Seeds of modern democracy were planted by Magna Carta

This week of June 15 is being celebrated all over the civilized world as the 800th anniversary of one of the major events in human history - an event that has led us to this moment when we could even speak honestly of "civilization."

It is, of course, the birthday of the Magna Carta, or "Great Charter." But in its stunning longevity, it is so often misunderstood that one can only wonder where the truth IS in its 3,500 tedious words of Medieval Latin. Let us take a look.

When some dozens of English barons met on a bucolic little plain near Runnymede only 20 miles outside of London that day in June 1215, they were in a vile mood. The treacherous, war-wasting monarch, King John, must have shrunk from their angry visages, because at the end of their "discussion," His Royal Majesty had agreed to virtually all of the indignant rebel barons' demands.

He would guarantee church rights and protect the barons from illegal imprisonment; they would have access to swift justice and there would be limitations on feudal payments to the Crown. There were many more parts of the charter that are less dramatic and have not so pompously come down to us. But let us just say, in the words of the noted British judge Lord Denning, quoted in The New York Times, that the Magna Carta was "the greatest constitutional document of all times - the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot."

That day's drama at Runnymede, with its Shakespearean protagonists, surely has its detractors, many of them bitter-of-tongue, and they have come out to bask in the sun of the meadow this heraldic week. The most common criticism is that, even in its barely understandable Latin, the charter is clear that any benefits so bestowed were to be granted only to the angry barons themselves, and not to peasants, freemen or regular Englishmen. Some revolution, these critics say.

Yet, what the Magna Carta did was not to even try to change everything at once; in a world of Lilliputians, the charter was one giant step toward the end prize of a fully working democracy, with a modern justice system, a public ethic that applauded and demanded fairness and transparency in government, and a tax system that did not tax only the poor and reward the rich.

Though there are other examples of peoples trying to harness the powers of monarchs, the Magna Carta was the first major test in the English-speaking world. After its initial promulgation against King John, who had squandered the barons' wealth on reckless wars, the charter was nullified and ignored, then replaced, again and again. No matter. That was history in those days - perhaps, in all days.

Yet, America's Founding Fathers embraced the charter. John Adams and Benjamin Franklin employed it against the Stamp Act of 1765. In drafting the Constitution, the founders used the clause "due process of law," thinking it was from the Magna Carta, whereas it was really added belatedly to the document. The document was growing, and growing more important along with the Colonies. And not only in America.

Not to sound flippant, but once something like this gets started, it's hard to put out its moral fire. In South Africa and India, Gandhi used its arguments on behalf of racial equality and Nelson Mandela did the same. Indeed, the charter has come to be the world's declaration of independence and liberty.

The charter was also important because it had Clause 61 or a "security clause," which meant a council of 25 barons were empowered to seize King John's castles and lands if the king sinned or erred against the signers of the charter. It was important because it presaged Guttenberg's printing press, which made its precepts more accessible to average people, and the Reformation and Protestantism.

But above all, the Magna Carta was an example in an ever-changing world that progress, too, was ever-changing. The Magna Carta did not come to stand by itself. Its ideas were forever being dawdled with and generally improved. And that is the way true democracy is today.

The many emanations of the Magna Carta - and how England grew and developed to be more democratic with every new version - show us, too, how peoples and societies develop differently, according to their history and experience.

So, yes, let us celebrate you, Magna Carta, this week and afterward. In the end, you really WERE magna!

Georgie Anne Geyer can be reached at gigi_geyer@juno.com

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