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==Finance and religion== {{See also|Coinage of Philip IV of France|History of the Jews in France#The Great Exile of 1306}} [[File:Denier Γ la masse Philippe le Bel.jpg|thumb|''Masse d'or'' (7,04 g) during Philip the Fair's reign]] ===Mounting deficits=== Under Philip IV, the annual ordinary revenues of the French royal government totalled approximately 860,000 ''[[livres tournois]]'', equivalent to 46 [[tonne]]s of [[silver]].{{sfn|Grummitt|Lassalmonie|2015|p=120}} Overall revenues were about twice the ordinary revenues.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=60}} Some 30% of the revenues were collected from the royal demesne.{{sfn|Grummitt|Lassalmonie|2015|p=120}} The royal financial administration employed perhaps 3,000 people, of which about 1,000 were officials in the proper sense.{{sfn|Grummitt|Lassalmonie|2015|pp=127β128}} After assuming the throne, Philip inherited a sizable debt from his father's war against Aragon.{{sfn|Strayer|1980|p=11}} By November 1286 it reached 8 tonnes of silver to his primary financiers, the Templars, equivalent to 17% of government revenue.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=59}} This debt was quickly paid off, and, in 1287 and 1288, Philip's kingdom ran a budget surplus.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=59}} After 1289, a decline in [[Saxony]]'s silver production, combined with Philip's wars against Aragon, England and Flanders, drove the French government to fiscal deficits.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=59}} The war against Aragon, inherited from Philip's father, required the expenditure of 1.5 million LT (livres tournois) and the 1294β99 war against England over Gascony another 1.73 million LT.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=59}}{{sfn|Strayer|1980|p=11}} Loans from the Aragonese War were still being paid back in 1306.{{sfn|Strayer|1980|p=11}} To cover the deficit, [[Pope Nicholas IV]] in 1289 granted Philip permission to collect a [[tithe]] of 152,000 LP ([[livres parisis]]) from the Church lands in France.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=60}} With revenues of 1.52 million LP, the church in France had greater fiscal resources than the royal government, whose ordinary revenues in 1289 amounted to 595,318 LP and overall revenues to 1.2 million LP.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=60}} By November 1290, the deficit stood at 6% of revenues.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=60}} In 1291 the budget swung back into surplus only to fall into deficit again in 1292.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=60}} The constant deficits led Philip to order the arrest of the [[Lombardy|Lombard]] merchants, who had earlier made him extensive loans on the pledge of repayment from future taxation.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=60}} The Lombards' assets were seized by government agents and the crown extracted 250,000 LT by forcing the Lombards to purchase French nationality.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=60}} Despite this draconian measure, the deficits continued to stack up in 1293.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=60}} By 1295, Philip had replaced the Templars with the [[Florence|Florentine]] Franzesi bankers as his main source of finance.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=61}} The Italians could raise huge loans far beyond the capacities of the Templars, and Philip came to rely on them more and more.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=61}} The royal treasure was transferred from the [[Temple (Paris)|Paris Temple]] to the Louvre around this time.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=61}} ===Devaluation=== [[File:Donation faite par le roi de France Philippe IV Le Bel aux chapelains et marguilliers de la Sainte-Chapelle du palais Γ Paris - Archives Nationales - AE-II-293.jpg|thumb|Donation made by the King of France, Philip IV the Fair, to the chaplains and wardens of the [[Sainte-Chapelle]] in Paris. February 1286]] In 1294, France and England went to war and in 1297, the county of Flanders declared its independence from France. This conflict accelerated the financial problems incurred by the French monarch.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=63}} As warfare continued and fiscal deficits persisted, Philip had no remedy but to use [[debasement]] of coinage as an alternative tool to meet his military expenditures.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=62}} This measure made people wary of taking their coins to royal mints, preferring to take their silver abroad to exchange it for strong currencies, which by 1301 led to a dramatic disappearance of silver in France.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=61}} Currency depreciation provided the crown with 1.419 million LP from November 1296 to Christmas 1299, more than enough to cover war costs of 1.066 million LP in the same period.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=63}} The resulting inflation damaged the real incomes of the creditors such as the aristocracy and the Church, who received a weaker currency in return for the loans they had issued in a stronger currency.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=61}} The indebted lower classes did not benefit from the devaluation, as the high inflation ate into the purchasing power of their money.