The Magna Carta Project

《大宪章》是历史上最著名的文件之一，整个英语世界都在庆祝。它被广泛视为英国宪法传统的基石，在这一传统中，国王和立法者本身都受到法律的严格约束。然而，关于《大宪章》的很多事情仍然是未知的。在过去的一百年里，对最初的1215年《大宪章》没有适当的评论，也从未对1225年重新发布的成为标准版本的宪章进行适当的评论，它的部分内容至今仍在法令册上。尽管从1215年问题中保存下来的所有四个原始版本的大宪章都被联合国教科文组织授予世界遗产地位，但从来没有一个适当的版本注意到这些文件之间的所有差异。自1805年以来，宪章的后续再版，包括1225年的最终版本，一直没有经过编辑，在很大程度上也没有进行研究。没有人完全确定这些文本之间的关系，或者确实有多少重新发行，或者有多少大宪章第一个世纪的幸存副本。自19世纪30年代以来，一直没有系统地寻找约翰国王的文件证据。因此，今天的历史学家对约翰统治的大部分时间只有一种扭曲和不完整的理解，这对《大宪章》的制定至关重要。由于约翰的原始信件和宪章的手写工作尚未进行，其中数百封保存在分散在英国、爱尔兰和法国的档案馆中，我们无法说出是谁撰写了《大宪章》，也无法说出幸存的四份原始信件是由皇家还是其他抄写员撰写的。目前的项目结合了四所大学和现代主要权威机构对这一主题的投入，旨在吸引学者和更广泛的公众。它将及时填补我们对《大宪章》知识的许多空白，为即将到来的2015年《大宪章》800周年庆典做准备。该项目的网站旨在成为对《大宪章》感兴趣的任何人的第一站，将为该文件的所有不同版本提供完整的评论和英文翻译。它不仅将提供所有幸存的大宪章的照片和摘要，还将提供数百份相关文件的照片和摘要。它将从学术和通俗两个方面解释宪章的意义。它将提供对大量文件证据的访问，这些证据目前被锁在档案馆中，对于我们理解大宪章的写作、标记、意义和后代至关重要。它将提供博客、月度特写和帖子，旨在传播这些新发现并满足公众兴趣。其结果将被纳入一项针对学校、公众理解以及学者的方案。它将协助在2015年周年纪念年在大英图书馆举办一次大型展览，同时还将举办一次向公众、媒体和学者开放的国际会议。会议本身将进一步传播该项目的发现。其中，除了有史以来以各种形式提出的第一个正版大宪章、第一个对标准的1225年大宪章文本的全面评论、以及自1914年以来对约翰国王发布的原始版本的第一个评论外，希望到2015年，我们不仅能够解释“谁写了大宪章”，而且能够解释这一最重要的宪法文件诞生的背景和背景。

Magna Carta is one of the most famous documents in history, celebrated throughout the English-speaking world. It is widely seen as the foundation stone of the British constitutional tradition in which kings and law makers are themselves subjected to the rigours of the law. And yet, there is a great deal about Magna Carta that remains unknown. There has been no proper commentary on the original 1215 issue of Magna Carta in the past hundred years, and there has never been a proper commentary on the 1225 reissue of the charter that became the standard version, parts of it still on the Statute Book today. Despite the fact that all four of the original versions of Magna Carta preserved from the issue of 1215 have been granted UNESCO World Heritage status, there has never been a proper edition noticing all of the differences between these documents. The subsequent reissues of the charter, including the definitive version of 1225, have been left unedited and to a large extent unstudied since 1805. No-one is entirely sure of the relation between these texts, or indeed of how many reissues, or how many surviving copies there are from the first century of Magna Carta. Since the 1830s, there has been no systematic search for documentary evidences for King John. As a result, historians today have only a warped and incomplete understanding of large parts of John's reign, crucial for the making of Magna Carta. Because no work has been undertaken on the handwriting of John's original letters and charters, several hundred of which survive in archives scattered across Britain, Ireland and France, we are unable to say who wrote Magna Carta or whether the four surviving originals were written by royal or by other scribes. The present project, which combines input from four universities and the principal modern authorities on the subject, is intended to appeal both to scholars and to a more general public. It will fill many gaps in our knowledge of Magna Carta in time for the forthcoming 800th anniversary of the charter to be celebrated in 2015. The project's website, intended to become the first port of call for anyone interested in Magna Carta, will supply full commentaries and English translations of all of the various versions of the document. It will supply photographs and summaries not only of all of the surviving Magna Cartas but of several hundred related documents. It will explain the charter's significance, both in scholarly and in popular terms. It will supply access to a large body of documentary evidence, until now locked away in the archives, crucial for our understanding of the writing, marking, meaning and posterity of Magna Carta. It will be supplied with blogs, monthly features and postings intended both to broadcast these new discoveries and to satisfy public interest. Its result will be fed into a programme directed to schools and to public understanding as well as to scholars. It will assist in the mounting of a major Exhibition at the British Library in the anniversary year, 2015, accompanied by an international conference open to the general public, the media and to scholars. The conference will itself further disseminate the project's findings. Amongst these, besides the first proper edition of Magna Carta ever presented in all its guises, the first ever full commentary on the standard 1225 text of Magna Carta, and the first commentary since 1914 on the original version issued by King John, it is hoped that by 2015 we can not only explain 'Who wrote Magna Carta', but the context and the circumstances in which this most significant of constitutional documents was brought to birth.