disappointments elsewhere. There were two such which fell especially
heavily upon him during the first half of his reign. He inherited from
his predecessor a quarrel with Philip Augustus of France. Philip lost
his first wife in 1190; in 1193 his designs against England caused him
to marry Ingebiorg, a sister of the King of Denmark. Immediately after
the marriage he took a dislike to her, refused to live with her, and
obtained from an assembly of his own clergy a sentence of divorce,
founded on an allegation of some very distant relationship between him
and his new wife. Ingebiorg and her brother appealed to Pope Celestine
III, who declared the sentence of divorce illegal and null. Philip not
only paid no attention to the numerous letters and legates of the
Pope, but he tried to make the divorce irrevocable by taking a new
wife. After several rebuffs he found in Agnes of Meran, the daughter
of a Bavarian noble, one who was willing to accept the dubious
position (1196). Innocent III at once took up an uncompromising
attitude, and instructed his legates that if Philip refused to send
away Agnes and to restore Ingebiorg, they should put the kingdom under
an interdict preparatory to a sentence of personal excommunication
against Philip and Agnes themselves. Those bishops who dared to
publish the interdict were seriously maltreated by the King; but after
nine months of resistance the distress of his people at the cessation
of religious services caused him to submit; he pretended to take back
Ingebiorg, and the interdict was raised (1200). But he did not send
away Agnes, and a renewal of the interdict was only averted by Agnes'
death in 1201. Innocent, desiring to be conciliatory, actually
declared Agnes' two children legitimate. Philip still, however,
pressed for a divorce from Ingebiorg, declaring that he was bewitched
by her. After his victory over John of England in 1204 he became more
than ever obdurate to papal remonstrances, and he even contemplated a
new marriage. Innocent was not in a position to drive him to extremes,