PHILIP IV. (1268-1314), called "le Bel" or "the Fair," king of France, was the son of Philip III. and his wife, Isabella of Aragon. His reign, which began in October 1285, is one of the most momentous in the history of mediaeval Europe, yet it belongs rather to the history of France and to that of the papacy than to the biography of the king. Little is known of the personal part played by Philip in the events associated with his name, and later historians have been divided between the view which regards him as a handsome, lethargic nonentity and that which paints him as a master of statecraft who, under a veil of phleg matic indifference and pious sentiment, masked an inflexible purpose, of which his ministers were but the spokesmen and executors. The first view seems to be borne out by the language of contemporary chroniclers. Yet this was the king who brought the papacy under his yoke, carried out the destruction of the powerful order of the Temple, and laid the foundations of the national monarchy of France. In this last achievement Finke finds the solution of a problem which Langlois had declared to be insoluble. In 1302, in the midst of a hostile assembly, Philip cursed his sons should they consent to hold the Crown of any one but God', and in this isolated outburst he sees the key to his character. "Philip was not a man of violent initiative, the planner of daring and fateful operations; otherwise there would 'Wenck, p. 49.
have been some signs of it. His personality was that of a well instructed, outwardly cold, because cool and calculating man, essentially receptive, afire for only one idea : the highest possible development of the French monarchy, internally and externally, as against both the secular powers and the Church. His merit was that he carried through this idea in spite of dangers to him self and to the state. A resolution once arrived at he carried out with iron obstinacy." Certainly he was no roi fainéant. His courage at the battle of Mons-en-Pevele was the admiration of friend and foe alike. It was against the advice of his tutor, Aegidius Colonna, that on coming to the throne he chose as his counsellors men of the legal class, and the names of his great ministers—Guillaume de Nogaret, Enguerrand de Marigny, Pierre Flotte (d. 1302)—attest the excellent quality of his judgment. He was, too, one of the few monarchs who have left to their successors reasoned programmes of reform for the state.
The greatest event of the reign was the struggle with Pope Boniface VIII. (q.v.). The pope went so far in 1296 as to forbid any lay authority to demand taxes from the clergy without his consent. When Philip retaliated by a decree forbidding the ex portation of any coin from France, Boniface gave way to save the papal dues, and the bulls issued by him in 1297 were a decided victory for the French king. There was a truce until
1301. After the arrest, by Philip's orders, of Bernard Saisset (q.v.), bishop of Pamiers, in that year, the quarrel flamed up again. To ensure the support of his people the king had called an assembly of the three estates of his kingdom at Paris in April 1302 ; in the following year Guillaume de Nogaret seized the per son of the pope at Anagni, an event immortalized by Dante. Boni face escaped from his captors only to die (Oct. 1), and the short pontificate of his saintly successor, Benedict XI., was occu pied in a vain effort to restore harmony to the Church. The issue of the conclave that met at Perugia on his death was ultimately determined by the diplomacy and gold of Philip's agents, and the new pope, Clement V., was the weak-willed creature of the French king. When in 1309 the pope installed himself at Avi gnon, the new relation of the papacy and the French monarchy was patent. It was the beginning of the "Babylonish captivity" of the popes. The most notable of its first-fruits was the hideous persecution of the Templars (q.v.), which began with the sudden arrest of the members of the order in France in 1307, and ended with the suppression of the order by Pope Clement at the coun cil of Vienne in 1313.
In 1294 Philip IV. attacked Edward I. of England, then busied with the Scottish War, and seized Guienne. Edward won over the counts of Bar and of Flanders, but they were defeated and he was obliged to make peace in 1297. Then the Flemish cities rose against the French royal officers, and utterly defeated the French army at Courtrai in 1302. The reign closed with the French position unimproved in Flanders, except for the transfer to Philip by Count Robert of Lille, Douai and Bethune, and their dependencies. Philip died on Nov. 29,1314. His wife was Jeanne, queen of Navarre (d. 1304), through whom that country passed under the rule of Philip on his marriage in 1284; three of his sons, Louis X., Philip V. and Charles IV., succeeded in turn to the throne of France, and a daughter, Isabella, married Edward II. of England.
See the Chronique of Geoffrey of Paris, edited by M. Bouquet, in vol. xxii. of the Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France. Of modern works see E. Boutaric, La France sous Philippe le Bel 0860 ; G. Digard, Philippe le Bel et le Saint-Siege (1900) ; C. V. Langlois in E. Lavisse's Histoire de France, vol. iii. (19oi) ; K. Wenck, Philipp der Schulze von Frankreich (Marburg, 1905) ; H. Finke, Papsttum and Untergang des Templerordens, 2 vols. (Mlinster i. W. 1907), esp. I. ch. ii.