Few propositions could have been a greater outrage on the Church. Not only were the people of Zara fellow-Christians, against whom the Franks had no complaint, but the King of Hungary was himself a crusader, his dominions were under the protection of the pope, and an attack on him was tantamount to an attack on Rome herself.
On these points difference of opinion was impossible, and the papal legate, with all the other ecclesiastics, denounced the Venetians and threatened them with excommunication. The result showed that force already expressed itself in the West through money, and not through the imagination.
What followed is the more interesting since it can be demonstrated that, when beyond the Alps, and withdrawn from the pressure of capital, the French barons were as emotional as ever. While these very negotiations were pending, the subjects of Philip Augustus had deserted him in a mass, and had grovelled before Innocent as submissively as if he had been Hildebrand.
The first wife of Philip Augustus was Ingeburga, a Danish princess, for whom he had an irrepressible disinclination. In 1195 he obtained a divorce from her, by an assembly of prelates presided over by the Cardinal of Champagne. He then married Agnes de Méranie, to whom he was devotedly attached; Ingeburga appealed to Rome, and Innocent declared the divorce void, and ordered Philip to separate "from his concubine."
Philip refused, and Innocent commanded his legate to put the kingdom under interdict. At Vienne, in the month of January, 1200, at the dead of night, the magical formulas were recited. When the Christ upon the altar had been veiled, the sacred wafer burned, the miracle-working corpses hidden in the crypt, before the shuddering people, the priest laid his curse upon the king until he should put away his harlot.
From that hour all religious rites were suspended. The church doors were barred, the bells were silent, the sick died unshriven, the dead lay unburied. The king summoned his bishops, and threatened to drive them from France: it was of no avail. The barons shrank from him, his very men-at-arms fell off from him; he was alone as Henry had been at Canossa. The people were frenzied, and even went to England to obtain priestly aid. The Count of Ponthieu had to marry Philip's sister at Rouen, within the Norman jurisdiction.