The Collaborative International Dictionary
Magna Carta \Mag"na Car"ta\, Magna Charta \Mag"na Char"ta\ [L., great charter.]
The great Charter, so called, obtained by the English barons from King John, A. D. 1215. This name is also given to the charter granted to the people of England in the ninth year of Henry III., and confirmed by Edward I.
Hence, a fundamental constitution which guaranties rights and privileges.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wikipedia
The Magna Carta Foundation (Fondazione Magna Carta, FMC) is an Italian think tank, which has been involved in politics, having been affiliated to Forza Italia (FI), The People of Freedom (PdL) and, as of today, New Centre-Right (NCD). FMC's current president is Gaetano Quagliariello, a minister in Letta Cabinet.
The think tank aims at combining elements of liberalism with Catholic social teaching, supports the so-called " Judeo-Christian roots" of Europe, and takes a strong pro- United States and pro- Israel stance in foreign policy, especially in relation to radical Islam and Islamic terrorism. For these reasons and due to the left-wing roots of many of its members, the group has been sometimes described as the neoconservative faction within FI and, later, the PdL. In fact, FMC has had close ties with American neocons and has agreed with them especially on issues of national security and just war theory.
The foundation's leading figure was long Marcello Pera, but later Quagliariello took over. Among MPs, other than Pera and Quagliariello, Fiamma Nirenstein, Eugenia Roccella, Luigi Compagna, Souad Sbai, Giuseppe Caldersi, Alfredo Mantovano, and Guido Possa have been, to different extents, close to FMC.
In November 2013 Quagliariello, Roccella and Compagna left the PdL and joined NCD.
Magna Carta (An Embroidery) is a 2015 work by English installation artist Cornelia Parker. The artwork is an embroidered representation of the complete text and images of an online encyclopedia article for Magna Carta, as it appeared in Wikipedia on 15 June 2014, the 799th anniversary of the document.
The hand-stitched embroidery is 1.5 metres wide and nearly 13 metres long. It is a response to the legacy of Magna Carta in the digital era and Parker has referred to it as "a snapshot of where the debate is right now", the result of all open edits by Wikipedians up to that date. It was commissioned by the Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford in partnership with the British Library, after being chosen from proposals from a shortlist of artists in February 2014.
Parker used a screenshot from the 15 June 2014 English Wikipedia article for Magna Carta and printed it onto fabric. Like Wikipedia, the embroidery was created through the collaboration of many individuals. It was divided in 87 sections and sent to 200 individuals who each hand-stitched portions of the artwork. She sought the collaboration of people and groups that have been affected by and associated with Magna Carta. The majority of the text was sewn by prisoners. Members of the Embroiderers' Guild stitched the images, with at least one embroiderer selected from each region of the UK. Many celebrities and public figures also contributed, stitching phrases or words of special significance to them. Parker has represented the work as "Echoing the communal activity that resulted in the Bayeux Tapestry, but on this occasion placing more emphasis on the word rather than the image, I wanted to create an artwork that is a contemporary interpretation of Magna Carta."
The work includes a tea stain from a prisoner and a spot of blood from Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, who accidentally pricked his finger while sewing.
Magna Carta (An Embroidery) is part of an exhibition celebrating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. It was displayed in the Entrance Hall of the British Library from 15 May until 24 July 2015 and in the Blackwell Hall of the Bodleian Library, Oxford from 11 November 2015 to 3 January 2016, touring other United Kingdom locations in the rest of 2016 and 2017.
( Latin for "the Great Charter of the Liberties"), commonly called (also Magna Charta; "(the) Great Charter"), is a charter agreed to by King John of England at Runnymede, near Windsor, on 15 June 1215. First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. Neither side stood behind their commitments, and the charter was annulled by Pope Innocent III, leading to the First Barons' War. After John's death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in 1216, stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause. At the end of the war in 1217, it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name Magna Carta, to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest which was issued at the same time. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in 1225 in exchange for a grant of new taxes; his son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in 1297, this time confirming it as part of England's statute law.
