Definition
Charta Libertatum (Latin: "charters of liberties") is the collective term for the two foundational constitutional documents of medieval English law: Magna Carta (the Great Charter) and Charta de Foresta (the Charter of the Forest). Used in the plural, the phrase denotes the paired grants by which the English Crown confirmed and guaranteed the liberties of the realm — civil and political rights under Magna Carta, and rights of use and access to royal forests under the Charter of the Forest. The term is sometimes encountered in the singular as a reference to Magna Carta alone, though strictly speaking the plural construction reflects the historically correct usage encompassing both charters.
Common Language
The phrase has no meaningful circulation in modern ordinary English. It is encountered exclusively in legal, historical, and scholarly contexts and requires no common-language comparison.
Common Confusion
Charta Libertatum is frequently read as a synonym for Magna Carta alone. This conflation is understandable — Magna Carta vastly overshadows its companion document in popular and legal memory — but it obscures the historical reality that the two charters were conceived and reissued as a coordinated pair. From 1217 onward, Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest circulated together, were confirmed together by subsequent monarchs, and were understood together as the constitutional settlement between Crown and subject. Researchers treating Charta Libertatum as merely another name for Magna Carta risk missing the forest rights dimension entirely, which was, for ordinary medieval English subjects, often of more immediate practical significance than the baronial guarantees of Magna Carta.
Why It Matters in Research
The term appears infrequently in English-language legal sources but surfaces with some regularity in Latin records, medieval chronicles, ecclesiastical documents, and early modern constitutional arguments. Several navigational points are worth noting.
First, confirmation and reissuance. The paired charters were confirmed by the Crown repeatedly across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries — most notably in 1225, 1265, and by Edward I in the Confirmation of the Charters (Confirmatio Cartarum) of 1297. When a source references Charta Libertatum or "the charters of liberties" in confirmation proceedings, it is almost always this pair. Researchers working through parliamentary rolls or royal chancery records will encounter the paired usage frequently in these confirmation contexts.
Second, the Charter of the Forest (Charta de Foresta) is significantly underrepresented in modern constitutional historiography relative to Magna Carta, yet it governed the rights of a far larger portion of the medieval English population. Researchers focused on property rights, common rights, or the history of natural resource regulation will find the Forest Charter — and sources that group it under the Charta Libertatum heading — a productive and sometimes overlooked avenue.
Third, in early modern constitutional arguments — particularly those of the seventeenth century, when common lawyers and parliamentarians drew heavily on medieval precedent — references to "the liberties" or "the charters" in political and legal literature often invoke this paired tradition. Edward Coke's writings, for example, treat both charters as pillars of the ancient constitution. A researcher tracing constitutional argument in that period should be alert to the implicit two-charter framework behind language that may appear to reference only Magna Carta.
Fourth, the Latin form of the term should be checked against variant spellings in manuscript and early printed sources, including Chartae Libertatum (plural nominative) and Cartae Libertatum, before concluding that a passage refers solely to Magna Carta.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (2nd Ed., Supplemental) offers a concise and accurate gloss: "The charters (grants) of liberties. These are Magna Charta and Charta de Foresta." This entry is notable for its brevity and correctness — it does not overclaim by treating the term as a synonym for Magna Carta alone, and it correctly identifies the plural character of the phrase.
The entry does not elaborate on the historical context, the significance of the pairing, or the repeated confirmations that gave the phrase its constitutional weight. Researchers relying solely on Black's for an understanding of this term will have an accurate but thin foundation. No extended treatment of Charta Libertatum as a distinct term appears in the other standard historical dictionaries of English law, reflecting the term's role as a collective label rather than a term with its own independent legal doctrine.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is a product of English legal history and has no operative jurisdiction in modern law. It appears in historical and comparative legal scholarship, constitutional history, and occasionally in arguments invoking the deep roots of common law liberties in Anglo-American legal systems.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Magna Carta; Charter of the Forest; Confirmation of the Charters (Confirmatio Cartarum)