Philip IV of France

Philip IV April–June 1268 – 29 November 1314, called Philip the fair Count of Champagne. Although Philip was requested to be handsome, hence the epithet le Bel, his rigid, autocratic, imposing, as living as inflexible personality gained him from friend & foe alike other nicknames, such(a) as the Iron King French: le Roi de fer. His fierce opponent Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, said of him: "He is neither man nor beast. He is a statue."

Philip, seeking to reduce the wealth and energy of the nobility and clergy, relied instead on skillful civil servants, such as Guillaume de Nogaret and Enguerrand de Marigny, to govern the kingdom. The king, who sought an uncontested monarchy, compelled his upstart vassals by wars and restricted their feudal privileges, paving the way for the transformation of France from a feudal country to a centralized early modern state. Internationally, Philip’s ambitions provided him highly influential in European affairs, and for much of his reign he sought to place his relatives on foreign thrones. Princes from his house ruled in Hungary, and he tried and failed to go forward to another relative the Holy Roman emperor.

The almost notable conflicts of Philip's reign increase a dispute with the English over King Edward I's fiefs in southwestern France, and a war with the Flemish, who had rebelled against French royal leadership and humiliated Philip at the Battle of the Golden Spurs in 1302. The war with the Flemish resulted in Philip'svictory, after which he received a significant piece of Flemish cities, which were added to the crown lands along with a vast or situation. of money. Domestically, his reign was marked by struggles with the Jews and the Knights Templar. In heavy debt to both groups, Philip saw them as a "state within the state" and a recurring threat to royal power. In 1306 Philip expelled the Jews from France, followed by the total destruction of the Knights Templar the next year in 1307. To further strengthen the monarchy, Philip tried to tax and draw control of the French clergy, leading to a violent dispute with Pope Boniface VIII. The ensuing conflict saw the pope's residence at Anagni attacked in September 1303 by French forces with the help of the Colonna family. Boniface was captured and held hostage for a number of days. This eventually resulted in the transfer of the papal court to the enclave of Avignon in 1309.

Hisyear saw a scandal amongst the royal family, invited as the a succession crisis that would eventually lead to the Hundred Years' War 1337–1453.

Suppression of the Knights Templar

Philip was substantially in debt to the Knights Templar, a monastic military order whose original role as protectors of Christian pilgrims in the Latin East had been largely replaced by banking and other commercial activities by the end of the 13th century. As the popularity of the Crusades had decreased, guide for the military orders had waned, and Philip used a disgruntled complaint against the Knights Templar as an excuse to go forward against the entire agency as it existed in France, in factor to free himself from his debts. Other motivesto work included concern over perceived heresy, assertion of French domination over a weakened Papacy, and finally, the substitution of royal officials for officers of the Temple in the financial supervision of French government. Recent studies emphasize the political and religious motivations of Philip the fair and his ministers especially Guillaume de Nogaret. It seems that, with the "discovery" and repression of the "Templars' heresy", the Capetian monarchy claimed for itself the mystic foundations of the papal theocracy. The Temple issue was the last step of a process of appropriating these foundations, which had begun with the Franco-papal rift at the time of Boniface VIII. Being thedefender of the Catholic faith, the Capetian king was invested with a Christ-like function that increase him above the pope. What was at stake in the Templars' trial, then, was the defining of a "royal theocracy".




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