"A History of the English Monarchy" extract: The Empress and the Sleeping Saints

My most recent book A History of the English Monarchy covers the English Crown from Roman rule to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, when the monarchy began to shift into a British institution. Over the next few weeks, I'm posting short extracts from each of the book's seven chapters.

The book's second chapter, God, Life and Victory, covers the years from 1066 to 1154 by focusing on the four kings who ruled after the Norman Conquest. This extract describes the impact of the monarchy's implosion during a civil war subsequently known as "the Anarchy", when the former King's only surviving daughter, the German Emperor's widow, was displaced in the line of succession by her cousin, who claimed the throne as King Stephen. 

… in 1141 Stephen suffered an eviscerating defeat at the Battle of Lincoln. The skirmish took place at Candlemas, the feast that marked the anniversary of the infant Jesus being formally presented by His mother and stepfather at the Temple in Jerusalem. The day also marked when the Virgin Mary had been ritually purified by the rites of the Jewish faith, removing the stain of childbirth from her. Thus known variably as Candlemas, the Presentation of Jesus or the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, the day was celebrated by a festival of light within Christian churches and it was during Mass that King Stephen’s Candlemas candle broke in his hands. If it was an omen, as many at the time assumed, it was an accurate one. In the ensuing carnage, Stephen fought bravely in hand-to-hand combat, but was eventually knocked unconscious by one of the Empress’s knights. 

With Stephen in her clutches, the Empress moved to London, where she was granted the interim title of domina Anglorum – ‘lady of the English’. Rather than win hearts, however, the Empress preferred to step on toes. Her haughtiness, her petty vindictiveness, her demands for tribute, her heavy fines and her overbearing arrogance alienated the capital until the Londoners rose up against her, forcing her to flee before she could be crowned. The riots happened so abruptly that the Empress fled mid-dinner, plates still on the table. Stephen’s wife Matilda was encamped on the south bank of the Thames with mercenaries from her native Boulogne, perfectly situated to take advantage of the Empress’s incompetence. The latter’s biographer, Marjorie Chibnall, is certainly correct in stating that the Empress was excoriated for displaying the same kind of dictatorial behaviour that had been tolerated in her father and it is curious that a woman who had won such praise for her behaviour in Italy and Germany during her first marriage could have behaved with such belligerent idiocy in England, but people change, and rage at her disinheritance by Stephen, and the ease with which he had done it, may have permanently shocked and embittered her. Either way, the loss of London in 1141 was the closest the Empress ever came to winning the crown. 

After that, the war between the cousins settled into a long and vicious campaign of attrition. The chronicles of the time record the agony endured by the population. Normandy, invaded by the armies of the Empress’s husband Geoffrey, ‘suffered continually from terrible disasters and daily feared still worse […] the whole province was without an effective ruler’. The Gesta Stephani, a chronicle sympathetic to King Stephen, wrote of ‘villages […] standing solitary and almost empty because the peasants of both sexes and all ages were dead’. Henry of Huntingdon remembered an England full of ‘slaughter, fire and rapine, cries of anguish and horror on every side’. The rich men filled their castles ‘with devils and evil men’, and with royal justice in the doldrums, the common folk bore the brunt of the aristocracy’s lawless depravity. ‘They put them in prison,’ the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle wrote, ‘and tortured them with indescribable torture to extort silver and gold […] They were hung by the thumbs or by the head, and chains were hung on their feet. Knotted ropes were put round their heads and twisted till they penetrated to the brains. They put them in prisons where there were adders and snakes and toads, and killed them like that. Some they put in an instrument of torture, that is in a chest which was short and narrow and not deep, and they put sharp stones in it and pressed the man so that he had all his limbs broken.’ The vicious, bloody and selfish upper class installed by the first Norman King helped lose it for the last. Many of those nobles had pressured Stephen into taking the throne in the first place, but abandoned him when war came. Little wonder that Stephen cried, ‘When they have chosen me king, why do they abandon me?’

It was a time of anarchy, misery and unanswered prayers: ‘To till the ground was to plough the sea; the earth bare no corn, for the lands were all laid waste by such deeds; and [men] said openly that Christ slept and his saints.’

A History of the English Monarchy

Henry V at Agincourt. Throughout the book, I am fascinated by the ways in which the legends of Camelot fuelled the monarchy's veneration of martial victory.

