THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
again accepted with honor by her penitent husband. The pope celebrated a similar triumph in 1206 when he succeeded in dissolving a marriage within forbidden degrees of kinship of King Alfonso IX. of Leon with Donna Berengaria, daughter of the king of Castile. Likewise he opposed the betrothal of King Peter of Aragon to Blanch of Navarre on account of too close relationship. Peter, being an obedient son of the Church, acceded to the papal command, and married Maria, the daughter of Guillaume de Montpellier. His inconstancy, however, which caused him to feel the marriage bond as an oppressive chain, soon awoke in him the desire to separate from his wife; and, to palliate his base design, he appealed to the consanguinity between them. But Innocent pronounced the alleged grounds for separation to be insufficient.
When King Sancho of Portugal declined to pay the tribute promised by his father to the see of Peter, Innocent demanded the same with Innocent energy. Moreover, he exacted obediin the ence to the papal regulations from North. Duke Ladislaus of Poland, who was robbing the Church and the bishops of their estates and rights. How strenuously Innocent insisted that the pope alone had the right to excommunicate kings or to release them from the ban appeared when Archbishop Eric of Trondhjem absolved Hakon, king of Sweden, after he had restored to the Church what his father had taken from it by violence, without consulting the pope. Innocent wrote to the archbishop that he had imitated himself as an ape might a man, and only absolution by the representative of Peter had validity. The renown of this powerful pope impelled Prince John of the Bulgarians to hope that by submitting to the see of Rome he might secure his sovereignty against foes at home, as well as against the claims of the Byzantine emperors. On Nov. 8, 1204, he received from the pope's legate the royal crown, the scepter, and a banner which Innocent had sent him, adorned with the cross of Christ and Peter's keys.
The fearlessness of Innocent, his firm perseverance in a path once taken, and his proud disdain of all temporal supremacy, born of the con- Innocent viction that he was not simply the and John of representative of St. Peter, but also England, the vicar of Christ and of God, was most brilliantly verified in his behavior toward the English king John. The monks of Canterbury cathedral, upon the death of their archbishop, Hubert, elected their superior, Reginald, as successor to the deceased prelate; when he proved unworthy of such confidence, they elected, at the king's wish, Bishop John of Norwich. Innocent did not confirm the latter's election, but induced certain members of the Canterbury convention, who were sojourning in Rome, to elevate the cardinal priest, Stephen Langton (q.v.), to the archiepiscopal throne, and a vehement conflict between State and Church was then inevitable, for the king was not disposed to yield in favor of a man imposed forcibly upon him by the pope. The papal threat of the interdict taking practical effect on Mar. 24, 1208, the king retaliated by giving orders to banish all clerics from
England, and to confiscate their estates. Hereupon the pope excommunicated him. All devices to keep news of the pope's action from England were fruitless; the sentence became known, and the king felt its operation in a revolt of the nobility. When Innocent furthermore released all subjects from the fealty and obedience they had sworn to the king, and threatened the penalty of excommunication against every one who had any dealings with him, the uprising grew stronger and stronger. At this pass the pope had recourse to the extreme step of pronouncing the crown forfeit, also summoning Philip Augustus to drive the unworthy fellow from the throne, and himself to take permanent possession thereof; whoever should take part in the war against John was to count as a crusader, and become participant in all the indulgences of a crusader. John now yielded and resolved to acacquiesce in the proposals once more set before him by the Curia through the legates Pandolfo and Durando. At Dover, on May 13, 1213, the king concluded an agreement with the Roman plenipotentiaries, to the effect that he would recognize Stephen as archbishop of Canterbury; restore all Church properties that he had appropriated to himself; authorize the return of the emigrated and expelled clergy and monks; accord liberty to the captive; and more to the same effect. But this Dover scene had even a still graver sequel. Really to secure himself against the impending invasion by the French pretender to the crown, though nominally in expiation of his sins, on May 18, 1213, John surrendered his kingdoms of England and Ireland to God and the pope, but then recovered them as papal feudatory, on condition of discharging an annual feudal rentage to the see of Peter — 700 marks for England, and 300 marks for Ireland. He was not absolved from the ban, however, until he had humbled himself before Archbishop Stephen. Beside all this, the land still remained under the interdict until July 2, 1214; that is to say, till the king had made restitution to the clergy, by a heavy sum of money, for the damages he had inflicted upon them during his grievous persecutions. Peace was now restored; but the king's oppressed and overtaxed barons could not endure the humiliation put upon them by John when he conveyed the realm to the pope. Their grievances not being removed, they had recourse to arms, in 1215, when they took possession of London and forced from the king the Magna Charta. No sooner had its contents become known to Innocent than he roundly denounced the compact, inasmuch as it encroached too seriously upon the royal prerogatives, and indirectly upon the see of Peter, now that the pope was John's liege lord. He declared the charter void and worthless, outrageous, without binding force. But neither this pronouncement nor repeated excommunications of all the king's adversaries had the least result. By nothing else did the papacy so sorely injure itself in England as by this opposition to the Magna Charta.
As vicar of Christ, Innocent appealed to kings and peoples for a crusade to the Holy Land. The preaching of Fulco of Neuilly (q.v.) won a portion of the French nobility, under the leadership