PHILIP IV, King of FRANCE, the Fair. — Born in 1268 at Fontainebleau, died on 29 November 1314. Son of Philip III and Isabella of Aragon, he was educated in the sciences by the cleric William of Ercuis, to whom he remained ever grateful. In 1284, at the age of sixteen, he married Joan of Navarre, who brought him the Kingdom of Navarre and the counties of Champagne and Brie. He was widowed in 1305. At seventeen, in October 1285, he succeeded his father Philip III.
To understand and judge his reign, one must know his complex personality. He has remained enigmatic to this day. The description left of him by G. Nogaret in the 6th and 7th apology (G. Dupeyrat, *Histoire ecclésiastique...*, Paris 1645, pp. 438, 518) is nothing more than an unhistorical embellishment, an idyllic portrait of one of the cruelest tyrants (Renan). While some see him as one of the principal representatives of an absolutist national regime, a cold calculator who pursued the preeminence of royal and state power without scruple, others condemn him for his hostile attitude toward the Church and the papacy, for his exclusively French national policy, which shattered the unity of Christian Europe. United to a rigid and zealous orthodoxy was in him a vigorous impulse for dominion, which manifested itself in his aspiration for independence from the Pope and the Emperor, in his tendencies toward conquest, in his aim to subordinate the French Church and the papacy, in founding French hegemony on solid bases of scrupulous finance, the army, and the fleet, and even in an unbounded avarice. Only in this dual aspect of rigid orthodoxy and brutally tyrannical nature do we find the whole of Philip.
Philip’s reign appears almost modern. The part played by his counsellors in his decisions is debated. Certain lay legists such as Peter Flotte, William of Nogaret, G. of Plaisian, Peter Dubois, etc., imbued with the spirit of Roman law, of centralization and nationalization of the state, confirmed and encouraged the king.
His policy of annexation and expansion brought new territories to France in the west and north. His financial policy provoked a serious conflict with Pope Boniface VIII, who in the bull *Clerici laicos* (25 Feb. 1296) protested against the taxation of the clergy. After the affair was settled by the bull *Esti de statu* (31 July 1297), the conflict reopened in 1301, when Boniface VIII, through his legate Bernard of Saisset, claimed the rights violated of the Church. Philip responded, after Bernard’s return to his diocese, by having him seized and cited before the royal assizes on a charge of high treason. The Pope demanded his absolution and summoned the French prelates to a council in Rome for 19 Nov. 1302, also inviting Philip, by the bull *Anselma fili* (5 Dec. 1301), to justify himself before the council.
In response, Philip convened on 3 Feb. 1302 in Paris the assembly of the Estates General and stirred up a tempest of national indignation with the reading of a forged bull, *Deum time*, and a reply to it (*Scitati maxima tua fatuitas*). Numerous writers took sides on both sides, and a rich pamphleteering production ensued, comparable to that of the Investiture Controversy. To the historically decisive bull *Unam sanctam* (18 Nov. 1302), in which Philip was excommunicated, Philip and the French Estates General responded by demanding the deposition of Boniface VIII. Soon after followed the attack at Anagni on 7 Sept. 1303, which hastened the Pope’s death (Oct. 1303). Benedict XI absolved Philip from the excommunication. His successor, Clement V, was so influenced by Philip that he withdrew the bulls of Boniface VIII and transferred the papal residence to Avignon. To avoid the trial of Pope Boniface VIII, Clement V sacrificed the order of the Templars to the king’s fiscalism.