Stephen Langton

Stephen Langton

Stephen Langton (died 1228) served as England's Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest ecclesiastical office in the land. He played an important role in events surrounding the fabled Magna Carta, signed by the English king in 1215. Though the document specified certain rights to England's landed aristocracy, it is sometimes heralded as the first formal declaration of human rights in history.

Little is known about Langton's life outside of his writings on theological matters and his tenure as an emissary between his onetime foe, King John, and the English barons. Not even a portrait of him survives. He was thought to have hailed from Lincolnshire, in the north of England, and was likely born in the mid-1150s. His father, Henry, possessed a small manor home and some property there, where ancestors from Denmark had likely settled some 200 years earlier. Around Lincolnshire at the time of Langton's youth were several famous monasteries and abbeys, and he came of age during a period of strife between the church and monarch in England. Henry II, who ruled from 1154 to 1189, named his chancellor, a layman, as head of the church in England. Thomas a Becket, however, came to oppose Henry's increasing thirst for power, and fled to the Continent for a time. Before he left, he hid in the Lincolnshire area, and was sheltered by the monks of the Gilbertine order. The quarrel was mended for a time, but supporters of the king murdered Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170. All of this occurred during Langton's childhood.

Both Langton and his brother Simon opted to become members of religious orders. He later wrote that his decision to enter a monastery scandalized his father. Langton served as prebendary at York for a time-a member of clergy who receives a stipend-and went to Paris around 1181. He studied there among the loose coalition of masters and pupils at what would become the famed Universite de Paris, then taught there himself until 1206. During his student days he befriended an Italian cleric, Cardinal de Conti, who would later play an important role in his life. At the time, Paris was the Western world's most renowned center of learning, and was especially famed for theologians continuing the work of early Christian scholars, who formulated the principal doctrines of the faith. Paris was a small city at the time, mostly situated on the Ile de Paris, and during the entire 25 years of his stay there, Langton could hear the noises of the workers who built the Notre Dame cathedral. Langton's tutor, Peter the Chanter, wrote critically of the grandiosity and expense of this church.

Contributed to Modern Bible

Langton earned a doctorate in arts and theology from Paris, and began delivering what were termed questiones, or lectures on theological or moral problems. He also wrote extensively on the Bible. An important Vulgate, or common edition, appeared from the Universite de Paris theologians during the thirteenth century, and Langton worked on the project himself. He is credited for dividing the books of the Bible into chapters. The Paris Vulgate served as the standard version for the next two centuries, and the first printed-not hand-copied, as was the method in Langton's day-editions of the bible from Johann Gutenberg's press were based on this revision. The chapter divisions he devised were still in use eight centuries later.

Langton penned theological treatises and discourses on the topics of heaven, hell, transubstantiation, and prayer. Answering the question of whether the devil sins with all his might, Langton wrote: "The devil wishes to be either good or bad. If the former, when he does evil he must feel the sting of a biting conscience, that is to say, synderesis ; and authority says that synderesis is extinct in the devil. If he wishes to be bad, he wishes to deserve punishment and so to be punished. It may well be that the devil is so obstinate that he wishes to be bad and yet does not wish to be punished."

Appointed Archbishop

During the course of his career in Paris, Langton and his questiones, along with extensive commentaries he wrote on books of the Old and New Testaments, brought him such renown that he became known as "Stephen with the Tongue of Thunder." He was summoned to Rome by Pope Innocent III, the former Cardinal de Conti, who recognized in Langton an ally in his battle with the new king of England. The favorite, but youngest son of Henry II, John was given lands in France, the earldom of Gloucester, and the lordship of Ireland, which caused resentment among his brothers. When the eldest succeeded to the throne in 1189 as Richard I (the Lionhearted), John promised to remain in France. But he conspired against his brother, attempting to seize the throne while Richard was away on a Crusade to the Holy Land. In the spring of 1199, Richard died and John ascended to the throne.