Philip I

king of France

Written and fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

History

Philip I (born 1052—died July 29/30, 1108, Melun, France) was the king of France (1059–1108) who came to the throne at a time when the Capetian monarchy was extremely weak but who succeeded in enlarging the royal estates and treasury by a policy of devious alliances, the sale of his neutrality in the quarrels of powerful vassals, and the practice of simony on a huge scale.

Philip was the elder son of Henry I of France by his second wife, Anne of Kiev. Crowned at Reims in May 1059, he became sole king on his father’s death in 1060; Baldwin V, count of Flanders, exercised the regency. Two years after he came of age in 1066, he obtained the county of Gâtinais as the price of his neutrality in a family struggle over Anjou and thereby linked the royal possessions in Sens with those around Paris, Melun, and Orléans. His major efforts, however, were directed toward Normandy, in which from 1076 he supported Robert II Curthose, its ineffectual duke, first against Robert’s father, King William I of England, then against Robert’s brother, William II. Philip’s true goal was to prevent emergence of a rival power in Normandy, for he was willing to abandon Robert whenever it seemed possible he might become dangerous.

Because of his firm determination to retain control over all appointments to ecclesiastical posts, which he blatantly sold, Philip was eventually drawn into conflict with the papacy, which nonetheless did not assume the disastrous proportions of the similar struggle over investitures in the Holy Roman Empire. This conflict was exacerbated by his matrimonial affairs; his scandalous “marriage” with Bertrada de Montfort, wife of a vassal, brought him repeated excommunication. By 1107, when the French monarchy’s struggle with the papacy was finally ended, Louis VI, Philip’s son by his legitimate wife, Bertha, had taken over the administration of the kingdom, Philip having been rendered inactive by his extreme obesity.