Philip the Good (Fr. Philippe le Bon) was the third duke of Burgundy (1419-1467) of the Valois dynasty. He dreamed of fighting against the infidel and recovering the Holy Land, where he wanted his heart to be buried.
Philip was the son of John, then count of Nevers and later duke of Burgundy (d. 1419), and Margaret of Bavaria. He was born while his father was on his way to join the Crusade of Nikopolis, which ended in defeat by the Turks in September 1396. The assassination of John, who had succeeded as duke of Burgundy in 1404, led Philip to form an alliance with England in 1420. King Henry V of England seems to have been his crusading mentor: in 1421 they both sent the Flemish knight Gilbert of Lannoy to make a journey of reconnaissance in the East.
Up to 1450, Philip limited Burgundian crusading activities to espionage and small naval operations. He sent the diplomat Bertrandon de la Broquiere to reconnoiter in the Ottoman Empire in 1432-1433 and organized ships to assist the Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes (1441, 1444) and Constantinople (1444-1445). He seems to have thought of a conquest of the Morea in 1436-1437, but more seriously of a recovery of the Holy Land in 1445-1448. From 1450 onward, Philip’s all-out aim was a general war against the infidels, above all the Ottoman Turks.
In 1451 Philip took a vow to succor the holy Christian faith. He dispatched four embassies to seek support: these went to Pope Nicholas V and King Alfonso I of Naples, to King Charles VII of France, to King Henry VI of England, and to Emperor Frederick III. This initiative was a complete failure, but the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 gave Philip a new and real focus for his zeal. His crusade vow was publicized at the Feast of the Pheasant, held with splendid ceremony in Lille at 1454. Yet it took ten years before Philip dispatched a small fleet under his bastard son Anthony, which stopped at Marseilles: Pope Pius II had died, and the crusade floundered. Philip was succeeded as duke of Burgundy by his son Charles the Bold.
-Jacques Paviot
See also: Burgundy
Bibliography
Bonenfant, Paul, Philippe le Bon, 3d ed. (Bruxelles:
Renaissance du Livre, 1955).
Hintzen, Johanna Dorina, De Kruistochtplannen van Philips den Goede (Rotterdam: Brusse’s Uitgevers-Maatschappij, 1918).
Muller, Heribert, Kreuzzugspldne und Kreuzzugspolitik des Herzogs Philipp des Guten von Burgund (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993).
Paviot, Jacques, Les dues de Bourgogne, la croisade et l’Orient (fin XlVe siecle - XVe siecle) (Paris: Presses de l’Universite de Paris-Sorbonne, 2003).
Vaughan, Richard, Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy (London: Longman, 1970).
World History
