​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 medieval 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 viewwhich regards him as a handsome, lethargic nonentity and that which paints him as a master of statecraft who, under a veil of phlegmatic 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 languageof contemporary chroniclers. To his enemy, Bernard Saisset, hewas neither man nor beast, but a statue, “the handsomest manin the world, but unable to do anything but stare fixedly at peoplewithout saying a word.” Guillaume de Nogaret, his minister,draws a far more flattering picture, enlarging on his charm, his amiability, his modesty, his charity to all men, and his piety; and the traits of this over-coloured portrait are more or less repeated by Yves, a monk of St Denis. There is, however, no word of any qualities of will or initiative. All of which suggests a personality mentally and physically phlegmatic, a suggestion strengthened by the fact that Bartholomaeus de Neocastro (quoted by Wenck) describes him as corpulent in 1290.

Yet this was the king who with equal implacability 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 Professor 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^[1]; 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 have been some signs of it. His personality was that of awell-instructed, outwardly cold, because cool and calculatingman, essentially receptive, afire for only one idea: the highestpossible development of the French monarchy, internally andexternally, as against both the secular powers and the Church.His merit was that he carried through this idea in spite of dangersto himself and to the state. A resolution once arrived at hecarried out with iron obstinacy.” Certainly he was noroifainéant. His courage at the battle of Mons-en-Pévèle was theadmiration of friend and foe alike. It was against the advice ofhis tutor, Aegidius Colonna, that on coming to the throne hechose as his counsellors men of the legal class, and the namesof his great ministers—Guillaume de Nogaret, Enguerrand deMarigny, Pierre Flotte (d. 1302)—attest the excellent qualityof his judgment. He was, too, one of the few monarchs who haveleft to their successors reasoned programmes of reform for thestate.

The new materials from the Aragonese archives, published byFinke, give the same general impression of “uncanny” reticenceon Philip’s part; when other contemporary kings would havespoken he keeps silence, allowing his ministers to speak for him.Isolated passages in some of the Aragonese letters included inthe collection, however, throw a new light on contemporaryestimate of his character, describing him as all-powerful, as“pope and king and emperor in one person.”^[2]

The reign of Philip IV. is of peculiar interest, because Of theintrusion of economic problems into the spheres of nationalpolitics and even of religion. The increased cost of governmentand the growing wealth of the middle class, rather than theavarice of the king and the genius of his ministers, were responsiblefor the genesis and direction of the new order. The greatestevent of the reign was the struggle withPope Boniface VIII.(q.v.) The pope, in his opposition to the imposition of royaltaxation upon the clergy, went so far in the bullClericis laicosof 1296 as to forbid any lay authority to demand taxes from theclergy without his consent. When Philip retaliated by a decreeforbidding the exportation of any coin from France, Bonifacegave way to save the papal dues, and the bulls issued by him in1297 were a decided victory for the French king. Peace betweenthe two potentates followed until 1301. After the arrest, byPhilip’s orders, ofBernard Saisset (q.v.), bishop of Pamiers, inthat year, the quarrel flamed up again other causes of differenceexisted, and in 1302 the pope issued the bullUnam sanctam, oneof the most extravagant of all statements of papal claims. Toensure the support of his people the king had called an assemblyof the three estates of his kingdom at Paris in April 1302; thenin the following year Guillaume de Nogaret seized the person ofthe pope at Anagni, an event immortalized by Dante. Bonifaceescaped from his captors only to die (October 11), and the shortpontificate of his saintly successor, Benedict XI, was occupied ina vain effort to restore harmony to the Church. The conclavethat met at Perugia on his death was divided between the partisansof the irreconcilable policy of Boniface VIII. and those of apolicy of compromise with the new state theories represented byFrance. The election was ultimately determined by the diplomacyand the gold of Philip’s agents, and the new pope, Clement V.,was the weak-willed creature of the French king, to whom heowed the tiara. When in 1309 the pope installed himself atAvignon, the new relation of the papacy and the Frenchmonarchy was patent to the world. It was the beginning ofthe long “Babylonish captivity” of the popes The mostnotable of its first-fruits was the hideous persecution oftheTemplars (q.v.), which began with the sudden arrest of themembers of the order in France in 1307, and ended withthe suppression of the order by Pope Clement at the council ofVienne in 1313.

It is now tolerably clear that Philip’s motives in this sinisterproceeding were lack of money, and probably the deliberatewish to destroy a body which, with its privileged position andinternational financial and military organization, constituted apossible menace to the state. He had already persecuted andplundered the Jews and the Lombard bankers, and repeatedrecourse to the debasing of the coinage had led to a series of smallrisings But under his rule something was done towardssystematizing the royal taxes, and, as in England. the financialneeds of the king led to the association of the people in the workof government.

In 1294 Philip IV. attacked Edward I. of England, then busiedwith the Scottish War, and seized Guienne. Edward won overthe counts of Bar and of Flanders, but they were defeated andhe was obliged to make peace in 1297. Then the Flemish citiesrose against the French royal officers, and utterly defeated theFrench army at Courtrai in 1302. The reign closed with theFrench position unimproved in Flanders, except for the transferto Philip by Count Robert of Lille, Douai and Bethune, and theirdependencies. Philip died on the 29th of November 1314. Hiswife was Jeanne, queen of Navarre (d. 1304), through whom thatcountry passed under the rule of Philip on his marriage in 1284,three of his sons, Louis X., Philip V. and Charles IV., succeededin turn to the throne of France, and a daughter, Isabella, marriedEdward II. of England.