Germany, too, had her Lothair, and, in the XIth century, King Henry IV., one of the most abandoned sovereigns that ever reigned, brought upon himself not only the papal anathema, but the displeasure of his electors and confederated vassals themselves by his shameless trifling with his marriage vows. His wife Bertha, a beautiful and virtuous woman, the daughter of Otho, Marquis of Italy, never found favor in his sight; and, in concert with some of his simoniacal bishops, Siegfried, the Archbishop of Mayence at their head, Henry held a diet at Worms in 1069 to procure a divorce from her. Siegfried, however, feeling uneasy at the part allotted him, sent to the Pope Alexander II. for advice, and received from him a severe reprimand for having countenanced the dissolute king. The papal legate, an austere and holy man, Peter Damian, arrived during the session of a diet at Frankfort, where the king's cause was to be finally judged. Despite Henry's protestations that his divorce would enable him, as he hypocritically said, to marry lawfully a wife that would please him, and to abandon his numerous harem of favorites, whom he would have no excuse any longer to retain, the stern sentence of Rome was passed against him—either excommunication or reconciliation with his wife. He reluctantly submitted, but only in appearance, for he refused even to see Bertha, and soon gave himself up to his former illicit pleasures. His brutal treatment of his second wife, Praxedes of Lorraine, whom he married according to his own choice after the death of Bertha, drew upon him further ecclesiastical censures, and he left a memory justly branded by all historians as more infamous still than that of the notorious Henry VIII. of England.
At the same time that his passions were revolutionizing the German Empire, Philip I. of France was showing an equally deplorable example to his vassals and subjects. He was married to Bertha, daughter of Hugh, Count of Frisia, by whom he already had two children, one of whom, Louis le Gros, succeeded him; but, blinded by a sinful affection, he carried off, in 1092, Bertrade, the wife of Fulk, Count of Anjou, and lived with her in a doubly adulterous union.
Hugh of Flavigny, a contemporary historian, says of this occurrence: “Even if our book were silent, all France would cry out, nay, the whole of the Western church would re-echo like thunder in horror of this crime. It is truly monstrous that an anointed king, who should have defended even with the sword the indissolubility of marriage, should on the contrary wallow shamelessly for years in intolerable disorder.” The Blessed Yves, Bishop of Chartres, immediately lifted his voice against the enormity of the crime; but though his fervent reproaches fell upon a deadened conscience, and his letter to the king was in vain, still among the bishops of France none could be found, at least for a long time, to perform a scandalous “marriage” between the king and his mistress. At last the Archbishop of Rouen allowed himself to be blinded, and consented to unite them, but a prompt and sharp interference on the part of Rome punished him by a deposition from all his ecclesiastical dignities, which lasted [pg 592] for several years. The whole of the controversy had now come clearly to the knowledge of the Pope Urban II.
The Count of Anjou had declared war against the ravisher, and the king had put the B. Yves in irons under the guard of the Viscount of Chartres. In the meanwhile, the pope wrote a scathing letter to the metropolitan of Rheims and the episcopate of France. “You,” he says, “who should have stood as a wall against the inroads of public immorality, you have been silent and allowed this great crime; for not to oppose is to consent. Go now, speak to the king, reproach him, warn him, threaten him, and, if necessary, resort boldly to the last measures.” From 1092 to 1094 the pope never ceased publicly and privately to oppose Philip's unlawful passion, and, sending as his legate Hugh, Archbishop of Lyons, convoked an assembly at Autun for the 15th of October, 1094, to decide the matter. The king insolently attempted to forestall the papal decision by calling a council for the 10th of September previous, which accordingly took place, and in which a few contumacious bishops confirmed the king in his obstinate resistance to the head of the church. As the queen had died a short time before, Philip presumptuously began to hope that his marriage with Bertrade would now be legalized; but, since she herself was the wedded wife of the Count of Anjou, it will be easy to see how vain were his expectations. The Council of Autun met, and, finding the king determined to continue in sin, solemnly excommunicated him. Philip then wrote a threatening letter to the pope, declaring that, if he did not absolve him from the church's censures, he would go over to the anti-pope Guibert, styled Clement III. Philip now attempted to secure immunity for himself in another way: he promised all sorts of reforms, both ecclesiastical and moral, if he could only obtain permission to indulge his guilty passion undisturbed. To this proposal the B. Yves replied, like S. Columbanus to Theodoric, that it was impossible to compound for sin by costly gifts, that God desires ourselves, not our treasures, and that heaven is won by penance and not by gold.
