A captive queen

I somehow managed to forget that on August 15, 1193, the French king, Philippe Capet, wed the Danish princess, Ingeborg, sister of the Danish king, Cnut VI. The wedding took place in Amiens and the next day Ingeborg was crowned by Philippe’s uncle, the Archbishop of Reims. So far this was the typical royal wedding. But it now took a dramatic and astonishing turn, for Philippe then declared that the marriage was over and he meant to have it annulled. Ingeborg, an eighteen year old girl who spoke no French, must have been as shocked as Philippe’s court. Philippe had her confined at the monastery of Saint-Maur des Fosses near Paris while he sought an annulment. His marital follies were to drag out for the next twenty years, making him the laughingstock of Europe, and giving Ingeborg nothing but grief.
At first he put together a false genealogy to show he and Ingeborg were related within the forbidden degree, and he got a council of compliant bishops and barons to agree. Naturally his cousin the Bishop of Beauvais was involved in this up to his neck. The elderly Pope dithered, but eventually rejected Philippe’s claim that the marriage was invalid; Philippe ignored him and married the daughter of a German duke. His contemporaries were as baffled as later historians by his aversion to Ingeborg, for she was said to be blonde and beautiful and even Philippe’s own chroniclers showed considerable sympathy for this young woman, who was being held prisoner and treated rather badly.
But in 1198, a very different Pope from the ineffectual Celestine took power, the strong-willed Innocent III, who at once ordered Philippe to put aside his new wife and take Ingeborg back. Philippe faked a reconciliation to get the Interdict lifted, but Ingeborg remained his prisoner. Even after Philippe’s German wife died in childbirth, Philippe remained adamant in refusing to recognize Ingeborg. He now claimed that their marriage had not been consum-mated because Ingeborg had cast a spell upon him, causing temporary impotence; Ingeborg always swore the marriage had been consummated. So many eerie echoes of Henry VIII’s marital struggles with Katherine of Aragon centuries later! When the Pope rejected Philippe’s claim of impotence by sorcery, Philippe finally admitted the marriage had been consummated, but claimed there’d been no insemination. Innocent III is not one of my favorite popes, but I love his response; he told Philippe to spare him “insanities of this kind.” Eventually, twenty years after her nightmare had begun at Amiens, Philippe capitulated and agreed to recognize Ingeborg as his queen, although they never lived together as man and wife. Fortunately for Ingeborg, she outlived Philippe by thirteen years, for his son and grandson treated her well—at long last. For those who’d like to know more about this bizarre, sad story, I did an article about Ingeborg for The Medieval Chronicles last year; here is the link.
http://www.themedievalchronicle.com/3...
Getting back to August 18th, on this date in 1572, Henri of Navarre, the future King Henri IV of France, wed Marguerite de Valois, sister of the current French king and daughter of Catherine de Medici in Paris. Their marriage was supposed to make peace between the Catholics and Protestants. It did not. Less than a week after their wedding, the infamous St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre occurred, with the number of Protestants slain numbering in the thousands. Marguerite and Henri would later divorce, but she gave him the ultimate wedding gift; she saved him from being slaughtered like so many of his co-religionists. He also had to promise to convert to Catholicism, although he rejected that promise as one made under duress once he was free again. He would, of course, later embrace Catholicism to end the bloody religious wars that had torn France asunder for decades, supposedly saying “Paris is worth a Mass.” C.W. Gortner has a vivid account of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in his excellent novel, The Confessions of Catherine de Medici. This is not a medieval event, but I’ve often thought that I’d like to write about Henri, so I did not want to let his wedding day go unnoticed.