Philip V of France - The Crusades

The Crusades

Philip was also to play a role in the ongoing crusade movement during the period. Pope John XXII, the second of the Avignon popes had been elected at a conclave assembled in Lyons during 1316 by Philip himself, and set out his renewed desire to see fresh crusades. Philip IV had agreed a joint plan for a new French led crusade at the Council of Vienne in 1312, with his son Philip, a "committed crusader," taking the cross himself in 1313. Once king himself, Philip was obligated to carry out these plans and asked John for and received additional funds after 1316. Both Philip and John agreed, however, that a French crusade was impossible whilst the military situation in Flanders remained unstable. Nonetheless, John continued to assure the Armenians that Philip would shortly lead a crusade to relieve them. An attempt to send a naval vanguard from the south of France under Louis I of Clermont failed, however, with the forces being destroyed in a battle off Genoa in 1319. Over the winter of 1319–20 Philip convened a number of meetings with French military leaders in preparation for a potential second expedition, that in turn informed Bishop William Durand's famous treatise on crusading. By the end of Philip's reign, however, both John and he had fallen out over the issue of new monies and commitments to how they were spent, and both their attentions were focused on managing the challenge of the Shepherds' Crusade.

The Shepherds' Crusade, or the Pastoreaux, emerged out of Normandy in 1320. One argument for the timing of this event has been that the repeated calls for popular crusades by Philip and his predecessors, combined with the absence of any actual large scale expeditions, ultimately boiled over into this popular, but uncontrolled, crusade. Philip's intent for a new crusade had certainly become widely known by the spring of 1320 and the emerging peace in Flanders and the north of France had left a large number of displaced peasants and soldiers. The result was a large and violent anti-Semitic movement threatening local Jews, royal castles, the wealthier clergy and Paris itself. The movement was ultimately condemned by Pope John, who doubted whether the movement had any real intent to carry out a crusade. Philip was forced to move against it, crushing the movement militarily and driving the remnants south across the Pyrenees into Aragon.