Table Of ContentMAGNA CARTA
To mark the 800th anniversary of the ratification of the Magna Carta by King
John at Runnymede, Magna Carta provides the central European perspectives on this monu-
mental document and its impact on the political and legal experiences of freedom, from the
medieval period to the present day. The volume gives rise to a discussion about the legacy
of the Magna Carta as one of the fundamental elements of European identity.
Supported by previously untranslated sources at the end of each chapter, the team of
contributors consider the lasting legacy of Magna Carta in Hungary, the Czech Republic,
Poland and Lithuania. The authors present the successful attempts to limit royal power by
law while protecting the privileges of the nobility carried out throughout the region from
the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries. Each chapter considers the historical and political
contexts behind these efforts, the processes by which political and legal institutions were
subsequently formed and finally examines the legacy of those institutions which are today
found in consitutional identities, constitutional arrangements and political projects across
Central Europe. A preface by Robert Blackburn draws the collection together, highlighting
the continued universal significance of the Magna Carta.
This original title will enable students and academics alike to see for themselves the
reverberations the Magna Carta caused in medieval Europe and beyond from a fresh and
unusual perspective.
Zbigniew Rau is Professor in the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University
of Łódz´, Poland and Director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Center for Political and Legal
Thought.
Przemysław Żurawski vel Grajewski is Lecturer in the Faculty of International Studies
at the University of Łódz´, Poland.
Marek Tracz-Tryniecki is Lecturer in the Faculty of Law and Administration at the
University of Łódz´, Poland.
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MAGNA CARTA
A Central European perspective
of our common heritage of
freedom
Edited by Zbigniew Rau, Przemysław
Żurawski vel Grajewski and
Marek Tracz-Tryniecki
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Zbigniew Rau, Przemysław Żurawski vel Grajewski and Marek Tracz-Tryniecki
for selection and editorial matter; individual chapters © the contributors
The right of the editor to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rau, Zbigniew, editor. | çZurawski vel Grajewski, Przemys±aw Piotr, 1963–
editor.
Title: Magna Carta : Central and East European perspectives / Edited by Zbigniew Rau
and Przemys±aw çZurawski vel Grajewski.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015032728| ISBN 9781138848528 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781138848542 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315640969 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Magna Carta—Influence. | Constitutional history—England. |
Rule of law—England—History. | Constitutional history—Europe, Central. |
Constitutional history—Europe, Eastern. | Rule of law—Europe, Central—History. |
Rule of law—Europe, Eastern—History.
Classification: LCC KD3946 .M335 2016 | DDC 340/.11—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015032728
ISBN: 978-1-138-84852-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-84854-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64096-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo and Melior
by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK
CONTENTS
Contributors vii
Foreword xii
Acknowledgements xviii
1 Why do we Central Europeans celebrate the anniversary
of Magna Carta? Introductory remarks 1
Zbigniew Rau, Marek Tracz-Tryniecki, and Przemysław Żurawski vel
Grajewski
2 a) The Hungarian experience of freedom: the tradition
of the Golden Bull 37
Attila K. Molnar and Levente Völgyesi
b) The Hungarian sources 52
3 a) King, estates and the Czech Crown: the legal sources of the
ideas of freedom in the medieval and early modern
Czech lands 79
Jana Janišová and Dalibor Janiš
b) The Czech sources 112
4 a) The nobility’s privileges and the formation of civil liberties
in old Poland 127
Dorota Malec
b) The Polish sources 147
vi Contents
5 a) Ruling by law and by consent: monarchy and noble
estate in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania 167
Artūras Vasiliauskas
b) The Lithuanian sources 191
Index 228
CONTRIBUTORS
Professor Zbigniew Rau, PhD, is Professor of Law and Chair of Political and Legal
Thought within the Faculty of Law and Administration at the University of Łódź,
and Director of the Alexis de Tocqueville Centre for Political and Legal Thought. He
has been a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College Cambridge (1985–1988),
a Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin (1988–1994), a Visiting Scholar at
the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University (1989,
1991), a Visiting Scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University (1990), a
Fellow of the Murphy Institute of Political Economy at Tulane University (1991),
and a Fellow of Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National
University (1993). Professor Rau served as a Senator of the Republic of Poland and
as a Member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (2005–2007).
He holds the office of the Voivode of Łódź Voivodeship.
Key Publications:
Rau, Z., ed., The Reemergence of Civil Society in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union, Westview Press, 1991.
Rau Z., Contractarianism versus Holism: Reinterpreting Locke’s Two Treatises of
Government, University Press of America, 1995.
Rau Z., From Communism to Liberalism: Essays on the Individual and Civil Society,
Łódź University Press, 1998.
Rau Z. and Tracz-Tryniecki, M., eds., Tocquevillian Ideas. Contemporary
European Perspectives, University Press of America, 2014.
Professor Attila K. Molnar, PhD, is a professor of Eötvös Loránd University,
Budapest, in the Faculty of Social Sciences and the director of the Thomas Molnar
Institute for Advanced Studies. He has published several monographs on the
viii Contributors
history of ideas with special reference to politics and religion. His main works are
The Protestant Ethic in Hungary (1994), Edmund Burke (2000), The Chaotic Prison,
essays (1999), On the Good Order, essays (2010), Conscience On Leave I (2014), The
Deliberative Democracy and the Redeeming Chatting (2014).
