At this juncture, as well as in the crusade against the Albigensians, Philip Augustus behaved towards the pope with a wisdom and ability hard of attainment at any time, and very rare in his own: he constantly humored the papacy without being subservient to it, and he testified towards it his respect, and at the same time his independence. He understood all the gravity of a rupture with Rome, and he neglected nothing to avoid one; but he also considered that Rome, herself not wanting in discretion, would be content with the deference of the King of France rather than get embroiled with him by exacting his submission. Philip Augustus, in his political life, always preserved this proper mean, and he found it succeed; but in his domestic life there came a day when he suffered himself to be hurried out of his usual deference towards the pope; and, after a violent attempt at resistance, he resigned himself to submission. Three years after the death of his first wife, Isabel of Hainault, who had left him a son, Prince Louis, he married Princess Ingeburga of Denmark, without knowing anything at all of her, just as it generally happens in the case of royal marriages. No sooner had she become his wife than, without any cause that can be assigned with certainty, he took such a dislike to her that, towards the end of the same year, he demanded of and succeeded in obtaining from a French council, held at Compiegne, nullity of his marriage on the ground of prohibited consanguinity. “O, naughty France! naughty France! O, Rome! Rome!” cried the poor Danish princess, on learning this decision; and she did in fact appeal to Pope Celestine III. Whilst the question was being investigated at Rome, Ingeburga, whom Philip had in vain tried to send back to Denmark, was marched about, under restraint, in France from castle to castle and convent to convent, and treated with iniquitous and shocking severity. Pope Celestine, after examination, annulled the decision of the council of Compiegne touching the pretended consanguinity, leaving in suspense the question of divorce, and, consequently, without breaking the tie of marriage between the king and the Danish princess. “I have seen,” he wrote to the Archbishop of Sens, “the genealogy sent to me by the bishops, and it is due to that inspection and the uproar caused by this scandal that I have annulled the decree; take care now, therefore, that Philip do not marry again, and so break the tie which still unites him to the Church.” Philip paid no heed to this canonical injunction; his heart was set upon marrying again; and, after having unsuccessfully sought the band of two German princesses, on the borders of the Rhine, who were alarmed by the fate of Ingeburga, he obtained that of a princess, a Tyrolese by origin, Agnes (according to others, Mary) of Merania, that is, Moravia (an Austrian province, in German _Moehren,_ out of which the chroniclers of the time made Meranie or Merania, the name that has remained in the history of Agnes). She was the daughter of Berthold, Marquis of Istria, whom, about 1180, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had made Duke of Moravia. According to all contemporary chronicles, Agnes was not only beautiful, but charming; she made a great impression at the court of France; and Philip Augustus, after his marriage with her in June, 1196, became infatuated with her. But a pope more stern and bold than Celestine III., Innocent III., had just been raised to the Holy See, and was exerting himself, in court as well as monastery, to effect a reformation of morals. Immediately after his accession, he concerned himself with the conjugal irregularity in which the King of France was living. “My predecessor, Celestine,” he wrote to the Bishop of Paris, “would fain have put a stop to this scandal, but he was unsuccessful; as for me, I am quite resolved to prosecute his work, and obtain by all and any means fulfilment of God’s law. Be instant in speaking thereof to the king on my behalf; and tell him that his obstinate refusals may probably bring upon him both the wrath of God and the thunders of the Church.” And indeed Philip’s refusals were very obstinate; for the pride of the king and the feelings of the man were equally wounded. “I had rather lose half my domains,” said he, “than separate from Agnes.” The pope threatened him with the interdict,--that is, the suspension of all religious ceremonies, festivals, and forms in the Church of France. Philip resisted not only the threat, but also the sentence of the interdict, which was actually pronounced, first in the churches of the royal domain, and afterwards in those of the whole kingdom. “So wroth was the king,” says the chronicle of St.