I am very excited to say that my new book A History of the English Monarchy: From Boadicea to Elizabeth I was released this week by MadeGlobal Publishing. I've been writing about the monarchy on this blog for a few years, so it was great fun to write the story of the Crown from its beginnings under Roman rule, right the way through to the accession of the first 'British', as opposed to English, sovereign in 1603. Thank you so much to everyone who has commented on my royal history posts in the past; for those who order History, I hope you enjoy it! Throughout, I was fascinated by the influence of the Arthurian legends in shaping how English kings, and their subjects, viewed and shaped the early monarchy. I was also particularly interested in telling the story of how the English Crown interacted with its Welsh, Scottish, and Irish neighbours, so chapters 3, 4, and 7 are heavy on exploring the often surprising story of how each part of the British Isles related to one another in that fascinating, bloody, compelling period of History. UK customers can order the book here; US and Canadian customers here.

The blurb reads: In A History of the English Monarchy, historian Gareth Russell traces the story of the English monarchy and the interactions between popular belief, religious faith and brutal political reality that helped shape the extraordinary journey of one of history’s most important institutions. From the birth of the nation to the dazzling court of Elizabeth I, A History of the English Monarchy charts the fascinating path of the English monarchy from the uprising of the Warrior Queen, Boadicea, in AD 60, through each king and queen up to the 'Golden Age' of Elizabeth I. Russell offers a fresh take on a fascinating subject as old as the nation itself.

INFORMATION: Each chapter is divided into sections, chronicling the monarchy’s story.

Chapter 1 - Conquest: The violent birth of the monarchy

* Britannia
* The Barbarian Conspiracy
* Seven Kingdoms
* Praying men, fighting men, and working men
* Edward the Confessor

Chapter 2 - God, Life and Victory: The coming of the Normans
* The Conqueror
* The Red King
* Beauclerc
* When Christ and His saints slept
* The Lioness in Winter


Chapter 3 - From Scotland to Spain: The empire of the Plantagenets
* Eleanor
* Henry
* Diarmait na nGall
* Murder in the Cathedral
* Family Strife
* Come, and see the place
* Sic Gloria Transit Mundi


Chapter 4 - Diluted Magnificence: The birth of Parliament
* The Wrath of God abideth upon him
* Crowned with a bracelet
* Know, Sire, that Llywelyn ap Gruffydd is dead
* The Jewish Diaspora
* Until a king is provided


Chapter 5 - Enemies Foreign and Domestic: The fourteenth-century monarchy
* Our friends do fail us all
* The glory of the English
* Shameless fire was thus mixed with sacred flame


Chapter 6 - Spilled Blood Does Not Sleep: The Wars of the Roses
* Necessitas non habet legem
* This story shall the good man teach his son
* The lords in England kill their enemies
* The sun in splendour
* No more sons of the royal blood


Chapter 7 - As the Law of Christ Allows: The rule of the Tudors
* The Welsh Moses
* Bluff King Hal
* The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn
* Deborah and Josiah
* The Queen of Scotland rises on the world
* That Good Old Princess

Epilogue - The word 'must'

Long to reign over us: a brief history of the British monarchy (Part 1)

Above: The German-born King George II, who ruled Britain between 1727 and 1760; he was the last British ruler to lead his army into battle. A slightly less glamorous death awaited him, however, when he died on his toilet after suffering a massive stroke.

"Royalty is a Government in which the attention of the nation is concentrated on one person doing interesting actions. A Republic is a Government in which that attention is divided between many, who are all doing uninteresting things." - Walter Bagehot, The English Constitution (1867)

There has been monarchy in the British Isles for thousands of years. Like an aged relative, it's hard to imagine it being young. It's even harder to believe that the monarchy has only managed to survive for so long by constantly adapting. Forget the conical-bra-themed self-reinvention of Madonna - the real mother of spicing up your image to suit the times is the British monarchy. The trick is that the monarchy has the knack of making itself look like a beacon of continuity. It's constantly changing, especially when it has to in order to keep the public's love, but it manages to hold on to just enough of the past to stay familiar. It's a hard juggling act and some kings and queens have been better at it than others.

