John of England: Encyclopedia II - John of England - Alleged illiteracy

John of England - Alleged illiteracy

For a long time, schoolchildren have learned that King John had to approve Magna Carta by attaching his seal to it because he could not sign it, lacking the ability to read or write (ignoring the fact that King John had a large library he treasured until the end of his life.) This textbook inaccuracy resembled that of textbooks which claimed that Christopher Columbus wanted to prove the earth was round. Whether the original authors of these errors knew better and oversimplified because they wrote for children, or whether they had been misinformed themselves, is unknown. As a result of these writings, generations of adults remembered mainly two things about "wicked King John," both of them wrong. (The other "fact" was that, if Robin Hood had not stepped in, Prince John would have embezzled the money raised to ransom King Richard. The fact is that John did embezzle the ransom money, by creating forged seals, and Robin Hood may or may not have actually existed. In any case, the real life source for the legend lived at least half a century before Richard was king. )

In fact, King John did sign the draft of the Charter that the negotiating parties hammered out in the tent on Charter Island at Runnymede on 15–18 June 1215, but it took the clerks and scribes working in the royal offices some time after everyone went home to prepare the final copies, which they then sealed and delivered to the appropriate officials. In those days, legal documents were sealed to make them official, not signed. (Even today, many legal documents are not considered effective without the seal of a notary public or corporate official, and printed legal forms such as deeds say "L.S." next to the signature lines. That stands for the Latin locus signilli ("place of the seal"), signifying that the signer has used a signature as a substitute for a seal.) When William the Conqueror (and his wife) signed the Accord of Winchester (Image) in 1072, for example, they and all the bishops signed with crosses, as illiterate people would later do, but they did so in accordance with current legal practice, not because the bishops could not write their own names.

Henry II had at first intended that John would receive an education to go into the Church, which would have meant Henry did not have to give him any land. In 1171, however, Henry began negotiations to betroth John to the daughter of Count Humbert III of Savoy (who had no son yet and so wanted a son-in-law.) After that, talk of making John a clergyman ceased. John's parents had both received a good education—Henry spoke some half dozen languages, and Eleanor had attended lectures at what would soon become the University of Paris—in addition to what they had learned of law and government, religion, and literature. John himself had received one of the best educations of any king of England. Some of the books the records show he read included: De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei by Hugh of St. Victor, Sentences by Peter Lombard, The Treatise of Origen, and a history of England—potentially Wace's Roman de Brut, based on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Alleged illiteracy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki