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Indissolubility 103
stronger than any other. After conquering Normandy and other
domains of King John of England, in 1204 Philip stood alone in
terms of power. Innocent showed a conciliatory spirit by legitimating
Philip’s children by his mistress. The tone and intensity of his
pressure on Philip varied with the configurations of church power
politics. But nothing would make Innocent actually dissolve the
There is more to be said about the Danish side of the crisis, and Frederik
Pedersen has this in hand. Though he emphasizes Denmark’s influence more, our
positions are not far apart. In a personal communication he agrees ‘that the case
could never have ended in a victory for Philip. Innocent was far too committed to
the consensual theory of marriage and too clever a politician to fall for the rather
lame excuses Philip presented as reasons for his wish for the dissolution of his
marriage to Ingeborg’.
Of this, Georges Duby wrote that ‘the most important consideration for Rome
was the increase in power that might accrue to it from the ascension to the French
throne of a bastard legitimized by the pope’ (Medieval Marriage, 78). This is an
instance of Duby’s tendency to over-explain. The desire to please Philip at that
critical time is a sucient explanation. Anyway, it was not as if legitimation could
be withdrawn, so it would not have given a future pope much of a hold over a
future king who might not inherit anyway (and did not: in the event, Philip’s son by
a previous marriage to a wife who had died succeeded him as Louis VIII). Again,
what of the power that would have accrued to Rome from the marriage of the king to
a mistress turned into a queen by the pope’s decision? Such arguments are shadowboxing
either way: with a scholar of Duby’s fame and a widely read work like this
the danger is that some people might assume that there is positive evidence.
This led a nineteenth-century historian of the case to think that Innocent III’s
overriding priorities were political: ‘zu einem sofortigen energischen Vorgehen,
wie er es gegen einen minder m•achtigen F•ursten in dieser Zeit •ubte, mochte sich
Innocenz gegen den K•onig von Frankreich bei der unklaren Lage der Dinge im
Reich, die ihm gute Beziehungen zu Philipp wertvoll machen mu¢ten, doch nicht
entschlie¢en k•onnen’ (R. Davidsohn, Philipp II. August von Frankreich und Ingeborg
(Stuttgart, 1888), 71); ‘mu¢te sich eine Angelegenheit geistlichen Zwanges, in der
es nur gegolten h•atte, die moralische Hoheit des apostolischen Amtes zur Geltung
zu bringen, mit den Interessen weltlicher Politik des Papsttums kreuzen, mu¢te
sie durch diese bestimmt und vielfach gehemmt werden. Wo die Pflicht des Oberhirten
schnelles Einschreiten gefordert h•atte, erheischte das Interesse politischer
Machtstellung kluges Abwarten’ (ibid. 74–5). Davidsohn did not grasp that, for
Innocent, indissolubility was a value not up for negotiation, whereas such matters
of timing, tone, and sanctions were the objects of instrumental calculation. Innocent
had a ‘Verantwortlichkeitsethik’ anchored in some fixed values rather than a ‘Gesinnungsethik’
which would have compelled him to treat each decision as an absolute
moral imperative. For a better insight into Innocent’s mind see R. H. Tenbrock,
Eherecht und Ehepolitik bei Innocenz III. (doctoral dissertation for the University of
M•unster; Dortmund-H•orde, [1933?]), 99: ‘es kennzeichnet die Gr•o¢e dieses Papstes
und Staatsmannes, da¢ er im Grunde niemals bewu¢t von dem Wege des Rechts
abwich. Er verlangsamte wohl den Schritt auf diesem steilen und rauhen Wege, um
Ausschau zu halten nach Nebenpfaden, die ihn zwar nicht vom Ziele wegf•uhrten,
aber ihm gestatteten, manchen Vorteil f•ur die Kirche zu erlangen. Das bedeutete
freilich oft ein Zur•uckweichen vor den Schwierigkeiten und eine Angst, gewisse
•au¢ere Erfolge, Erfolge des Politikers, des Mannes, der der Welt “zugewandt” ist,