Culture, Power and Personality in Medieval France

The assessment of the comparative wealth of Louis VII and his son Philip II has been a key, for both mediaeval and modern writers, to an evaluation of the power of the early Capetian monarchy. Contemporaries of Philip II looked back upon his father as a relatively poor monarch, simple and pious. On the other hand, Philip, the king who annexed Vermandois and conquered Normandy for the royal domain, was called Augustus by his biographer Rigord because he had “augmented”the realm, and chroniclers routinely remarked that Philip had increased or enriched the kingdom. Modern historians have generally accepted this contrast. Before 1180 the Capetian kings were the lords of a relatively small domain in the ºle-de-France, which Louis VI was able to consolidate and Louis VII used as a base for influencing his great vassals. Philip II, conqueror and financial innovator, raised the actual (as opposed to theoretical) power of the monarchy above that of the neighboring territorial principalities and began a new period of expansion for the French monarchy.