Philip IV of France
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| Philip IV the Fair | ||
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| King of France (more...) | ||
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| Reign | 5 October 1285 – 29 November 1314 | |
| Coronation | 6 January 1286, Reims | |
| Titles | Jure Uxoris Count of Champagne (1284 – 1305) Jure Uxoris King of Navarre (1284 – 1305) |
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| Born | 1268 | |
| Fontainebleau, France | ||
| Died | 29 November 1314 | |
| Fontainebleau, France | ||
| Buried | Saint Denis Basilica | |
| Predecessor | Philip III | |
| Successor | Louis X | |
| Consort | Joan I of Navarre (1271-1305) | |
| Issue | Louis X (1289-1316) Philip V (1293-1316) Charles IV (1294-1328) Isabelle, Queen of England (c.1295-1358) |
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| Royal House | House of Capet | |
| Father | Philip III (1245-1285) | |
| Mother | Isabella of Aragon (1247-1271) | |
Philip IV the Fair of France (French: Philippe IV le Bel) (1268 – November 29, 1314) was King of France from 1285 until his death in 1314.
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[edit] Youth
A member of the House of Capet, Philip was born at the Palace of Fontainebleau at Seine-et-Marne, the son of King Philip III and Isabella of Aragon. Philip was nicknamed the Fair (le Bel) because of his handsome appearance, but his inflexible personality gained him other epithets, from friend and foe alike. His fierce opponent Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, said of him, "He is neither man nor beast. This is a statue"[1]
His education was guided by Guillaume d'Ercuis the almoner of his father.
As prince, just before his father's death, he negotiated the safe passage of the royal family out of Aragon after the unsuccessful Aragonese Crusade.
[edit] Consolidation of the royal demesne
As a king, Philip was determined to strengthen the monarchy at any cost. He relied, more than any of his predecessors, on a professional bureaucracy of legalists. Because to the public he kept aloof and left specific policies, especially unpopular ones, to his ministers, he was called a "useless owl" by his contemporaries. His reign marks the French transition from a charismatic monarchy – which could all but collapse in an incompetent reign – to a bureaucratic kingdom, a move towards modernity.
Philip married queen Jeanne of Navarre (1271–1305) on August 16, 1284. The primary administrative benefit of this was the inheritance of Jeanne in Champagne and Brie, which were adjacent to the royal demesne in Ile-de-France and became thus effectively united to the king's own lands, forming an expansive area. During the reigns of Jeanne herself, and her three sons (1284-1328), these lands belonged to the person of the king; but by 1328 they had become so entrenched in the royal domain that king Philip VI of France (who was not an heir of Jeanne) switched lands with the then rightful heiress, Joan II of Navarre, with the effect that Champagne and Brie remained part of the royal demesne and Joan received compensation with lands in western Normandy.
| French Monarchy |
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| Direct Capetians |
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| Philip IV |
| Louis X |
| Philip V |
| Isabella, Queen of England |
| Charles IV |
| Grandchildren |
| Joan II of Navarre |
| John I |
| Joan III, Countess and Duchess of Burgundy |
| Margaret I, Countess of Burgundy |
| Edward III of England |
| Mary of France |
| Blanche of France, Duchess of Orléans |
The Kingdom of Navarre in the Pyrenees was not so important to contemporary interests of the French crown. It remained in personal union 1284-1329, after which it went its separate way. Philippe gained Lyon for France in 1312.
[edit] War with the English
The outbreak of hostilities with England in 1294 was the inevitable result of the competitive expansionist monarchies, triggered by a secret Franco-Scottish pact of mutual assistance against Edward I, who was Philip's brother-in-law, having married Philip's sister Marguerite; inconclusive campaigns for the control of Gascony to the southwest of France were fought in 1294-98 and 1300-03. Philippe gained Guienne but was forced to return it. No major war had been fought in Europe since the 'teens, and in the interim the nature of warfare had changed: it had become more professional, technologically more advanced and much more expensive. The search for income to cover military expenditures set its stamp on Philip's reign and his contemporary reputation. Pursuant to the terms of the Treaty of Paris (1303), the marriage of Philip's daughter Isabella to the Prince of Wales, heir of Philip's enemy, celebrated at Boulogne, 25 January 1308, was meant to seal a peace; instead it would produce an eventual English claimant to the French throne itself, and the Hundred Years War.
