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102 Chapter 2
nation of this decision is set out in detail in his decretal Debitum,
which will be discussed in more detail in the chapter on bigamy: it
is a key text. As will become clear there, this intellectually gifted
ecclesiastical politician had a coherent and consistent symbolic rationale
in mind. Granted his ability to turn ideas into action, we
should not be surprised to find him behind the most thoroughgoing
attempt—probably in human history up to that point—to impose
a ‘one man to one woman for life’ model of marriage on a large
literate society.
Innocent’s intransigence towards royal matrimonial wishes
showed the way things were going. Even more remarkable than his
decision to confirm Marie de Montpellier’s marriage was his refusal
after much diplomatic delay to grant an annulment to Philip II Augustus
of France. Innocent needed Philip as an ally. In the early
thirteenth century Philip made himself the most powerful ruler in
Europe. The empire was divided by a succession crisis and had
no serious centralized revenues by comparison with France. The
Angevin empire under King John su·ered a humiliating defeat and
a massive loss of land to Philip. Behind his success was wealth.
Innocent was trying to get a pro-papal candidate made Holy Roman
Emperor; in 1207 he imposed his candidate as archbishop of
Canterbury after a disputed election, and found himself locked in
a serious conflict with the king of England. By inflexibility towards
Philip he was taking a risk. In hindsight, we know he could afford
to, but he could not have been so sure in advance: the other
crises were too serious. The rejected girl was a Danish princess.
Staying on good terms with Denmark was desirable, but good relations
with France were more important by far: in the early 1200s
France had achieved a position comparable to that of the United
States from the 1990s: not the only power that mattered, but far
As Rinc‹on recognized: ‘En la exposici‹on detallada que acabamos de hacer, ha
quedado, a nuestro juicio, incuestablemente patente la relevancia jur‹§dica de la significaci‹on
sacramental del matrimonio, debido, en gran manera, al peso magisterial
yjur‹§dico de la decretal Debitum de Inocencio III’ (El matrimonio, 403).
In addition to works cited below, see J. Gaudemet. ‘Le dossier canonique sur
mariage de Philippe Auguste et d’Ingeburge de Danemark (1193–1213)’, Revue
historique de droit franc«ais et ‹etranger, 62 (1984), 15–29, repr. in id., Droit de l’ ‹Eglise
et vie sociale au Moyen A^ge, no.xiv.
For instance, to judge by the accounts of 1202/3, ‘An overwhelming surplus
was...availableforthecostsofthe“hotel”andthemilitary campaign against John’
(J.W.Baldwin,The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal
Power in the Middle Ages (Berkely etc., 1986), 174).