A quick note on how the monarchy is numbered - since this confuses some people. After 1066, it's customary to start putting numbers after rulers' names. So, for instance, there have been four kings called William in British history - in 1066, 1087, 1689 and 1830. This means that when the current Duke of Cambridge becomes king, he will be called King William V. The woman a king marries usually gets the title of queen, because of her marriage to the king. However, this type of queen is called a 'queen consort,' and because she is married to a king and doesn't hold power in her own right, she does not get a number after her name. If there were no males left in the royal family and a woman inherited the throne in her own right, then a woman got a number after their name. For example, there have actually been five queens in English history called Elizabeth. However, three of them - Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (the late Queen Mother) - achieved their title by marrying a king; they were queen consorts. Only two, Elizabeth I in 1558 and the current Queen in 1952, came to the throne in her own right and inherited power from her father. They are known as 'queen regnants.' When there is a queen regnant, her husband does not get the title of 'king,' he becomes a prince, because in royal tradition, a king is always higher than a queen and if a queen rules in her own right, nobody can be higher than her. That is why the current Queen's husband is called "Prince Philip". 

The House of Normandy: A Genealogy

The Other Queen: The Life of Matilda of Boulogne, Queen of England

"In many ways, Matilda of Boulogne was a model consort. As a regent, diplomat, warrior, counsellor and mother, she occupies a position alongside her predecessors Matilda of Scotland and Matilda of Flanders, at the apogee of English queenship, after which many historians concur that the power invested in the office began to decline ... Matilda's husband is one of the great, if misunderstood, failures of English kingship. Matilda herself, though, was never anything less than a great queen." 

- Lisa Hilton, Queens Consort: England's Medieval Queens (2008)

Author's Note

Firstly, a note of apology for having taken so long to write and upload the fourth instalment in this blog’s “Queens of England” series. The last update – “The Fair Maid of Brabant” – chronicling the life of Adeliza of Louvain was posted on August 31st, over two months ago. With writing the sequel to Popular and working on various scripts and my Masters degree in Medieval History, things have rather gotten away from me. This post – the life of Adeliza’s successor (although Adeliza never really regarded her as such) – is the last post chronicling the lives of the queens of the House of Normandy, which ruled England from 1066 to 1154. In terms of time, it was a short dynastic reign; in terms of importance, vast. After this, I shall be posting on the House of Normandy’s genealogy and then moving onto the queens of the House of Plantagenet, who reigned from 1154 to 1399. 

Secondly, a note on structure. Just as the names Eleanor and Isabella were to dominate the lists of their immediate successors, the name Matilda was very much the preferred name of the queens of the Anglo-Norman empire. In fact, with the exception of the decorous Adeliza of Louvain, every Anglo-Norman queen bore the name of Matilda. In part, this was because the British-Norman elite was a relatively tiny and close-knit group. Its first queen, Matilda of Flanders, stood as godmother to her future daughter-in-law and successor, who was thus also named Matilda, in her honour. This Matilda (of Scotland), in turn, stood as godmother to this queen, her niece Matilda of Boulogne. All this would potentially be complicated enough from a narrative point-of-view were it not for the fact that for the entirety of Matilda of Boulogne’s time as queen, her life was fatally intertwined with that of her cousin, also named Matilda (herself the daughter of Matilda of Scotland). At the very same time as Matilda of Boulogne claimed to be the true queen-consort of England, her cousin was claiming to be the true queen-regnant. Needless to say, neither acknowledged the legitimacy of the other’s claim. The two Matildas were intimately aware of one another, but from the perspective of telling their story, having two Matildas appearing so frequently in the text is going to be distracting. Luckily, their world was bi- and sometimes even tri-lingual. “Matilda” was the European version of their name, but their Anglo-Saxon subjects preferred to render it by its more traditional usage – “Maud.” This chapter in the series focuses primarily on the life of Matilda of Boulogne, a French heiress married to the prince who controversially seized the throne of England in 1135 and became known as “King Stephen.” Their cousin and rival, who claimed to be the true inheritor of the English crown, was an English princess and the widow of the German Emperor. She will thus be referred to either as “the Empress” or by the Anglo-Saxon variant of her name, “Maud.”

