Individual Details

Biography

Philippe was born in Gonesse on 22 August 1165, the son of Louis VII, king of France and his third wife Alix de Blois. Philippe's father died in 1180 when he was fifteen. In 1180 he was betrothed to the ten-year-old Isabelle of Flanders, comtesse d'Artois, and the nuptials took place in 1184. They had a son Louis in 1187, but in 1190 she died just after giving birth to stillborn twins.

After losing his child-wife Philippe II August went on crusade, but he hurried back to marry again for the sake of his dynasty as his son Louis was a sickly child. He needed the daughter of a king, and on 14 August 1193 he married Ingeborg (Isambour), daughter of King Valdemar of Denmark. Arrangements had been made for her to be crowned queen on the day after the nuptials. However, during the wedding night Philippe's feelings changed to revulsion.

Before an assembly in Compiègne, fifteen duly sworn witnesses, twelve of them from the king's family, solemnly calculated the degrees of consanguinity between Ingeborg and Philippe's first wife Isabelle of Flanders. This solution was not accepted by Ingeborg's brother, the Danish king, who appealed to Pope Celestine III, claiming the genealogies to be wrong. Abbot William of Ebelholt, a cleric in Denmark, prepared a genealogy of Scandinavian kings, a document which is still preserved today and is one of the sound genealogical sources about early Scandinavian royals. The genealogy demonstrated that Ingeborg was not too closely related with the counts of Flanders, because Adela of Flanders, wife of King Canute IV of Denmark, was not her ancestress. However the pope gave Philippe no more than a warning.

The Finnish genealogist M. Sjöström has pointed out recently that in the conflict another relationship had been overlooked. Ingeborg was a 6th generation descendant and Philippe a 5th generation descendant of Jaroslav I of Kiev, a degree of consanguinity that would have been sufficient canonical obstacle to marriage, because in those days marriages were forbidden between persons within seven generations of descent from a common ancestor. Therefore Philippe seems to have been correct in claiming that his marriage with Ingeborg was canonically invalid because of consanguinity.

In June 1196 Philippe married the beautiful Agnès de Meran. With Ingeborg still alive this was bigamy. The new pope, Innocent III, ordered Philippe to part from Agnès. Laying France under an interdict, the pope wanted to suspend all religious services. Negotiations were to last fifteen years; in the event, because of an upsurge of the Cathar movement, the interdict was not applied.

In 1200 Philippe gave a charter to the University of Paris. In 1201 in Soissons the Church confronted Philippe over his bigamy. However, after a fortnight of argument he departed, taking Ingeborg with him. On 29 July 1201 Agnès de Meran died and Philippe could no longer be regarded as a bigamist. In November of that year, the pope acknowledged the legitimacy of the two children of Philippe and Agnès. In 1205 a 'damsel from Arras' bore him a bastard son. As Philippe would have nothing to do with Ingeborg she was spared the perils of childbearing.

As the marriage with Ingeborg had not been consummated the pope was willing to declare it void. However he had not counted on Ingeborg, who maintained that she and Philippe had slept together. To satisfy pope, king and queen, the only solution seemed to be that the queen should take the veil and enter a convent. However in April 1213 Philippe announced he was taking back his wife.

Philippe died 14 July 1223 at Mantes and Ingeborg died 29 July 1236 at Corbeil.