At length, in 1095, the Council of Placentia was held. Philip pleaded for a delay, which was granted him, but at the following council, that of Clermont, he and his concubine were at last rigorously excommunicated. And here Rohrbacher takes occasion to remark, à propos to the crusade which was then occupying Christendom: “Indeed, of what use would a crusade against the Turks have proved if the popes had not, at the same time, resolutely opposed the introduction of Turkish disorders into Christian society?”
In 1096, Philip consented to submit, and went in state to the Council of Nismes to meet the pope, and be absolved from the excommunication, which, as he found, weighed very heavily on his conscience. Throughout the middle ages this one trait, a lively faith, proved, indeed, the only barrier against excesses which, had they been unrestrained by the fear of ecclesiastical censures, would have simply produced a state of license worse than that of the latter days of the Roman Empire. But Philip's repentance was short-lived; he recalled Bertrade, and even gave away benefices and church dignities to her favorites, seculars, and persons of questionable morality. Urban II. died, and was succeeded by Paschal II., who again sent his legates to the king, and, at the Council of Poictiers, excommunicated the guilty pair a [pg 593] second time. At this council a strange scene took place. A layman threw a stone at one of the legates, and, though it missed him, it split open the head of another bishop who was standing near. This was the signal for a violent attack on the prelates; the unruly crowd outside the church battered down the doors, and rushed in, throwing stones and missiles of all kinds among the deliberating bishops. Of these a very few, seized with panic, hastily made their escape, but the greater part stood like heroes at their post, and even took off their mitres that their heads might present a better mark to the infuriated and partisan mob. Nor was this the only act of violence perpetrated in the name of Philip and Bertrade. Shortly after this scene, while staying at Sens, they remained a fortnight without hearing Mass, which so incensed Bertrade that she sent her servants to break open the doors of the church, and caused one of her priests, a tool of her own, to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice in her presence. Philip now noisily proclaimed that he was going to Rome to receive absolution, but Yves of Chartres warned the Pope of the king's insincerity, and the pontiff remained conscientiously cold to all his advances until he had wrested from him a solemn oath not only to cease his criminal intercourse with Bertrade, but also to abstain from seeing her or speaking to her unless in the presence of a third person. Nevertheless, the solemn absolution was not pronounced in his favor before the Council of Beaugency, assembled in 1104, twelve years after his first sin in carrying off the lawful wife of his own vassal and kinsman.
The XIIth century, so stormily begun, was disturbed later on by yet another controversy of the same kind. It has been noticed by Protestant writers, says De Maistre, that it was almost invariably marriage, its indissolubility and the irregularities against its integrity, that have provoked the “scandal” of excommunication. In this admission, made rather to criminate than to honor the church, made indeed to throw the obloquy of schism upon the popes themselves, is there not an unwilling testimony to the Papacy's unflinching championship of virtue?
