Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/24

 PHILIP

PHILIP

Irish and the Welsh. When John Lackland subjected to cruel persecution the English bishops who, in spite of him, recognized Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, Innocent III in 1212 placed England under interdict, and the legate, Pandulphus, declared that John Lackland had forfeited his throne. Then Philip, who received at his court all the exiles from England, consented to go to England in the name of Innocent III to take away the crown from John Lack- land. It was to be given to his son, the future Louis VIII. On 22 May, 1213, the French expedition was to embark at Gravelines, when it was learned that John Lackland had become reconciled with Rome, and some months later he became a vassal of the pope. Thus failed, on the eve of its realization, the project of the French invasion of England. But the legate of In- nocent III induced Philip to punish Ferrand, Count of Flanders, who was the ally of all the enemies of the king. At the battle of Bouvines (27 July, 1214) Ferrand, who supported Otto IV, was taken prisoner. This battle is regarded as the first French national victory. Philip II, asserting that he had on both sides two great and terrible lions. Otto and John, excused himself from taking part in the Crusade against the Al- bigenses. He permitted his son Louis to make two expeditions into Languedoc to support Simon de Montfort in 1215, and Amaury de Montfort in 1219, and again in 1222 he sent Amaur}' de Montfort two hundred knights and ten thousand foot soldiers under the Archbishop of Bourges and the Count of La Marche. He foresaw that the French monarchy would profit by the defeat of the Albigenses.

Philip's reign was characterized by a gigantic advance of the French monarchy. Before his time the King of France reigned only over the He de France and Berri, and had no communication with the sea. To this patrimony PhiUp II added Artois, Amienois, Valois, Vermaudois, a large portion of Beauvaisis, Normandj', Maine, Anjou, Touraine, and a part of Poitou and Saintonge. His bailiffs and seneschals established the royal power firmly in these countries. Paris became a fortified city and attracted to its university students from different countries. Thanks to the possession of Dieppe, Rouen, and cer- tain parts of Saintonge, the French monarchy became a maritime and commercial power, and Philip in- vited foreign merchants to France. Flanders, Pon- thieu, and Auvergne became subject fiefs, supervised by agents of the king. He exercised a sort of pro- tectorate over Champagne and Burgundy. Brittany was in the hands of Pierre de Dreux, a Capetian of the younger branch. "History ", writes M. Luchaire, "does not present so many, such rapid, and such com- plete changes in the fortune of a State".

Philip Augustus did not interfere in episcopal elec- tions. In Normandy, where the Plantagenets had assumed the custom of tlirectly nominating the bishops, he did not follow their example. Guillaume Le Bre- ton, in his poem the "Philippide", makes him say: "I leave to the men of God the things that pertain to the service of God". He favoured the emancipa- tion of communes, desiring to be liked bj' the middle classes of the districts he annexed. He often exacted a tax in exchange for the communal charter. But he did not allow the communes to infringe on the prop- erty of clerics or the episcopal right of jurisdiction. At Noyen he intervened formally in behalf of the bishop, who wjis threatened by the commune. He undertook a campaign in defence of the bishops and abbots against certain feudal lords whom he himself desired to humiliate or weaken. In 1180, before he was king, he undertook an expedition into Berri to punish the Lord of Charenton, the enemy of the monks, and into Burgundy where the Count of Chalon and the Lord of lieaujcu were i)ersecuting the Church. In 1186, on the (■(]iiiiil:iitil of tlic monks, he took posses- sion of Chatillon-.sur-Seine, in the Duchy of Burgundy,

and forced the duke to repair the wrongs he had com- mitted against the Church. In 1210 he sent troops to protect the Bishop of Clermont, who was threatened by the Count of .\uvergne.

But on the other hand, in virtue of the preponder- ance which he wished royalty to have over feudalism, he exacted of the bishops and abbots the performance of all their feudal duties, including military service; although for certain territories he was the vassal of the bishops of Picardy, he refused to pay them homage. Moreover, hedeclared with regard to Manasses, Bishop of Orleans, that the royal court was entitled to judge at the trials of bishops, and he made common cause with lay feudalism in the endless discussions regarding the province of ecclesiastical tribunals, which at the beginning of the thirteenth century were disposed to extend their jurisdiction. An ordinance issued about 1206 at the instance of the king, executed in Nor- mandy and perhaps elsewhere, stipulated that in cer- tain cases lay judges might arrest and try guilty clerics, that the right of asjdum of rehgious buildings should be limited, that the Church might not excom- municate those who did business on Sunday or held intercourse with Jews, and that a citizen having several children should not give more than half of his estate to that one of his sons who was a cleric. Finally he imposed on the clergy heavy financial exactions. He was the first king who endeavoured to compel clerics to pay the king a tenth of their income. In 1188 the archdeacon Peter of Blois defeated this claim, but in 1215 and 1218 Philip renewed it, and by de- grees the resistance of the clergy gave way. Philip, however, was pious in his own way, and in the ad- vice which St. Louis gave to his son he said that Philip, because of "God's goodness and mercy would rather lose his throne than dispute with the servants of Holy Church". Thus the reputation left by Philip II was quite different from that of Philip IV, or Frederick II of Germany. He never carried out towards the Church a policy of trickery or petty vexations, on the contrary he regarded it as his collab- orator in the foundation of French unity.

Le Breton. La Philippide. ed. Delaborde (Paris, 1S83-5); RiGOBD .\ND Le Breton, Chroniques; Delisle, Catalogue dea actes de Philippe-Auguste (Paris, 1856); Luchaire, Philippe- Auguste in L.ivissE, Hist, de France, III (Paris, 1901); Ln- ch.\ire, L' Universite de Paris sous Philippe-Auguste (Paris, 1899) ; Gautier, La France sous Philippe-Auguste (Tours, 1899) ; Cartelueri, Philipp II August. Konig von Frankreick (3 vols., Leipzig, 1899-1909); Davidsohn, Philipp August von Frankreich und Ingehorg (1888) ; Walker, On the increase of royal power in France under Philip Augustus (1888) ; Hutton, Philip Augustua (London, 1896).

Georges Gotau.

Philip II, King of Spain, only son of the Emperor Charles V, and Isabella of Portugal, b. at Valladolid, 21 May, 1527; d. at the Escorial, 13 Sept., 1598. He was carefully educated in the sciences, learned French and Latin, though he never spoke anything but Cas- tilian, and also showed much interest in architecture anii music. In 1543 he married his cousin, Maria of Portugal, who died at the birth of Don Carios (1535). He was appointed regent of Spain with a council by Charles V. In 1554 he married Mary Tudor, Queen of England, who was eleven years his senior. This polit- ical marriage gave Spain an indirect influence on the affairs of England, recently restored to Catholicism; but in 1555 PhiHp was summoned to the Low Coun- tries, and Mary's death in the same year severed the connexion between the two countries. At a solemn conference held at Brussels, 22 Oct., 1555, Charles V ceded to Philip the Low Countries, the crowns of Cas- tille, .\ragon, and Sicily, on 16 Jan., 1556, and the countship of Burgundy on the tenth of June. He even thought of securing for him the imperial crown, but the opposition of his brother Ferdinand caused him to abandon that project. Having become king, Philip, devoted to Catholicism, defended the Faith through- out the world and opposed the progress of heresy, and