***

ENGLAND,

In the Year of Grace, 1135

The mystic’s eyes gleamed with certainty as he pronounced his prophecy. It is always difficult to tell where the fire of spiritual surety springs from – either a religious gift or a mental imbalance. But the hermit need not have worried; the prince standing before him was a pious soul, much more inclined to see the old man’s mutterings as visionary, rather than insane. It was a dangerous time in England, dangerous, even, for the prince to be consulting the hermit about the matter in question. An old and sick man, who had long outlived the sons of his first marriage, was sitting upon the throne; his queen, beautiful and charming, was barren. After over a decade of marriage, she had produced no children to replace those lost years ago in a catastrophic shipwreck off the coast of Normandy. A crisis of the succession was brewing, just as surely as there was a God in Heaven. Recently, the King’s only surviving legitimate child - a daughter - had recently been made a widow by the death of the German Emperor. In her widowhood, she had returned to her father’s realm, which placed her back in play as viable contender for the succession. Certainly, it seemed to be the old king’s wish to leave his crown to his imperial daughter. But within the elite of his kingdoms in England and Normandy, there were many great lords who said that for them to be ruled over by a woman would be an abomination. They said that the true heir was not the King’s daughter, but his nephew, Stephen.

It was that prince, Stephen, who now stood before the old man, who years earlier had eschewed the vanities of the world and retreated into a life of religious seclusion and poverty where, it was said, the angels had endowed him with the dubious gift of prophecy. The Hermit fixed his rheumy eyes upon the prince who, despite his quiet and chivalrous exterior, wanted so desperately to take the throne of England when his aged uncle at last died. The holy man spoke: the Queen would remain barren. It had been ordained by Heaven that no child would quicken the womb of Adeliza of Louvain, whilst the Crown of England still sat upon her head. The King would not die in England, the monk said next, but rather in his possessions beyond the sea – in Normandy, the land of his ancestors. Finally, he concluded the prophecy by giving the prince the news he had been so desperate to hear – the Empress would not sit upon the throne when her father died. England and Normandy would pass instead to Stephen. Infused by an intoxicating mixture of piety and ambition, Stephen received the hermit’s blessing and hurried swiftly from the dank cave where the holy man chose to worship Christ in solitude and suffering. 

September 24th: The Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham

 Today is the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham, with its cult centre in Norfolk, England. There are currently two churches in Walsingham - one a High Anglican chapel, the other (one mile away) is its Roman Catholic sister. In the Anglican church, a small Russian Orthodox shrine to the Virgin is also kept, so Christians of all denominations are represented. In a further sign of Marianist ecumenicalism, pilgrims regularly walk barefoot along the Holy Mile between the two churches. For High Anglican and Catholic members of the Armed Forces, there is a long tradition stretching back to the First World War, which placed the Virgin of Walsingham as one of the British army, navy and air force's patrons.

Although it is certainly a lovely place, Walsingham is by no means as well-known as other Marianist shrines at, say, Lourdes or Fatima, or even Knock and Loretto. Its visitor numbers are ant-like in comparison to those who visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, the most visited Catholic shrine in the world. But, prior to the English Reformation, Walsingham was perhaps one of the most visited Christian centres in Europe, certainly in England, and it boasted an enormous, lavish complex and church.

"The Fair Maid of Brabant": The Life of Adeliza of Louvain, Queen of England

“It has not been granted to you from Heaven that you should bear a child to the King of the English… Perhaps the Lord has closed up your womb.”
- Hildebert, Archbishop of Tours in a letter to Queen Adeliza

Appropriately enough, Adeliza of Louvain’s career as Queen of England started with a shipwreck. This one incident in the English Channel, which occurred months before she even set foot in England, was to radically alter Adeliza's position in her new country. Initially, the marriage between Adeliza of Louvain and the recently-widowed King Henry I of England was supposed to bring some comfort and distraction to the King following the death of his first wife, the powerful and respected Matilda of Scotland. On the surface, Adeliza seemed to fit the bill perfectly. She was young, charming, beautiful and well-connected. Her father owned sizable territories in modern-day France and Germany and her mother was a descendant of the great Emperor Charlemagne. So proverbial was Adeliza’s prettiness that she was nicknamed “the Fair Maid of Brabant” and her personality had won her praise at the Imperial court in Germany. The marriage contracts between King Henry and Adeliza’s father, Godfrey, were signed in the spring of 1120, six months before the shipping disaster that would shatter not only Adeliza’s future happiness but also the welfare of England for a generation.

