It is said that, in the midst of the horrible confusion that followed the death of Charlemagne, the idea of such an expedient had first arisen. In the Synod of Limoges, the Abbot Odolric had proposed that, till the nobles should cease from their ravages, the churches should be stripped of their ornaments, the mass not be celebrated, no marriages take place, and the abstinence of Lent be observed. This universal mourning had brought the ferocious nobles to a sense of their guilt, and more peaceful times had succeeded, so that an interdict was considered as one of the mightiest weapons in the armory of the Church. Only a few years before, Innocent had, by an interdict on the kingdom of France, forced Philippe Auguste to put away Agnes de Meranie, whom he had married in the lifetime of his lawful wife Ingeberge. Then (if ever) it was properly employed, to enforce morality; but it was a different thing to lay a whole nation under the ban of the Church merely for a dispute respecting an appointment. Innocent sent orders to the bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester, to publish the interdict on the Monday of Passion week, 1208 (the second before Easter). They went to the King, and besought him to be reconciled with the Pope, and avert this dreadful edict. He grew pale with rage, foamed at the mouth, and threatened them furiously; swore at the clergy, drove them from his presence, and issued orders that his officers should seize, the property of every man who paid any attention to the interdict. “If you, or any of your body, dare to lay my states under interdict, I will send you to Rome, and seize your goods; and if I catch one Roman priest in my realms, I will cut off his nose and put out his eyes, that all may know he is a Roman!” Nevertheless, on the appointed day it was pronounced by the three prelates, according to the appointed form. At night the clergy assembled, each bearing a torch, and with one voice chanted the _Miserere_, and other penitential psalms and prayers, while the church-bells rang out the ‘broken funeral-knell. Veils were hung over the crucifixes, the consecrated Wafer of the Host was consumed by fire, the relics and images of the saints were carried into the crypts, and then the bishops, in the violet robes of mourning used on Good Friday, announced to the frightened multitude, in the name of Heaven, that the domains of John, King of England, were laid under the ban of the Church until he should have rendered submission to the Holy See. Every torch was then at once extinguished, in token that the light of the Gospel was denied them!