Jana Janišová, PhD, is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Theory of Law and
History of Law in the Faculty of Law of Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech
Republic, in the field of history of civil law in the Bohemian lands, the legal history
of European countries, the reception of Roman law and constitutional develop-
ment in the Bohemian lands. Research specializations are: Moravian provincial law
and the provincial judiciary (especially the court records); civil law in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries; the feudal system of the Bishopric of Olomouc; and critical
editions of early modern legal-historical sources.
Key Publications:
Janišová J., Šlechtické spory na raně novověké Moravě (Edice rokové knihy zemského
hejtmana Václava z Ludanic z let 1541–1556) [Disputes of the Nobility about
Honour in Moravia in the Early Modern Period. The Edition of the Roková kniha
by Lord Lieutenant Václav of Ludanice from 1541–1556)] (Brno, 2007), pp. 470.
Janišová J., ‘De iure nostro. Právní spis Karla staršího ze Žerotína’ [De iure nos-
tro. The Legal Work of Charles the Elder of Žerotín], in Libor Jan, Dalibor
Janiš et al., Ad iustitiam et bonum commune. Proměny zemského práva v českých
zemích ve středověku a raném novověku (Brno, 2010), pp. 68–106.
Janišová J., ‘Privilegium Rudolfa II. pro olomoucké biskupství z roku 1590.
Právní argumentace biskupa Stanislava Pavlovského [Privilege of Rudolph
II to the Olomouc Bishopric in 1590. Bishop Stanislav Pavlovský´s Legal
Argumentation]’, Folia Historica Bohemica 27 (2012), pp. 41–69.
Janišová J., Janiš D., Zemské zřízení Markrabství moravského z roku 1516 (Počátky
kodfikace zemského práva na Moravě) [the Provincial Code of the Margraviate
of Moravia 1516 (Beginnings of Provincial Law Codification in Moravia)]
(Olomouc, 2013), 198 pp.
Dalibor Janiš, PhD, is researcher in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ostrava,
and researcher in the Faculty of Law of Palacký University in Olomouc, Czech
Republic. Research specializations are: the late medieval and early modern history
of the law (primarily Moravian provincial law; the judicial system); the critical edi-
tions of (legal) sources; and history of the nobility and aristocratic residences.
Key Publications:
Janiš D., ed., Práva a zřízení Markrabství moravského z roku 1545 (Pokus
moravských stavů o revizi zemského zřízení) [Rights and Orders of the Moravian
Margraviate of 1545 (The Moravian Estate’s Attempt to Revise the Provincial
Code)] (Brno, 2005), 296 pp.
Contributors ix
Janiš D., ed., Moravský zemský sněm na prahu novověku. Edice Památek sněmovních
z let 1518–1570. 1. Památky sněmovní I. [The Moravian Provincial Assembly
in the Sixteenth Century. The Edition of the Assembly Records (Památky
sněmovní) from 1518 to 1570] (Documenta res gestas Bohemicas saeculorum
XVI.–XVIII. illustrantia. Series A, Volumen I-1) (Praha, 2010), 504 pp.
Janiš D., ‘Stände versus Herrscher: Widerstandsrecht und Landrechte in den
Böhmischen Ländern’, in Václav Bůžek, ed., Ein Bruderzwist im Hause Habsburg
(1608–1611). Opera Historica 14. (České Budějovice, 2010), pp. 277–306.
Janiš D., Zemské soudnictví na Moravě vrcholného středověku [Provincial Justice in
Moravia of the High Middle Ages] (Brno, 2013), 276 pp.
Professor Dorota Malec, PhD, graduated from the Faculty of Law and
Administration of the Jagiellonian University. She is a historian of Polish law
and a specialist in the history of the institution of the notary public. Her research
focuses on the history of the judiciary and administration, and also on the history
of administrative courts. Since 2008 she has been the Head of the Chair of History
of Administration, and at present she performs the function of Vice-Dean of the
Faculty of Law and Administration of the Jagiellonian University, Poland.
Professor Artūras Vasiliauskas, PhD, is the director of the British Council, the
United Kingdom’s international organization for educational opportunities and
cultural relations, in Lithuania. He also teaches courses on cultural and social
history and historical anthropology at the Department of History in Vilnius
University, Lithuania. In 2001–2005 he was a director of the Invisible College
Lithuania, a non-profit institution that provided supplementary education in
humanities and social sciences for gifted university students. In 2005–2009 he
was employed at the Nordic Council of Ministers, and coordinated support
projects for the European Humanities University, the Belarusian institution of
higher education operating in exile in Vilnius. He received his doctoral degree
from King’s College, University of London, for his thesis ‘Local Politics and
Clientage in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 1587–1632’ in 2001. His academic
interests lie in the political culture and legal mentality of the Lithuanian nobility
in the early modern period.
Key Publications:
Vasiliauskas A., ‘Antyk i sarmatyzm’, in Kultura Wielkiego Księstwa Litewskiego:
analizy i obrazy (Cracow, 2006), pp. 1–21.
Vasiliauskas A., ‘Valdymo sistemos bruožai (XVI a. vid. – XVIII a. vid.)’, in
Lietuvos vidaus reikalų istorija (Vilnius, 2008) pp. 81–103.
Vasiliauskas A. ,‘The Practice of Citizenship among the Lithuanian Nobility,
ca. 1580–1630’, in Citizenship and Identity in a Multinational Common-
wealth. Poland-Lithuania in Context, 1550–1772 (Leiden and Boston, 2009)
pp. 71–102.
