sometimes with fragile historical base. Still, the document has consolidated itself as a global symbol of the importance of fundamental freedoms, such as habeas corpus. By limiting the power of the monarch, it began to represent the right to protection against arbitrary and unfair actions of the state.
One of his most celebrated excerpts states: “No free man will be captured or arrested, or deprived of his rights or goods, or banned or exiled, or deprived of his position in any other way, nor do we act force against him, or will send others to do so, except for the legal judgment of his equals or the law of the land.”
First issued in 1215, the letter formalized a series of concessions obtained by rebel barons of a reluctant John of England – known in folklore as John without a land, or the “bad king.”
John revoked the document shortly thereafter, but his son, Henry III, published revised versions – the last in 1225. Later, Henry’s son, Eduardo I, confirmed this version in 1297 and again in 1300.
The document has exerted direct influence on the United States Constitution, and the US Declaration (Bill of Rights) includes several provisions that go back to the Magna Carta.
In all, there are 25 original manuscripts of the Magna Carta, produced at different times. Including the newly identified in Harvard, only three are out of the United Kingdom.
The Harvard Law School acquired its copy of a London legal bookstore, Sweet & Maxwell, which had bought the Sotheby’s House manuscript in December 1945. The value of the transaction was $ 27.50 (about $ 156).
Despite the fame of the document, many British have only a vague notion of what it represents. Former Prime Minister David Cameron, for example, was unable to translate the expression Magna Carta when questioned by David Letterman into his interview program in 2012.
Still, few question its importance for the evolution of western concepts of civil rights and freedoms. Faced with current threats to these principles, historian Nicholas Vincent believes that the rediscovery in Harvard came at a good time.
“The magna letter submits the king to the empire of the law,” he said. “The head of state cannot simply act against someone because he doesn’t like this person-he needs to do so based on law.”
The text of the letter is incorporated into the constitutions of 17 US states, Vincent said. “In legal terms, there is more magna letter in the US states than in the United Kingdom.”
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