The charter became part of English political life and was typically renewed by each monarch in turn, although as time went by and the fledgling English Parliament passed new laws, it lost some of its practical significance. At the end of the 16th century there was an upsurge in interest in Magna Carta. Lawyers and historians at the time believed that there was an ancient English constitution, going back to the days of the Anglo-Saxons, that protected individual English freedoms. They argued that the Norman invasion of 1066 had overthrown these rights, and that Magna Carta had been a popular attempt to restore them, making the charter an essential foundation for the contemporary powers of Parliament and legal principles such as habeas corpus. Although this historical account was badly flawed, jurists such as Sir Edward Coke used Magna Carta extensively in the early 17th century, arguing against the divine right of kings propounded by the Stuart monarchs. Both James I and his son Charles I attempted to suppress the discussion of Magna Carta, until the issue was curtailed by the English Civil War of the 1640s and the execution of Charles. The political myth of Magna Carta and its protection of ancient personal liberties persisted after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 until well into the 19th century. It influenced the early American colonists in the Thirteen Colonies and the formation of the American Constitution in 1787, which became the supreme law of the land in the new republic of the United States. Research by Victorian historians showed that the original 1215 charter had concerned the medieval relationship between the monarch and the barons, rather than the rights of ordinary people, but the charter remained a powerful, iconic document, even after almost all of its content was repealed from the statute books in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Magna Carta still forms an important symbol of liberty today, often cited by politicians and campaigners, and is held in great respect by the British and American legal communities, Lord Denning describing it as "the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot".
In the 21st century, four exemplifications of the original 1215 charter remain in existence, held by the British Library and the cathedrals of Lincoln and Salisbury. There are also a handful of the subsequent charters in public and private ownership, including copies of the 1297 charter in both the United States and Australia. The original charters were written on parchment sheets using quill pens, in heavily abbreviated medieval Latin, which was the convention for legal documents at that time. Each was sealed with the royal great seal (made of beeswax and resin sealing wax): very few of the seals have survived. Although scholars refer to the 63 numbered "clauses" of Magna Carta, this is a modern system of numbering, introduced by Sir William Blackstone in 1759; the original charter formed a single, long unbroken text. The four original 1215 charters were displayed together at the British Library for one day, 3 February 2015, to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta.
Magna Carta is the first of a series of constitutional charters in English law from 1215 onwards.
Magna Carta may also refer to:
Magna Carta is a progressive rock group originally formed in London in April 1969; their first concert was on 10 May 1969, by Chris Simpson (guitar, vocals), Lyell Tranter (guitar, vocals), and Glen Stuart (vocals).
The trio released albums for Fontana Records and Vertigo Records, enjoying particular success with 1970's Seasons before Tranter returned to Australia. Davey Johnstone joined the line-up as his replacement, recording Songs From Wasties Orchard and In Concert with the band before leaving to work with Elton John, with whom he is still playing.
Usage examples of "magna carta".
Professor Peddick would be eager to go on to Runnymede to see the meadow where the Magna Carta was signed, to say nothing of its excellent perch deeps.
Go back to Runnymede every so often to get another Magna Carta and cut off King Charles's head at regular intervals to ensure our constitutional rights?
Pickering, was the Magna Carta, granted by his Majesty King John of England, Ireland, Scotland, et cetera, et cetera, to his nobles at Runnymede in June in the Year of Our Lord one thousand two hundred and fifteen.
Pickering, that the Magna Carta is the basis of what we think of as English common law?
When they're shorthanded I fill in on Crusades, Magna Carta, 1066, and Agincourt.
Both men had needed to cooperate during the rebellion of 1213-1216 that led to the Magna Carta.
The document to which John signed his name was called the Big Charter--the Magna Carta.
Some lefty had come up with a law out of the Magna Carta, or whatever, saying public land couldn’.
In a few years they would force him into signing the Magna Carta to curb his excesses.
In America, they turned up in the illustrations of patriotic pamphlets, and when Charles Willson Peale later painted his portrait of William Pitt (to the colonists, a hero of enlightened government), he depicted the British statesman in the attitude and garb of a Roman orator, Magna Carta in hand, pointing to a figure of Britannia holding a liberty pole.