Philip IV the Fair

King of France (r. 1285-1314)

• Born: 1267 or 1268
• Birthplace: Fontainebleau, France
• Died: November 29, 1314
• Place of death: Fontainebleau, France

As king, Philip steadfastly created a strong monarchy in France. He developed a bureaucracy that allowed for firmer central control of raising revenues in the kingdom. His efforts, by accelerating the departure from a feudal form of government, began to modernize the French state.

Early Life

Philip IV, known as “the Fair” because of his supposedly handsome and stately appearance, was born at the royal castle of Fontainebleau, southeast of Paris. The second son of the weak king Philip III who succeeded the holy and revered Louis IX and Isabella of France, young Philip endured a difficult childhood. When he was three years old, his mother died, and in 1274, his father remarried, taking Marie of Brabant as his second wife. Marie, probably hoping to see her own children rather than her stepchildren become the heirs of the French throne, shunned Philip and his older brother Louis. Prince Louis died in 1276, making Philip the next in line to the throne.

Although Philip III did not have a particularly close relationship to his son and heir, the king did provide Philip with an education befitting a royal prince. The king arranged for the famous scholar Giles of Rome to instruct his young son. Giles’s clerk, Guillaume d’Ercuis, however, was tasked with teaching Prince Philip. Guillaume provided the prince not only with the basics of reading and writing but also with the warmth and close companionship he lacked after his mother’s death. At his father’s court, Philip also learned about aristocratic life and the business side of government, with its bureaucrats, foreign diplomats, favor-seekers, and feudal barons, whose every demand had to be considered and answered in order to preserve their loyalty and support.

On August 28, 1284, Philip III arranged a brilliant marriage for his son, betrothing him to Jeanne, the heiress to the kingdom of Navarre and the county of Champagne. This marriage arrangement was particularly important because it brought the extremely valuable and strategically located county of Champagne into the lands held directly by the king, thereby providing the Crown with a plentiful income as well as a solid foothold in vulnerable eastern France. Philip was a most devoted husband, who, unlike many other monarchs in medieval Europe, seems truly to have loved the spouse who was provided for him. After his wife’s death in 1305, Philip did not remarry.

Shortly after his son’s marriage, Philip III became involved in a papal crusade against Pedro, king of Aragon, who had attacked Philip’s uncle King Charles I of Sicily, a vassal of the pope. While on this disastrous mission to conquer Aragon, King Philip became ill, and he died on October 5, 1285. Philip, his heir, became the new king of France later in the month on receiving the news of his father’s death. He inherited a poorly waged war, a massive financial burden, and an Aragonese enemy.

Life’s Work

The suddenness with which Philip the Fair ascended the French throne was emphasized by his immediate departure from his predecessor’s interests, concerns, and method of government. Abandoning the papally ordered crusade against Aragon, the young king directed his attention toward selecting new advisers and reordering the bureaucratic machinery of his kingdom. Unlike his father, Philip IV strongly desired to make the kingdom of France independent of papal or Church influence, control, or interference. Philip believed that his subjects’ political concerns were more important than those of the pope and that whatever was good for the kingdom would necessarily be favorable for the Church.

Although the new king was a pious man who supported the Church financially within his kingdom, he also knew, as one of his biographers put it, the importance of the “religion of monarchy.” This powerful ideology established the king as the most powerful individual within the kingdom, deserving absolute obedience, and permitted him to act autonomously. Philip demonstrated his devotion to this “religion” throughout his reign by strengthening the power of the royal administration, asserting his sovereignty over all subjects, noble and nonnoble alike, in his realm, and engaging in struggles with external powers, such as the English king Edward I and Pope Boniface VIII, who encroached on his territories or rights.

Because the French monarchy under the Capetian Dynasty had emerged as a feudal state, the majority of governmental business was undertaken not by the king but by his personal vassals, who resided in the various regions of the realm and loyally provided military and governmental service for their lord. Thus, Paris, the royal capital, was not yet the seat of royal power in the thirteenth century, and vassals, who had pledged to be loyal to the king, provided legal, military, and administrative service as they saw fit in the king’s absence. To maintain itself as the protector and defender of the French people, the French monarchy, under the guidance of Philip IV, created a new bureaucratic order and uniformity.