[edit] The drive for income
In the shorter term, Philip arrested Jews so he could seize their assets to accommodate the inflated costs of modern warfare: he expelled them from his French territories in 1306. His financial victims included Lombard bankers and rich abbots. He was condemned by his enemies in the Catholic Church[2] for his spendthrift lifestyle. He debased the coinage. When he also levied taxes on the French clergy of one half their annual income, he caused an uproar within the Roman Catholic Church and the papacy, prompting Pope Boniface VIII to issue the Bull Clericis laicos, forbidding the transferance of any church property to the French Crown and prompting a drawn-out diplomatic battle with the King. In order to condemn the pope, Philip convoked an assembly of bishops, nobles and grand bourgeois of Paris, a precursor to the Etats Généraux that appeared for the first time during his reign, a measure of the professionalism and order that his ministers were introducing into government. Philip emerged victorious, after having sent his agent William Nogaret to arrest Boniface at Anagni, when the French archbishop Bertrand de Goth was elected pope as Clement V and the official seat of the papacy moved to Avignon, an enclave surrounded by French territories, commencing the captive Avignon Papacy.
[edit] In Flanders
He suffered a major embarrassment when an army of 2,500 noble men-at-arms (Knights and Squires) and 4,000 infantry he sent to suppress an uprising in Flanders was defeated in the Battle of the Golden Spurs near Kortrijk on 11 July 1302. Philip reacted with energy to the humiliation and personally defeated the Flemings at Mons-en-Pévèle two years later. Finally, in 1305, Philip forced the Flemish to accept a harsh peace treaty after his success at the battle of Mons-en-Pévèle; the peace exacted heavy reparations and humiliating penalties, and added the rich cloth cities of Lille and Douai, sites of major cloth fairs, to the royal territory. Béthune, first of the Flemish cities to yield, was granted to Mahaut, Countess of Artois, whose two daughters, to secure her fidelity, were married to Philip's two sons.
[edit] Suppression of the Knights Templar
On October 13, 1307, hundreds of Knights Templar in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of Philip the Fair, to be later tortured into admitting heresy in the Order. The Knights Templar were a 200-year-old military order, supposedly answerable only to the Pope. But Philip used his influence over Clement V, who was largely his pawn, to disband the order and remove its ecclesiastical status and protection in order to plunder it.
What became of the Templar treasures in France has long been a mystery that has led to many theories and speculations. There are a number of stories regarding Templars who escaped from Philip's agents, such as the tale that a number of ships sailed from France to Scotland possibly containing some of the Templar treasure, and that some of the Knights who sailed to Scotland later fought in the Battle of Bannockburn with Robert the Bruce when the Scots regained their independence from England.
A modern historical view is that Philip, who seized the considerable Templar treasury and broke up the Templar monastic banking system, simply sought to control it for himself. In 1314, he had the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, burnt at the stake in Paris. According to legend, de Molay cursed both Philip and Clement V from the flames, saying that he would summon them before God's Tribunal within a year; as it turned out, both King and Pope died within the next year.
Philip IV's rule signaled the decline of the papacy's power from its near complete authority. His palace located on the Ile de la Cité is represented today by surviving sections of the Conciergerie. He died during a hunt and is buried in Saint Denis Basilica. He was succeeded by his son Louis X.
[edit] Children
The children of Philip IV and Jeanne of Navarre were:
- Marguerite (1288-1300)
- Louis X - (October 4, 1289 - June 5, 1316)
- Philip V - (1291 - January 3, 1322)
- Isabelle - (c. 1292 - August 23, 1358)
- Charles IV - (1294 - February 1, 1328)
- Robert (1297-1308)
All three of his sons reaching adulthood would become kings of France, and his daughter, as consort of Edward II, was queen of England.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Favier,Jean Philippe le Bel
- Goyau, Georges. "Philip IV (the Fair)." The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XII. 1911. [1]
- Grandes Chroniques de France
- A.H. Newman, in Philip Schaff, The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge
- Knights Templar History and Mythology [2]
[edit] External links
| House of Capet Born: 1268 Died: 29 November 1314 |
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| Preceded by Philip III |
King of France 5 October 1285–29 November 1314 |
Succeeded by Louis X |
| Preceded by Blanche of Artois |
King of Navarre and Count of Champagne by marriage with Joan I of Navarre and Champagne (as 'Philip I') August 16, 1284–4 April 1305 |
Succeeded by Marguerite de Bourgogne |
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History - France - Direct Capetians - Valois - Bourbons - Bonaparte |
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| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Philip IV of France |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Philip IV the Fair, Philippe IV le Bel (French) |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | King of France |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1268 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Palace of Fontainebleau, Seine-et-Marne |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 29, 1314 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
