PETROBRUSIAN HERESY
. See PETER DE BRUYS
PHILIP I
(1052–1108). King of France, 1059–1108. The son of Henry I (r. 1031–60) and Anne of
Kiev, Philip was crowned king on May 23, 1059, and was still a child when his father
died the following year. Baudouin V, count of Flanders (r. 1035–67), Philip’s uncle by
marriage, administered the royal government until Philip attained his majority in 1066. In
that year, Baudouin’s son-in-law, William the Conqueror, duke of Normandy, seized the
throne of England.
During the next twenty-five years, Philip strove to assert his control over the royal
domain and to expand it. He acquired Corbie, the Gâtinais, and the French Vexin;
developed the system of prevôts to administer his holdings; and saw the central
administration transformed from a curial to a palatial system, as the great officers of the
crown and local castellans replaced the major territorial lords and prelates in validating
royal acts. As reform swept the church, the king was under increasing pressure to forgo
investiture of clergy and the profits of simony, while the ecclesiastical controversy
surrounding Berengar of Tours (condemned in 1080) attested to new intellectual vigor in
the kingdom. Philip also was able to exploit the conflicts among William the Conqueror’s
sons to acquire Gisors in 1090.
After 1092, everything focused on the scandal arising from the king’s repudiation of
his wife, Queen Bertha, and his bigamous marriage with Bertrade de Montfort, the fourth
wife of Foulques IV, count of Anjou. Excommunications and absolutions alternated
between 1094 and 1104, when Philip finally achieved normal relations with the papacy.
During this time, his son, the future Louis VI, took more and more responsibility for
ruling and for defending the Vexin against the attacks of William II Rufus of England (r.
1087–1100). The crown acquired another addition to the royal domain with the purchase
of the viscounty of Bourges in 1101. Philip died at the end of July 1108 and was interred
in the abbey of Saint-Benoîtsur-Loire (Fleury).
R.Thomas McDonald
[See also: BERENGAR OF TOURS; BERTHA OF HOLLAND; BERTRADE DE
MONTFORT; LOUIS VI THE FAT; VEXIN]
Fliche, Augustin. Le règne de Philippe Ier, roi de France (1060–1108). Paris: Société Française
d’Imprimerie et de Librairie, 1912.
Prou, Maurice. Recueil des actes de Philippe Ier, roi de France (1059–1108). Paris: Imprimerie
Nationale, 1908.
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