Two days of national celebrations are under way to commemorate 800 years since the singing of the failed treaty between the 'tyrannical' King John and his rebellious barons, which turned into a decisive moment for English democracy and justice.
According to the Guardian, researchers from the University of East Anglia and King's College London's Magna Carta Project think the Lincoln charter was written by a religious scribe working for the Bishop of Lincoln, while the Salisbury charter was done by a scribe working for the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury.
Scholars believe they have uncovered evidence that proves the scribes were working outside the court, meaning the famous Runnymede deal was backed by England's bishops, as much as by the rebel barons whom King John was hoping to appease.
"To have found and identified the work of these scribes... is the equivalent of finding needles in a very large haystack," said medieval history professor Nicholas Vincent, principal investigator on the project. "But it also has important historical implications."
"King John had no real intention that the charter be either publicised or enforced. It was the bishops, instead, who insisted that it be distributed to the country at large and thereafter who preserved it in their cathedral archives," said Vincent.
"We now find at least two cathedral churches, Lincoln and Salisbury, each producing its own Magna Carta, supplying the time, the scribe and the initiative to get the document copied.
"Bizarrely enough, Magna Carta is the product of a situation far closer to that which elsewhere in today's world we might associate with the enemies of modern liberal democracy, with Sharia law or with those systems in which church and state are indistinguishable."
Four original charters bearing the Magna Carta text are known to have survived. Two of these 1215 charters are held at the British Library, one is at Lincoln cathedral and one at Salisbury cathedral. All four have Unesco World Heritage status.
