the end of his reign when the Aragonese supported the
rebellion of the Sicilians against Charles of Anjou (the
Sicilian Vespers, 1282). Charles’s pleas for support and
the blessing of the pope led to the French crusade against
Aragon, an ill-fated expedition across the Pyrénées in
1285, in which the French were routed. During the
retreat, Philip III himself died.
Philip was married twice: fi rst (1262) to Isabella of
Aragon, who died in 1271 on the return from the crusade
to Tunis. She was the mother of Philip’s son and succes-
sor, Philip IV the Fair. In 1274, Philip III married Marie
de Brabant, whose party at court was responsible for
bringing an end to the infl uence of Pierre de la Broce;
charged with treason, he was executed in 1278. Philip
the Fair seems always to have had a strong dislike of Ma-
rie, about whom Pierre had spread ugly rumors. These
included allegations that she and her party wanted to
displace the children of her husband’s fi rst marriage by
her own in the line of succession and that she had even
poisoned Philip IV’s older brother as part of her plan.
No such conspiracy was ever proved, however, and the
succession proceeded smoothly even under the diffi cult
circumstances of the crusade against Aragon.
See also Louis IX
Further Reading
Langlois, Charles-Victor. Le régne de Philippe III le Hardi. Paris:
Hachette, 1887.
William Chester Jordan
PHILIP IV THE FAIR
(1268–314)
King of France, 1285–1314. Philip expanded royal pow-
er within the kingdom and dominated the ecclesiastical
and secular affairs of western Europe. The grandson of
St. Louis, whose canonization he achieved in 1297, he
imitated and attempted to surpass Louis’s achievements.
Served devotedly by a series of powerful ministers, he
imposed his own stamp on governmental policies, insti-
tuting widespread consultation of his subjects, issuing
a host of reform charters, canceling and returning taxes
when the causes that prompted them ceased, and subor-
dinating to his authority the dukes of Aquitaine/Guyenne
(also kings of England) and the counts of Flanders.
Attentive to matters of conscience and believing in his
role as God’s minister, he upheld Christian orthodoxy
against Pope Boniface VIII and the Knights Templar,
appealing to a general council against the pope and de-
stroying the Templars; he obtained papal bulls forgiving
him for sins he feared he might commit; he magnifi ed
the importance of the royal power to cure; in 1306, he
expelled the Jews from France. Anxious to establish the
full legitimacy and the glory of the Capetian house, he
encouraged the reinterpretation of the Capetians’ his-
tory. Upholding the highest standards of morality and
publicizing his own scrupulosity, in 1314 he presided
over the trial and execution of two knights charged with
adultery with his own daughters-in-law, thus casting
doubt on the legitimacy of his grandchildren.
Born between April and June 1268, while Louis
IX was still ruling, Philip, second son of Philip III the
Bold and Isabella of Aragon (d. 1271), had a troubled
childhood, dominated by the scandals that erupted at
court after his father’s marriage in 1274 to Marie de
Brabant, suspected of poisoning Philip’s elder brother,
who died in 1276, shortly before the death of his third
brother. In 1284, Philip was knighted and married to
Jeanne, heiress of Champagne and Navarre; he became
king in 1285 after his father’s death on a crusade against
Aragon. Having extricated himself from the ill-fated
venture, Philip avoided confl ict for nine years, but in
1294 he precipitated war against the mighty Edward I of
England, duke of Aquitaine/Guyenne. Settled in 1303,
the fruitless episode strained the kingdom’s fi nances
and led to manipulation of the currency. It resulted in
the marriages of Philip’s sister Marguerite to Edward
in 1299 and of his daughter Isabella to Edward II in
1308; the latter union would give Edward III grounds for
claiming the throne of France. The war also initiated a
confl ict with the Flemings, Edward I’s allies and Philip’s
subjects, which, settled in 1305, broke out again in 1312
because of the harsh peace terms Philip imposed. Cleri-
cal taxation imposed for the war occasioned Boniface
VIII’s controversial bull Clericis laicos in 1296. From
then until Boniface’s death in 1303, Philip and the pope
were locked in sporadic but bitter struggles involving
the limits of secular jurisdiction over ecclesiastics. In
the spring of 1303, Philip presided over assemblies in
Paris that charged Boniface with heresy and immorality;
in September 1303, the pope was violently attacked in
Anagni when Philip’s minister Guillaume de Nogaret
summoned him to submit to the judgment of a council.
Clement V, the Gascon-born cardinal who became pope
in 1305, was more to the king’s liking; he granted Philip
many privileges and in 1311 accepted the suppression of
the Knights Templar, the crusading order whose assets
Philip had seized in 1307, again because he believed
them guilty of heresy and immorality.
Philip failed to achieve some of his ambitions. He
never succeeded in placing a relative on the imperial
throne; his visionary scheme after his wife’s death in
1305 to become ruler of the Holy Land was abortive. The
power he exercised within the kingdom led, at the end
of his reign, to the formation of leagues of disgruntled
subjects protesting his fi scal and monetary policies and
demanding the restoration of old customs; his eldest son
and successor, Louis X (r. 1314–16), issued numerousPHILIP IV THE FAIR