Philip IV of France

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Philip IV the Fair (French: Philippe IV le Bel) (1268 – November 29, 1314) was King of France from 1285 until his death.

Life

A member of the Capetian dynasty, 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.

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. 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 (1284-1329), these lands belonged to the person of the king; but by 1329 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 Jeannne received compensation with lands in western Normandy.

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.

Philip arrested Jews so he could seize their assets to accommodate the inflated costs of modern warfare; he was condemned by his enemies in the Catholic Church for his spendthrift lifestyle. 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. Still, Philip emerged victorious 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.

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 that exacted heavy reparations and humiliating penalties.

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 gained 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. He died during a hunt and is buried in Saint Denis Basilica. He was succeeded by his son Louis X.

Children

The children of Philippe IV and Jeanne of Navarre were:

1. Marguerite (1288-1300)
2. Louis X - (October 4, 1289 - June 5, 1316)
3. Philippe V - (1291 - January 3, 1322)
4. Isabelle - (c. 1292 - August 23, 1358)
5. Charles IV - (1294 - February 1, 1328)
6. 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.

See also

• Outrage of Anagni
• Guillaume de Nogaret
• Enguerrand de Marigny

Sources and further reading

• Goyau, Georges. "Philip IV (the Fair)." The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XII. 1911. [link]
• Knights Templar History and Mythology [link]

External links