Phillip le Belle by vidyashakti

Poser • Historical • posted on Jul 14, 2009

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Description

A member of the House of Capet, Philip was born at the Palace of Fontainebleau at Seine-et-Marne, the son of King Philip III and Isabella of Aragon. Philip was nicknamed the Fair (le Bel) because of his handsome appearance, but his inflexible personality gained him other epithets, from friend and foe alike. His fierce opponent Bernard Saisset, bishop of Pamiers, said of him, "He is neither man nor beast. This is a statue" On Friday, October 13, 1307, hundreds of Knights Templar in France were simultaneously arrested by agents of Philip the Fair, to be later tortured into admitting heresy in the Order. (This is one of the reasons why Friday the 13th is seen as unlucky.) The Knights Templar were a 200-year-old military order, supposedly answerable only to the Pope. But Philip used his influence over Clement V, who was largely his pawn, to disband the order and remove its ecclesiastical status and protection in order to plunder it. Philip seized the considerable Templar treasury and broke up the Templar monastic banking system. In 1314, he had the last Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, burnt at the stake in Paris. According to legend, de Molay cursed both Philip and Clement V from the flames, saying that he would summon them before God's Tribunal within a year; as it turned out, both King and Pope died within the next year. Philip IV's rule signaled the decline of the papacy's power from its near complete authority. His palace located on the Île de la Cité. He died during a hunt when he was mauled by a wild boar and is buried in Saint Denis Basilica. He was succeeded by his son Louis X.