Despite his preoccupation with Italy and Germany, the early years of Innocent’s pontificate saw him busily engaged in upholding the papal authority and the moral order of the Church in every country in Europe. No consideration of the immediate interests of the Roman see ever prevented him from maintaining his principles even against powerful sovereigns who could do much to help forward his general plans. The most conspicuous instance of this was Innocent’s famous quarrel with Philip Augustus of France, when to vindicate a simple principle of Christian morals he did not hesitate to abandon the alliance of the ‘eldest son of the Church’ at a time when the fortunes of the Papacy were everywhere doubtful. Philip’s first wife, Isabella of Hainault, the mother of the future Louis VIII., had died in 1190, just before her husband had started on his Crusade. [Sidenote: Ingeborg of Denmark.] In 1193 Philip negotiated a second marriage with Ingeborg, the sister of Canute VI., the powerful King of Denmark, hoping to obtain from his Danish brother-in-law substantial help against England and the Empire. Philip did not get the expected political advantages from the new connection, and at once took a strong dislike to the lady. On the day after the marriage Philip refused to have anything more to do with his bride. Within three months, he persuaded a synod of complaisant French bishops at Compiègne to pronounce the marriage void by reason of a remote kinship that existed between the two parties. Ingeborg was young, timid, friendless, helpless, and utterly ignorant of the French tongue, but King Canute took up her cause, and, from her retreat in a French convent, she appealed to Rome against the wickedness of the French king and clergy. Celestine III. proved her friend, and finding protestations of no avail, he finally quashed the sentence of the French bishops and declared her the lawful wife of the French king. But Philip persisted in his repudiation of Ingeborg, and Celestine contented himself with remonstrances and warnings that were utterly disregarded. [Sidenote: Agnes of Meran.] In 1196 Philip found a fresh wife in Agnes, a lady of the powerful house of Andechs-Meran, whose authority was great in Thuringia, and whose Alpine lordships soon developed into the county of Tyrol. Innocent at once proved a stronger champion of Ingeborg than the weak and aged Celestine. He forthwith warned Philip and the French bishops that they had no right to put asunder those whom God had joined together. ‘Recall your lawful wife,’ he wrote to Philip, ‘and then we will hear all that you can righteously urge. If you do not do this, no power shall move us to right or left, till justice be done.’ A papal legate was now sent to France, threatening excommunication and interdict, were Ingeborg not immediately reinstated in her place. For a few months the Pope hesitated, moved no doubt by his Italian and German troubles, and fearful lest his action against a Christian prince should