Читать книгу The Empire and the Papacy, 918-1273. Investiture Contest, Crusades & The Famous Conflicts онлайн

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In 1060 Henry died, and the little Philip I. was acknowledged as his successor without a murmur. During his minority, Count Baldwin V. of Flanders held the regency, paying perhaps more regard to his interests as a great feudatory, than to his duty to his ward. It was possibly owing to this attitude that Baldwin allowed his son-in-law, William the Bastard, to fit out the famous expedition which led to the conquest of England, and thus gave one of the chief vassals of France a stronger position than his overlord. The year after the battle of Hastings Baldwin of Flanders died, and henceforward Philip ruled in his own name. As he grew up, he gained a bad reputation for greed, debauchery, idleness, and sloth. Before he attained old age he had become extraordinarily fat and unwieldy, while ill-health still further diminished his activity. Yet Philip was a shrewd man, of sharp and biting speech, and clear political vision. His quarrel with the Church was the result of his private vices rather than his public policy. As early as 1073 he was bitterly denounced by Gregory VII. as the most simoniac, adulterous, and sacrilegious of kings. But he gave most offence to the Church when, in 1092, he repudiated his wife, Bertha of Holland (with whom he had lived for more than twenty years), in favour of Bertrada of Montfort, the wife of Fulk Réchin, Count of Anjou, whom he married after a complaisant bishop had declared her former union null. This bold step brought on Philip’s head not only the arms of the injured Fulk, and of Bertha’s kinsfolk, but a sentence of excommunication from Urban II. (1094). Though a way to reconciliation was soon opened up by the death of Bertha, the Pope nevertheless persisted in requiring Philip to repudiate his adulterous consort. Philip never gave up Bertrada, and never received the full absolution of the Church. Nevertheless, the war which he carried on against the Papacy did not cost him the allegiance of his subjects, though to it was added a long conflict with Gregory VII.’s ally, William the Conqueror. So weak was he that he dared not prevent the holding of councils on French soil at which he was excommunicated, and the great crusading movement proclaimed. But Philip was more active and more shrewd than his ecclesiastical enemies thought. He turned his attention with single-minded energy towards the increase of the royal domain, preferring the inglorious gain of a castle or a petty lordship to indulging in those vague and futile claims by which his three predecessors had sought in vain to hide their powerlessness. He took possession of the lapsed fief of Vermandois, and, not being strong enough to hold the district in his own hands, established there his brother Hugh the Great, the famous crusading hero and the father of a long line of Capetian counts of Vermandois, who were all through the next century among the surest supports of the Capetian throne. Philip also absorbed the Vexin and the Valois, thus securing important outworks to protect his city of Paris from Normandy and Champagne. By his politic purchase of Bourges, Philip for the first time established the royal power on a solid basis south of the Loire. But the weak point of Philip’s acquisitions was that he had not force sufficient to hold them firmly against opposition. Hampered by the constant unfriendliness of the Church, broken in health and troubled in conscience, he ended his life miserably enough. Formally reconciled to the Pope before the end of his days, he died in the habit of a monk, declaring that his sins made him unworthy to be laid beside his ancestors and St. Denis, and humbly consigning himself to the protection of St. Benedict. When the vault at Fleury closed over his remains, French history began a new starting-point. Philip I. was the last of the early Capetians who were content to go on reigning without governing, after the fashion of the later Carolingians. It was reserved for his successors to convert formal claims into actual possessions. Nevertheless, the work of Philip set them on the right track. In his shrewd limitation of policy to matters of practical moment, and his keen insight into the drift of affairs, the gross, profligate, mocking Philip prepared the way for the truer expansion of France under his son and grandson. His reign is the bridge between the period of the early Capetians and the more fruitful and progressive period that begins with Louis VI. The great fiefs under the early Capetians.