As the amount and complexity of legal business in the realm increased in the late thirteenth century, it became increasingly obvious that the king’s courts needed to be reorganized. The Parlement, which had initially been an outgrowth of the royal council that heard certain types of important legal cases, was routinely engulfed in work. Under Philip, the court was divided into several lesser courts that held inquests, received petitions for equity cases, heard cases based on the written law used in southern France, or pronounced judgments in suits. The king also relied heavily on a corps of officers to supervise affairs and administer justice in local jurisdictions.

In addition to this reorganization of the court, Philip’s reign witnessed a reorganization of royal finances and the development of effective mechanisms for accounting, auditing, and disbursing royal funds and tax revenues by the chamber of accounts. To manage the large bureaucracy needed to rule the kingdom, Philip depended on a small, permanent royal council instead of the large council made up of most of the leading aristocrats and prelates of the kingdom. This smaller body was made up of full-time civil servants who could travel with the king throughout his realm and act decisively when called on. With this large, complex, and powerful army of bureaucrats, Philip was better prepared to know the state of his kingdom and to rule his subjects than his predecessors, who had depended on their occasionally cantankerous feudal vassals to assist them in the task of governing.

Philip IV’s strong assertion of royal power within France is a theme that can be noted throughout his twenty-nine-year reign. From the early years, when Philip cast aside his father’s advisers and policies in favor of his own, to the middle years, when he tangled with the most powerful vassal, Edward I, duke of Aquitaine and king of England, to the final weeks of his life, when he taxed his subjects heavily and ignited an aristocratic rebellion, the king appeared determined to shape both his reign and his nation. Unwilling to be a passive observer, the workhorse king played an active role in policy making, participating in the meetings of the small royal council, drafting letters and pronouncements, and issuing orders to his civil servants.

Although Philip insisted on assuming this dominant role in French politics, he also portrayed himself as the protector of his subjects. When Edward encroached on the rights of the French and attacked La Rochelle in 1294, Philip summoned him to appear before the Parlement. When Edward refused to appear as a king suspected of wrongdoing in Philip’s court, Philip seized the duchy of Aquitaine and declared war against his English vassal. For several years, the two kings fought in an inconclusive war. Only in 1302, when Edward’s ally, the count of Flanders, inflicted a stunning defeat on Philip’s large army at Courtrai, was peace restored.

To finance the war, Philip levied several onerous taxes on the French, regardless of their rank. In the final years of the war, the subjects demanded that they be allowed to give their consent to such extraordinary levies. Philip, always anxious to be seen as a good monarch, obliged them by assembling representatives from various localities to approve taxes and, in 1302, by convoking the Estates General, to endorse the principles of regular royal taxation during wartime. By pursuing his legal claims against the rebellious Duke Edward, plunging the realm into a protracted war to protect his royal powers, and establishing regular taxation to support the royal government and armies, Philip demonstrated not only his desire to rule France firmly but also his sovereign power over his subjects as their king.

Philip’s pressing financial need, created by the prolonged war against Edward, contributed to his famous clash with Boniface VIII. In this conflict, the king claimed that as king of all subjects, laypersons as well as the clergy, he had the right to tax everyone in order to defend the realm against enemies. The pope strenuously resisted Philip’s effort to tax churchmen. Boniface decreed that it was illegal for a monarch to do so, and, in 1302, he threatened to excommunicate the king and release all of his subjects from their obligation to be loyal to him.

Unwilling to allow Boniface VIII to dictate to him, Philip turned on the pope. He effectively declared that the pope could not interfere with what the king regarded as the internal affairs of the kingdom. He condemned the pope for his actions and threats, spreading propaganda throughout the kingdom about the pope’s unjustified actions and raising questions about the pope’s legitimacy and moral conduct. Shortly before he was due to be banned from the Church, Philip ordered a small band of soldiers to arrest the pope at his residence in Italy. With the arrest, Boniface had no choice but to capitulate. By this extreme political statement, Philip clearly established that the king of France was the sole ruler of every French person and that, in order to preserve his autonomy, he would not surrender to the orders and threats of the pope.

