164 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1198-1216.
few months after their marriage, and took the fair Agnes of Meran in her stead. The French bishops, on the plea of remote consanguinity, justified the divorce. But Innocent, listening to the appeals of Ingeborg, and placing France under the interdict, forced the king to take her back.1
The Christian states of the Spanish peninsula felt the pontiff's strong hand. The kingdom of Leon was kept under the interdict five years till Alfonso IX. consented to dismiss his wife on account of blood relationship. Pedro, king of Aragon, a model of Spanish chivalry, received his crown at Rome in 1204 and made his realm a fief of the Apostolic see. Sancho, king of the newly risen kingdom of Portugal, was defeated in his effort to break away from the pope's suzerainty.
In the North, Sweden accepted Innocent's decision in favor of the house of Schwerker, and the Danish king, who was attempting to reduce the tribes along the Baltic to Chris tianity, was protected by the pope's threat of interdict upon all molesting his realm. The king of England was humbled to the dust by Innocent's word. To the king of Scotland a legate was sent and a valuable sword. Even Iceland is said to have been the subject of Innocent's thought and action.
In the Southeast, Johannitius of Bulgaria received from Innocent his crown after bowing before his rebuke for having ventured to accept it from Philip of Swabia. Ottoker, prince of Bohemia, was anointed by the papal legate, and Emmeric of Hungary made a vow to lead a crusade, which his brother Andrew executed. Thus all the states of Europe west of Russia were made to feel the supremacy of the papal power. The conquest of Constantinople and the Holy Land, as we shall see, occupied an equal share of attention from this tire less and masterful ruler, and the establishment of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, 1205, was regarded as a signal triumph for the papal policy.
1 The pope legitimatized the children of Agnes, who died in 1201.
§ 39. INNOCENT AND KING JOHN OF ENGLAND. 165
§ 39. Innocent and King John of England.
" This royal throne of kings, this sceptr'd isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise ; This fortress, built by nature for herself, Against infection, and the hand of war ; This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, Which serves it in the office of a wall, Or as a moat defensive to a house, Against the envy of less happier lands ; This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth."
— Shakespeare, Richard II., Act II. Sc. 1.
ADDITIONAL LITERATURE. — The Chronicle of ROGER OF WENDOVER (the first of the St. Alban annalists) and the revision and continuation of the same by MATTHEW PARIS (a monk of St. Alban's, the last and greatest of the monastic historians of England), ed. by H. R. LUARD in Rolls Series, 7 vols. London, 1872-1883, vol. II. Engl. trans, of Wendover by J. A. GILES, Bohn's Lib. 2 vols. London, 1849 ; of M. Paris by GILES, 3 vols. London, 1852-1854. — Memorials of WALTER OF COVENTRY, ed. by STUBBS, 2 vols. 1872 sq. — RADULPH OF COGGESHALL: Chronicon Anylicanum, ed. by J. STEVENSON, 1875. The Annals of Waverley, Dunstable, and Burton, all in the Rolls Series. — W. STUBBS : The Constitutional Hist, of England, 6th ed. 3 vols. Oxford, 1897, and Select Charters, etc., 8th ed. Oxford, 1900, pp. 270-306. —GEE and HARDY : Documents, London, 1896. — R. GNEIST : Hist, of the Engl. Court, Engl. trans. 2 vols. London, 1886, vol. I. 294-332. — E. GUTSCHOW : Innocent III. und England, Munich, 1904, pp. 198. —The Histories of LINGARD (R. C.), GREEN, MILMAN, FREEMAN (Norman Conquest, vol. V.). — For Stephen Langton, DEAN HOOK : Lives of the Abp. of Canterbury, and art. Langton, in Diet, of Natl. Biog. —Also W. HUNT, art. John, in Diet, of Natl. Biog. XXIX. 402-417. —Sir JAMES H. RAMSEY: The Angevin Empire, 1154-1216, London, 1903. He calls John a brutal tyrant, hopelessly depraved, without ability in war or politics.
Under Innocent, England comes, if possible, into greater prominence in the history of the papacy than during the controversy in the reign of Alexander III., a generation be fore. Then the English actors were Henry II. and Thomas a Becket. Now they are Henry's son John and Becket's successor Stephen Langton. The pope was victorious, in-