In 1140, Louis VII. of France, surnamed Le Jeune, refused to sanction the canonical nomination of Peter, Archbishop of Bourges, whom Thibault, Count of Champagne, valiantly defended and upheld. At the same time, Raoul, Count of Vermandois, a man advanced in years, who had long been married to Thibault's niece, wished to dissolve his marriage in order to contract another with Petronilla, the sister of the Queen of France, Louis' wife, Eleanor of Antioch. He succeeded in persuading a few bishops to grant him this permission on the plea of relationship between him and his first wife, which, if true, would have made that union illegal from the first. S. Bernard, in a fervid letter to Pope Innocent II., denounces his vile conduct, giving a most lamentable picture of the state of the kingdom of France. “That which is most sacred in the church,” he says, “is trodden underfoot.” The pope, through his legate, Cardinal Yves, excommunicated the Count of Vermandois, and laid his whole territory under an interdict. Mass could no longer be said, the sacraments were not administered, the churches were closed, the bells silent. The king revenged himself by declaring war on the Count of Champagne, who had given shelter to the archbishop, and appealed to Rome against the Count of Vermandois. He devastated Thibault's territory with fire and [pg 594] sword, and behaved, says Rohrbacher, rather like a Vandal chief than a Christian king. In 1142, he arrived before the town of Vitry, sacked it, and set fire to its church and castle. In the former were no less than 1300 persons, men, women, and children, who had sought safety in the sanctuary. He ruthlessly closed all avenues to the church, and burnt the miserable inhabitants as they vainly strove to escape. The town was hereafter called Vitry le Brûle. The Count of Champagne, weakened by this terrible onset, sued for peace, and promised to exert his influence to have both excommunication and interdict taken off the person and fiefs of Raoul de Vermandois. It was, in fact, provisionally suspended, but, as the culprit still refused to dissolve his criminal union, he was excommunicated for the second time. S. Bernard was a prominent actor in this controversy, and powerfully worked for the preservation of peace.
But greater troubles were yet in store for France and the church. In 1193, Philip Augustus lost his first wife, Isabella of Hainault, and soon afterwards sent the Bishop of Noyon, Stephen, with great pomp to the King of Denmark, Canute III., to ask the hand of his sister Ingeburga in marriage. The request was joyfully granted, and the queen-elect brought back to France with all possible honor. The marriage took place at once, and the king confessed himself much pleased with his new consort. The next day he caused her to be solemnly crowned, a ceremony to which great importance was attached in those days; but, strange to say, during the service itself he was seen to turn pale as if with horror, and to cast sudden looks of aversion towards the queen. He, however, retired with her to Meaux, and lived with her a short time, still unable to conquer his dislike, which many did not fail to attribute to witchcraft, for Ingeburga was both comely, virtuous, and accomplished. The king now called together his parliament at Compiègne, his uncle, the Archbishop of Rheims and legate of the Holy See, presiding. The queen, who did not understand French, and whose Danish attendants had all been sent away, was present at the deliberation. Unheard, therefore, and even unchallenged, she was speedily declared too closely related to the king through his former wife Isabella to be united to him in lawful marriage. This seems to have been the favorite pretext for dissolving inconvenient marriages in those times, as it was also later in the too famous case of Henry VIII. of England and Catharine of Aragon, but even in this we see the spirit of subordination to the general authority of the church still underlying the partial revolts of her unruly sons. When Queen Ingeburga was made acquainted by an interpreter with the sentence rendered against her, she was painfully astonished, and, bursting into tears, cried out in her broken French, Male France! Male France! Some pitying hearts there must have been in that assembly of lords spiritual and temporal, some remorseful consciences among that gathering of Frenchmen, who, as Rohrbacher quaintly says, “forgot even to be courteous to a stranger and a woman.” Ingeburga, rising, then added, “Rome! Rome!”—sublime appeal of oppressed innocence to the fountain-head of justice and honor! Philip had her immured in the Abbey of Cisoing. Pope Celestine III. sent legates to inquire into the rights of the case, but the king succeeded in intimidating them, and no conclusion was arrived at in the council held at Paris. The pope [pg 595] then wrote an energetic letter to the bishops, concluding by a decision to this effect, that, having carefully examined the genealogy upon which turned the question of the alleged close relationship between the king's first and second wives, he solemnly annuls the unlawful act of divorce passed at the Parliament of Compiègne, and decrees that, if the king should attempt to marry any other woman during Ingeburga's lifetime, he should be proceeded against as an adulterer.
This speedily came to pass. Not content with repudiating his wife, he attempted, in 1196, to marry another, Agnes of Merania (Tyrol). Ingeburga instantly appealed to the pope, saying that for this outrage her husband “allegeth no cause, but of his will maketh an order, of his obstinacy a law, and of his passion une fureur,” as Rohrbacher rather untranslatably puts it.