Significance

When Philip IV the Fair died in November, 1314, France was in turmoil. His heir, Louis X, inherited a kingdom riddled with rebellions, as noblemen across the northern half of the realm resisted the payment of yet another round of burdensome royal taxes. This uprising, however, revealed the successes Philip had achieved. A king noted for his steeliness, Philip created during his long reign a mature kingdom, established on principles of firm royal government and furnished with the courts, professional bureaucrats, institutions, and accepted procedures necessary for maintaining a cohesive nation. It was this very royal strength that the rebels condemned in 1314, as they felt the Crown’s grip tighten on what they perceived as their own rights and privileges.

Some years before, when the exasperated bishop of Pamiers reflected on the character of the French king, he wrote, “The king stares at men fixedly, without uttering a word. . . . He is not a man, not a beast, he is a graven image.” This owl-like monarch, who struck the perfect pose of a determined ruler and did not hesitate to impose his will on subjects and enemies alike, had introduced his realm to effective government between 1285 and 1314. Moreover, the image that the king presented to the bishop reflects the awesomeness that he had cultivated. His subjects, enemies, officers, and fellow monarchs revered the royal majesty as respectful worshipers who acknowledged and trembled before the royal might he wielded. It is not the effective administration of the realm alone for which Philip the Fair deserves credit, but also his creation and practice of the “religion of monarchy.”

The Capetians

Reign

• Ruler

987-996

• Hugh Capet

996-1031

• Robert II the Pious

1031-1060

• Henry I

1060-1108

• Philip I the Fair

1108-1137

• Louis VI the Fat

1137-1179

• Louis VII the Younger (with Eleanor of Aquitaine, r. 1137-1180)

1179-1223

• Philip II Augustus

1223-1226

• Louis VIII the Lion

1223-1252

• Blanche of Castile (both queen and regent)

1226-1270

• Louis IX (Saint Louis)

1271-1285

• Philip III the Bold

1285-1314

• Philip IV the Fair

1314-1316

• Louis X the Stubborn

1316

• Philip, brother of Louis X (regent before birth of John I and during his short life)

1316

• John I the Posthumous

1316-1322

• Philip V the Tall

1322-1328

• Charles IV the Fair

Bibliography

Barzel, Yoram, and Edgar Kiser. “Taxation and Voting Rights in Medieval England and France.” Rationality and Society 14, no. 4 (November, 2002). Explores the history of taxation and voting rights and their complex relationship during the reign of Philip and others. A scholarly, technical discussion.

Fawtier, Robert. The Capetian Kings of France: Monarchy and Nation, 987-1328. Reprint. London: Macmillan, 1962. A survey of the first dynasty that ruled France that provides a picture of the needs and growth of the French monarchy, culminating in the reorganization under Philip.

Hallam, Elizabeth M, and Judith Everard. Capetian France, 987-1328. 2d ed. New York: Longman, 2001. A 480-page history of the Capetian Dynasty for both students and other scholars. Maps, genealogies, and detailed, extensive bibliographies enhance the book’s value.

Lynch, Joseph H. The Medieval Church: A Brief History. New York: Longman, 1992. Surveys the history of the Church during the Middle Ages and includes a chapter on Philip and Boniface in the context of the Avignon Papacy. Also offers a bibliography and index.

Perroy, Edouard. The Hundred Years’ War. Translated by D. C. Douglas. New York: Capricorn Books, 1965. A very good survey of the late medieval conflict between the kings of England and France. The early chapters are devoted to explaining the origins of the struggle, especially during the reign of Philip.

Petit-Dutaillis, Charles. The Feudal Monarchy in France and England: From the Tenth to the Thirteenth Century. 1936. Reprint. New York: AMS Press, 1983. A useful book for understanding the concept of the feudal state and how it differed from the bureaucratic state created by kings such as Philip.

Strayer, Joseph R. “Philip the Fair: A ’Constitutional’ King.” In Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History: Essays by Joseph R. Strayer, edited by John F. Benton and Thomas N. Bisson. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971. In this brief work, the author not only outlines the perceptions of monarchy that Philip had but also indicates how Philip implemented his ideas about the function of the king in France.

Strayer, Joseph R. The Reign of Philip the Fair. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. Although not a chronological biography of the king, this book examines how Philip totally reformed the government of France by changing the personnel of government, relying more on professional bureaucrats for the business of rule, and reorganizing the administration of the realm.

Wood, Charles T., ed. Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII: State Versus Papacy. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967. This small volume contains many of the primary documents and historical interpretations of the famous struggle between pope and king.