Event Reminder - Magna Carta from Runnymede to Washington: Old Laws, New Discoveries

Date: Monday, April 6, 2015
Time: 1:00 p.m.
Place: Library of Congress, James Madison Building, Montpelier Room (LM-619), 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. 20540

The final program of the Magna Carta Lecture series will feature noted scholar Nicholas Vincent on Monday, April 6, 2015.

In his lecture, Professor Vincent will explain Magna Carta's connection to Washington, D.C., a story he promises contains many strange twists and turns. He will also reveal new information on copies of Magna Carta elsewhere, on the meaning and history of this great document, and on the ways, many rather peculiar, that the legend of Magna Carta has been exploited by all shades of political opinion.

The Library of Congress commemorated the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta with a10-week exhibition, "Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor," which ran from Nov. 6, 2014 to Jan. 19, 2015 and featured the Lincoln Cathedral Magna Carta, one of the four remaining originals from 1215. In addition the Law Library of Congress held a symposium and a series of talks.

What more could be said about an 800 year-old document? As Professor Nicholas explains, "Magna Carta is an iconic, old document. As a result, it is assumed that there can be little about its history that has not already been explored. In reality, and until very recent times, there had been surprisingly little investigation of the document as artefact, to calculate quite how many Magna Cartas survived across the world, or to find out quite how those that survive had fared across the centuries, or to explore the archives of England and France to find out what other treasures might still lurk there."

Nicholas Vincent is professor of medieval history at the University of East Anglia. In 2007, he acted as special advisor for the Sotheby's sale of a 1297 Magna Carta that is currently on display at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Trained at Oxford, and then as a fellow of Peterhouse Cambridge, he has held chairs or fellowships at Oxford, Cambridge, Canterbury, Norwich, Paris and Poitiers. Professor Vincent is the author of more than 100 scholarly articles and a dozen books, including "Magna Carta: A Very Short Introduction" (2012); "Magna Carta: The Foundations of Freedom" (2014); and "Magna Carta: Making and Legacy," forthcoming in June 2015.

In December 2014, Professor Vincent was responsible for the discovery of yet another previously unknown Magna Carta, in the archives of the English borough of Sandwich. He acts as principal investigator for the Magna Carta Project, whose website carries a wealth of new materials on Magna Carta and its meaning.

The Law Library of Congress planned the lecture series to complement the Library's earlier exhibition. The series, co-sponsored by the American Bar Association Standing Committee on the Law Library of Congress, was designed to provide further context on how the Great Charter fits into expansive historical and contemporary topics. Previous lectures focused on jury trials; techniques used in selecting and conserving primary sources for exhibitions and education outreach; the relationship between Magna Carta and the U.S. Constitution; and the status of women in Medieval England.

We hope you will join us!