Peter, Cardinal of St. Mary in the Via Lata, was sent as legate into France, with authority, in case of the king's obstinacy, to lay his dominions under the papal ban. But the command to put away his beloved Agnes, and to receive again the hated Ingeburga, the king treated with contempt and defiance. The pope was inflexible. "If, within one month," he wrote to the legate, "after your communication, the king of France does not receive his queen with conjugal affection, you shall subject his whole realm to interdict—an interdict with all its awful consequences." A council was held at Dijon, messengers appeared from the king, protesting in his name against all further proceedings, and appealing to Rome. But the orders to the legate were peremptory. The interdict was proclaimed with all its appalling circumstances. It is thus described:—"At midnight, each priest holding a torch, were chanted the psalm for the miserable, and the prayers for the dead, the last prayers which were to be uttered by the clergy of France during the interdict. The cross on which the Savior hung was veiled with black crape; the relics replaced within the tombs; the host was consumed. The cardinal, in his mourning stole of violet, pronounced the territories of the king of France under the ban. All religious services from that time ceased; there was no access to heaven by prayer or offering. The sobs of the aged, of the women and children, alone broke the silence. The interdict was pronounced at Dijon. Only the baptism of infants, and extreme unction to the dying, were allowed by the church, while the realm lay under the curse of the papal ban."
For the guilt of the sovereign the whole nation must suffer, reasoned the pope, in order that his heart might be softened, either by pity for the misery of his people or by fear of their discontent; and in those days of superstition the misery was extreme; for death at such a time would be thought eternal perdition. "0 how terrible," exclaimed an eye-witness, "how pitiable a spectacle it was in all our cities! To see the doors of the church watched, and Christians driven away from them like dogs; all divine offices ceased; the sacrament of the body and blood of the soul was not offered; no gathering together of the people, as wont at the festivals of the saints; the bodies of the dead not admitted to christian burial, but their stench infected the air, the loathsome sight of them appalled the living: only extreme unction and baptism were allowed. There was a deep silence over the whole realm, while the organs and the voices of those who chanted God's praises were everywhere mute."