WOMEN IN THE AGE OF SAINT LOUIS
While romance has preserved many memories, and history not a few facts, of Eleanor of Guienne, the records concerning two other notable women, her contemporaries, are very scanty. Whatever her faults, Eleanor was a great and commanding personality, one that could not be overlooked because, whether for good or ill, she was always powerful. The two unhappy queens of Philippe Auguste, Ingeburge de Danemark and Agnes de Meranie, though they were the innocent causes of much distress in France, are yet hardly known to us as personalities.
The first queen of Philippe Auguste was Isabelle de Hainault; after her death he sought the hand of a Danish princess, Ingeburge, sister of Knut IV. The marriage was one contracted for political reasons; Philippe was at the time engaged in his lifelong struggle against the power of the Plantagenets, and desired an ally against Richard Coeur de Lion. At Amiens, on Assumption eve, 1193, Ingeburge was married to the King of France; the next day she was crowned Queen of France by the Archbishop of Rheims. During the ceremony, says a chronicler of Aix, "the King, looking on the Princess, began to conceive a horror of her; he trembled, he grew pale, he was so greatly troubled in spirit that he could hardly contain himself till the end of the ceremony." For some unknown reason the fair stranger seems to have awakened in him unconquerable repugnance; and from that moment he began to devise means of getting rid of her.
Ingeburge, according to the testimony of those who had no special reason to favor her but every reason to justify the king, was of a gentle disposition, sensible, affectionate, and endowed with considerable beauty of the type usually associated with Danish women. She was a defenceless stranger, not even acquainted with the French language, and there were but few in France to champion her cause in the painful complications that followed. Philippe's aversion could by no means be accounted for; in the Middle Ages what could not be accounted for, if of evil nature, was the work of the devil or of his vicegerents on earth, the witches; so it was promptly reported that the King of France was bewitched, though it is not exactly apparent that the real force of the enchantment fell upon him it was Ingeburge who suffered.
Philippe began proceedings to obtain an annulment of the marriage, which, he asseverated, had never been consummated. This was denied by Ingeburge, and we are inclined to take her word rather than that of the unscrupulous king, who, though a successful ruler, was not at all averse to falsehood where falsehood served his turn. The pair separated almost at once, and Philippe tried by ill treatment to make Ingeburge consent to a legal separation. After three months of the utmost unhappiness the young queen had the shame of hearing her marriage declared null and void. The council which rendered this decision consisted wholly of French prelates, presided over by the very Archbishop of Rheims who had pronounced the nuptial benediction over the pair. Ingeburge was at Compiègne, where the council met, and was present at the session at which her marriage was annulled on the frivolous pretext of a kinship, not between Philippe and Ingeburge for even the ingenuity of mediaeval genealogy could not trace out that but between the late Queen Isabella and Ingeburge. The unfortunate Danish lady could not understand what these priests were saying in the strange tongue of the land to which she had come to be a queen; when the purport of the proceedings was explained to her through an interpreter, she exclaimed, in tears: "Male France! Male France! Rome! Rome!"
DOMESTIC INTERIOR IN FRANCE, TWELFTH CENTURY
From a water-color by S. Baron, after a description by Viollet-le-Duc
The decorated fireplace, between two windows, was wide enough to hold logs eight or ten feet long. Two large benches were at right angles, one with a movable back, the other being double-seated. The table was fixed to the floor, the master's chair being elevated, other diners sat on stools. The tablecloth was used for wiping fingers and lips. The buffet, with cups and goblets on top, was used as to-day. Generally, the beds were narrow and displayed great luxury: the wood was carved, incrusted, or painted; the coverlets had fringes and embroideries; curtains formed an alcove, and a night lamp was hung at the foot. The room contained an oratory.
In the rear were the kitchen, etc, and on the upper floors were sleeping and other chambers.
She did indeed appeal from "wicked France" to Rome, and the appeal was not without ultimate good effect. In the meantime she refused to prejudice her cause by returning to Denmark, and the heartless Philippe confined her, almost as a criminal, in a convent at Cisoing, in the Tournois; he did not even have the decency or the humanity to provide suitably for her actual needs.