The Magna Carta Project

《大宪章》是历史上最著名的文件之一，在整个英语世界都很受欢迎。它被广泛认为是英国宪法传统的基石，国王和立法者本身也受到法律的严格约束。然而，关于《大宪章》，还有很多东西仍然不为人知。在过去的一百年里，对1215年的原始版本《大宪章》没有适当的评论，对1225年重新发布的宪章也没有适当的评论，该宪章成为标准版本，其中部分内容至今仍在《规约书》中。尽管从1215年开始保存下来的所有四个原始版本的大宪章都被授予联合国教科文组织世界遗产地位，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。随后的宪章再版，包括1225年的最终版本，自1805年以来一直未经编辑，在很大程度上未经研究。没有人能完全确定这些文本之间的关系，也没有人确切地知道有多少重新发行的版本，或者有多少第一世纪的大宪章幸存下来。自19世纪30年代以来，一直没有系统地寻找约翰王的文献证据。因此，今天的历史学家对约翰统治的大部分时间只有一个扭曲和不完整的理解，这对《大宪章》的制定至关重要。由于没有人对约翰的信件和宪章原件的笔迹进行过研究，其中几百份保存在英国、爱尔兰和法国的档案馆中，我们无法说谁写了《大宪章》，也无法说四份幸存的原件是由皇家还是其他抄写员写的。本项目结合了四所大学和有关这一主题的主要现代权威机构的投入，旨在吸引学者和更广大的公众。它将填补我们对《大宪章》知识的许多空白，以迎接即将到来的2015年《宪章》800周年纪念。该项目的网站旨在成为对《大宪章》感兴趣的人的第一个停靠港，将提供该文件所有不同版本的完整评论和英文翻译。它将提供照片和摘要，不仅是所有幸存的大宪章，但数百个相关文件。它将解释宪章的意义，无论是在学术和流行的术语。它将提供访问大量的文件证据，直到现在锁在档案馆，对我们的写作，标记，意义和大宪章的后代的理解至关重要。它将提供博客，每月的功能和张贴旨在广播这些新发现，并满足公众的兴趣。其结果将纳入一项针对学校、公众理解和学者的方案。它将协助在2015年周年纪念日在大英图书馆举办一个大型展览，同时举办一个向公众、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调查结果。其中，除了有史以来第一个正式版本的《大宪章》，第一个对1225年《大宪章》标准文本的完整评论，以及自1914年以来第一个对约翰国王发布的原始版本的评论之外，希望到2015年，我们不仅可以解释“谁写了《大宪章》”，而是这部最重要的宪法文件诞生的背景和环境。

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.