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=61}} The result was social unrest.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=63}} By 22 August 1303 this practice led to a two-thirds loss in the value of the ''livres, sous'' and ''deniers'' in circulation.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=64}} The defeat at the battle of Golden Spurs in 1302 was a crushing blow to French finance: the 15 months which followed this battle saw a depreciation of the currency by 37%, and new decrees were issued forbidding the export of gold and silver abroad.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=64}} The royal government had to order officials and subjects to provide all or half, respectively, of their silver vessels for minting into coins.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=64}} New taxes were levied to pay for the deficit.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=64}}<ref>{{cite web | url =https://mises.org/library/great-depression-14th-century | title =The Great Depression of the 14th Century | last =Rothbard | first =Murray | date =23 November 2009 | website =Mises Daily Articles | publisher =Mises Institute | access-date =8 January 2020 }}</ref> As people attempted to move their wealth out of the country in non-monetary form, Philip banned merchandise exports without royal approval.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=64}} The king obtained another crusade tithe from the pope and returned the royal treasure to the Temple to gain the Templars as his creditors again.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=64}} Despite their consequences, these decisions were not considered immoral at that time, as they were the prince's accepted right, and this right could be taken far if a special situation, such as war, justified it. Furthermore, the issue of coins with a lower content of silver was needed to maintain circulation, in a context where the inflation of silver produced a severe scarcity of currency due to the ongoing commercial revolution.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=61}} ===Revaluation=== After bringing the Flemish War to a victorious conclusion in 1305, Philip on 8 June 1306 ordered the silver content of new coinage to be raised back to its 1285 level of 3.96 grams of silver per ''livre''.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=65}} To harmonize the strength of the old and new currencies, the debased coinage of 1303 was devalued accordingly by two-thirds.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=65}} The debtors were driven to penury by the need to repay their loans in the new, strong currency.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=65}} This led to rioting in Paris on 30 December 1306, forcing Philip to briefly seek refuge in the Paris Temple, the headquarters of the Knights Templar.<ref>{{cite book |last=Read |date=2001 |first=P. |title=The Templars |page=255 |publisher=Phoenix |author-link=Piers Paul Read |isbn=978-1-84212-142-9 }}</ref> Perhaps seeking to control the silver of the Jewish mints to put the revaluation to effect, Philip ordered the expulsion of the [[Jews]] on 22 July 1306 and confiscated their property on 23 August, collecting at least 140,000 LP with this measure.{{sfn|Torre|2010|p=65}} With the Jews gone, Philip appointed royal guardians to collect the loans made by the Jews, and the money was passed to the Crown. His son and successor, [[Louis X of France|Louis X]], invited Jews back in 1315 with an offer of 12 years under a strict charter.{{sfn|Chazan|1979|p=79}} When Philip levied taxes on the French clergy of one-half their annual income, he caused an uproar within the Catholic Church and the papacy, prompting [[Pope Boniface VIII]] to issue the [[papal bull|bull]] ''[[Clericis Laicos]]'' (1296), forbidding the transference of any church property to the French Crown.{{sfn|Ozment|1980|p=145}} Philip retaliated by forbidding the removal of bullion from France.{{sfn|Ozment|1980|p=145}} By 1297, Boniface agreed to Philip's taxation of the clergy in emergencies.{{sfn|Ozment|1980|p=145}} In 1301, Philip had the bishop of Pamier arrested for treason.{{sfn|Black|1982|p=48}} Boniface called French bishops to Rome to discuss Philip's actions.{{sfn|Black|1982|p=48}} In response, Philip convoked an assembly of bishops, nobles and grand bourgeois of Paris in order to condemn the Pope.{{sfn|Black|1982|p=48}} This precursor to the [[Estates General (France)|Estates General]] appeared for the first time during his reign, a measure of the professionalism and order that his ministers were introducing into government. This assembly, which was composed of clergy, nobles, and burghers, gave support to Philip.{{sfn|Black|1982|p=48}} Boniface retaliated with the famous bull ''[[Unam Sanctam]]'' (1302), a declaration of papal supremacy.{{sfn|Black|1982|p=48}} Philip gained victory, after having sent his agent [[Guillaume de Nogaret]] to arrest Boniface at [[Anagni]].{{sfn|Lerner|1968|p=5}} The pope escaped but died soon afterward.{{sfn|Lerner|1968|p=5}} The French archbishop Bertrand de Goth was elected pope as [[Clement V]] and thus began the so-called [[Avignon Papacy|Babylonian Captivity of the papacy]] (1309β76), during which the official seat of the papacy moved to [[Avignon]], an enclave surrounded by French territories, and was subjected to French control.
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