{"id":175,"date":"2015-06-13T16:49:45","date_gmt":"2015-06-13T16:49:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/uncategorized\/magnacarta\/"},"modified":"2015-08-19T14:01:00","modified_gmt":"2015-08-19T14:01:00","slug":"magnacarta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/2015\/06\/13\/magnacarta\/","title":{"rendered":"A Premonstratensian Abbot in France Reacts to Magna Carta"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Image above: British Library Cotton MS Augustus II.106. Credit<\/a>.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

The 800th anniversary of Magna Carta has prompted a lot of discussion<\/a> around the world about how the document has influenced law and government in the centuries since it was signed\u2014but even in 1215, Magna Carta was being discussed outside of England.<\/p>\n

One of the key figures whom I discuss in my dissertation is Gervais, who was abbot of a succession of Premonstratensian houses\u2014Saint-Just-en-Chauss\u00e9e, Thenailles, and then Pr\u00e9montr\u00e9 itself from 1209-1220\u2014before serving as bishop of S\u00e9ez from 1220-28. Though his ecclesiastical career led him to northern France, Gervais was English by birth. Charles-Louis Hugo, the great Premonstratensian antiquarian writer of the early eighteenth-century, described Gervais as being\u00a0origine Lincolniensis, sanguine clarus, <\/em>though we know nothing more of Gervais or his origins than that.1<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

While my interest in Gervais centres mostly on his other activities in 1215\u2014he travelled to Rome to participate in the Fourth Lateran Council, which gave him encouragement for his reformist agenda which seems to have been so central in shaping the direction of the Premonstratensian Order for the rest of the thirteenth century\u2014even amidst all his other duties, Gervais was following the events unfolding back in his country of birth. In 1215, Gervais wrote to archbishop Stephen Langton of Canterbury about Magna Carta.2<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The letter is undated but was probably composed in July or August, since Gervais knew that an agreement had been reached between King John and the rebels, but didn’t yet know of the renewal of the civil war or of the pope’s condemnation of Magna Carta. The letter doesn’t provide any new insights into the circumstances surrounding the composition of Magna Carta, but it does give us a rare insight into how the conflict in England was perceived by an Englishman and an ecclesiastic, one who had lived overseas for many years but who still had strong ties there. Gervais urged moderation in the church’s interaction with the crown\u2014perhaps unsurprisingly, given both the Premonstratensians’ history of maintaining strong ties with royal administrations, and given Gervais’ own insistence on the importance of hierarchical structure within his order.<\/p>\n

You can find the full text of the letter embedded below:<\/p>\n