I recently wrote Conserving and exhibiting the Declaration of Arbroath in connection with the recent exhibition of the manuscript of the letter of the Scottish nobility to Pope John XXII. In it I included links to two other of my posts about the Declaration which I wrote in 2020 to commemorate its seven hundredth anniversary.
I have now come upon an article by Gordon McKelvie which was originally on The Conversation website and has been republished by that of the University of Winchester In it he sets out to rescue the Declaration from modern politicians and from political debate about the place of Scotland within Great Britain.
Although very different in its nature and status from Magna Carta the Declaration has acquired a similar cultural significance as a part of national identity. With reference to it McKelvie is trying, in a way, to pose the equivalent to the essay title about Magna Carta - is it a great constitutional enactment or a failed peace treaty? ( The answer to that is, of course, not either or but both and ).
With both documents the correct interpretation or interpretations must lie in what that say, in who composed them, in what the reader would have understood them to mean, and in their place in the culture of their times.
The article can be seen at Scotland’s medieval Declaration of Arbroath is too important for cherry picking by politicians, says Winchester historian
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