Daughter of the Church: The Life of Matilda of Scotland, Queen of England

"From the time England first became subject to kings, out of all the queens none was found to be comparable to her, and none will be found in time to come, whose memory will be praised and name will be blessed throughout the ages."
- The Hyde Chronicle

For seventeen years after the death of Matilda of Flanders, England had no queen. William the Conqueror followed his wife to the grave four years later, to be succeeded in England by his son, William II, who for his own reasons decided not to marry. When William died and was succeeded by his brother, Henry I, in 1100, the new King married for reasons very similar to his father’s – his chosen queen was a princess of unassailable royal ancestry and famed for her piety. The two queens even shared the same Christian name and, in fact, the new Queen Matilda had been the god-daughter of the old. Unlike her predecessor however, the new Queen was not beautiful. One of her champions rather kindly said that the Queen’s appearance was ‘not entirely to be despised.’

Beauty or no beauty, Matilda of Scotland, Queen of England, had an august lineage and, as the career of her predecessor showed, such things mattered at that time. Matilda could claim in her family one parent who was to become a character in a Shakespearean play and another who was to become a Catholic saint. Her father, Malcolm III, King of Scots, was the hero whose victory heralds the end of Macbeth, whilst Matilda’s mother, Queen Margaret, was an English princess so famed for her religious zeal that she was to be canonised in the 13th century by Pope Innocent IV. Four of Matilda’s brothers and one of her half-brothers – Duncan II, Edmund, Edgar, Alexander I and David I – were to wear the Crown of Scotland and her sister, Mary, was to become the mother of the Queen of England in the next generation.

"The Friend of True Piety": The Life of Matilda of Flanders, Queen of England

This is the first in a new series chartering the lives of the Queens of England.

“She was even more distinguished for the purity of her mind and manners than for her illustrious lineage… She united beauty with gentle breeding and all the graces of Christian holiness.”
- The Anglo-Norman chronicler, Orderic Vitalis (1075 – 1142)

“The story of English queenship begins with a French princess. In the centuries after the collapse of Roman imperialism, Europe experienced a perpetually fluctuating regathering of territorial power. Put simply, such power was achieved through violence, but the role of kings was increasingly delineated and formalised by religious liturgy. While their status had yet to become institutional, much less constitutional, a similar process began to arise in the case of queens… Consecration, coronation. These are the processes which set a queen apart from other women in a mystery she shared only with her husband… An unruly twinge of reverence for such beliefs might now be dismissed as embarrassing sentimentality, but there existed no sense of the irrationality of such a contention for the period in question. Just as the Church was omnipresent for every individual, from peasant to magnate, so the idea of difference, of selection by God, coloured the concept of the medieval monarch. Though there is ample, touching, funny evidence of the humanity of medieval queens, it is essential to remember that they were isolated as well as elevated by consecration. They were unique, they were sacred, they were magical.”
- Lisa Hilton, Queens Consort: England’s Medieval Queens (2008)

Matilda of Flanders was born in a violent age and married to a violent man. She was the mother of violent sons and first lady of two nations which were controlled and subjugated by violence. Indeed, her marriage itself – much like her later elevation to the position of queen – may very well have begun in violence of the most intimate kind. Hearing that her father planned to marry her to Duke William of Normandy, who was the illegitimate son of an upstart duke and his working-class concubine, the impeccably royal Matilda snobbishly refused, telling anyone who would listen that she would rather die than marry someone as uncouth and ill-bred as William. The chronicler, Orderic Vitalis, reports that Matilda was not alone in feeling this way, since because of his birth out of wedlock William was considered “a bastard, despised by the native nobility.” In the more charming phrase of the modern historian, Lisa Hilton, the ancestry of the House of Normandy was certainly “good for a giggle.” William, however, evidently didn’t see the humour and he was determined to have the well-connected Matilda for his wife. The Chronicle of Tours decorously reports that he barged into her bedroom and beat her until she agreed to marry him. Overcome by this display of masculinity, Matilda fainted and agreed. A much more believable account, however, is that William raped her – either in her bedroom or one afternoon when she was out riding. With her all-important virginity now snatched from her, it was impossible for Matilda to marry anyone else in her social class and, as a result, she had to marry William.

