Fortunately for Berenguela, the marriage was postponed until she had attained her majority; and when that day of partial freedom came, she boldly declared that she would not marry the German prince, that she did not know him and did not love him, and that nothing could force her to such a bargain of herself. Great was the consternation in her father's court, and great was the dismay in the North when Frederick Barbarossa was told of this haughty Spanish maiden who refused the honor of an alliance with his imperial house. The case was well-nigh unique; the mediaeval world was startled in its traditional routine, and Berenguela's audacity became the talk of every court in Europe. Prayers and entreaties were in vain, so firmly did she stand her ground in spite of the countless specious arguments which were used to bend her will, and, finally, the matter was dropped and considered a closed incident. "Woman sees deep; man sees far. To the man the world is his heart; to the woman the heart is her world;" so says Christian Grabbe, and this epigram may well be applied to Berenguela's case. Her heart was her world, and she fought for it, and in her victory she won, not only for herself, but for Spain as well. And it came about in this way. Berenguela was married, and with her own consent, to Alfonso IX., King of Leon, who had of late made war upon her father, and with this marriage and the peace which followed between the two countries, Spain prospered for a time. This Alfonso of Leon had already made one marriage venture which had come to grief, for he had previously wedded the Princess Teresa of Portugal, and his marriage had been forcibly dissolved by Pope Innocent III., who was then, as Hume puts it, "riding rough-shod over the nations of Christendom." This divorce had been pronounced on the ground that the young couple were too closely related to each other; and as they ventured to resist, they were for a time excommunicated. So Alfonso and Teresa were finally separated, though not until several children had been born to them, and then the young king led Berenguela to the altar. This marriage, in its immediate result, was but a repetition of what had gone before. The pope annulled it promptly on the same grounds of consanguinity, and turned a deaf ear to every plea for reconsideration. The case was not an unusual one; many marriages which were far less regular in form had been sanctioned by this new Roman Caesar; and the result of the marriage could be but for the benefit of Rome, as domestic peace in Spain gave assurance of more successful opposition to the Moslem rule. But the pope was firm, his holy permission had not been obtained before the marriage had been celebrated, and, piqued at this unintended slight which had been put upon his august authority, he revealed his littleness by this show of spite.