As with most of her contemporaries, Matilda of Flanders’ exact date of birth is unknown. It was probably in 1032 or 1033, not long after the consummation of her parents’ marriage. She was the daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Flanders and his wife, Adèle, the King of France’s youngest daughter. As a result, the baby’s grandparents included King Robert the Pious of France and his queen, Constance of Arles. Like her father, Adèle was an exceptionally religious woman, who would later be nicknamed “Adèle the Holy” and she imparted this love of Christianity to her only daughter, Matilda, along with an excellent education, which she personally oversaw. As with most fathers of the age, it is likely that Count Baldwin was more interested in his sons than in his daughter – certainly, given the way he acted over her marriage, Matilda’s feelings did not seem to particularly factor into his equations in any meaningful way. In this case, Baldwin was lucky, for Adèle had fulfilled the primary function of a royal bride in providing her husband with four sons – Baldwin, Robert, Henri and Richard. Henri died as a baby, but the others flourished. Perhaps, however, it is unfair to be too harsh on Matilda’s father, who spent most of his life attempting to increase the wealth and security of his country, whilst having to face constant opposition from the local nobility, who were disapprovingly described as figures of “atrocious cruelty” and selfishness by religious scribes at the time. Still, by the time Matilda reached her teenage years, Baldwin’s efforts on Flanders’ behalf were clearly paying dividend. The foundations had been laid for a strong infrastructure and trading network, which would continue to grow throughout the Middle Ages until Flanders had become the economic power-house of Europe in the 15th century.

Thanks to her parents’ ancestry, Matilda was one of the more well-connected of the European princesses born in the early 11th century. In her veins, ran the blood of the famous Christian emperor, Charlemagne (d. 814), the most venerated Christian monarch apart from Constantine the Great, in an era which was obsessed with them. She was also descended from King Alfred the Great (849 – 899), the famed, brilliant and pious King of Wessex, whose reputation was already becoming legendary in his native England. Matilda was also a very good-looking young woman, described by her contemporary William of Jumièges as “a very beautiful and noble girl of royal stock”. There is a story, repeated in the Guinness Book of World Records, that Matilda was to become the shortest of English queens, but the idea that she only ever reached 4’ 2” in height is based on an inaccurate measurement of her bones, undertaken in 1819, when the restored French monarchy was attempting to undo some of the damage done on the royal tombs by the Revolution. A more scientific exhumation of Matilda’s body in 1959 established that, in fact, she grew to 5’ in height by the time she reached maturity.

Maturity for Matilda of Flanders came in a fairly brutal form, as has been discussed, at best through a coerced marriage, at worse (and most probably) through rape. As she approached her sixteenth or seventeenth birthday, her father began to seriously consider a match between his only daughter and William, the 20-something Duke of Normandy. Like Flanders, Normandy was technically an independent nation, although feudal overlordship for Normandy was held by the King of France. Flanders, which roughly equates to modern-day north Belgium, was heavily under the influence of the Holy Roman Empire (roughly equating with modern-day Germany and Bohemia), but Baldwin was anxious to remove his province from the Empire's orbit. An alliance with Normandy would help pull Flanders more closely under the protection of France, a process started a generation earlier by Baldwin’s own marriage to Adèle. Normandy, moreover, had considerable diplomatic influence in England, a wealthy country which needed to be neutralised since the English King had promised to help the Emperor in subjugating Flanders if it made any further attempt to extricate itself from the Holy Roman Empire’s sphere of influence.

Having seen Baldwin marry Adèle for much the same diplomatic reasons in the time of his late father, the current Emperor, Heinrich III, was understandably nonplussed at the idea of their daughter Matilda marrying William and thus further helping in the liberation of Flanders from its position as a vassal-state of the Empire. Luckily for the Emperor, he had been instrumental in securing the election of the current Pope, Leo IX, who, despite doing many commendable things during his time as Pontiff, was also a political realist who was prepared to appease and assist his imperial backer when necessary. As Baldwin and William hashed out the details of the marriage proposal, an edict came from Rome forbidding it; William and Matilda were fifth cousins, which technically placed them within the grounds of forbidden affinity, and, in this case, unlike in so many others, the Holy Father unhelpfully refused to dispense the impediments.