"... mais tot por le servise Deu"? Philippe III le Hardi, Charles d'Anjou, and the 1273/74 Imperial Candidature

“‘... mais tot por le servise Deu’? Philippe III le Hardi, Charles d’Anjou, and the 1273/74 Imperial Candidature.” The 1273 imperial candidature of the French king Philippe III le Hardi (1270–1285) has long been regarded as little more than a curiosity, a trivial footnote in the attempts of the king’s uncle, Charles d’Anjou, to establish his ascendancy over the Italian peninsula. This article sets out to question the veracity of this judgment. It seeks to demonstrate that both Philippe and Charles pursued the proposal that Philippe should become ruler of the western Empire extremely seriously, to the extent that both were willing to waive their rights over a sizeable and important region, the Comtat-Venaissin, in order to obtain this end. It proposes that the reasons for this lay in concerns associated with the successful prosecution of a future crusade and that the candidature reflected a view of the proper ordering of Christian society which for both Philippe and Charles incorporated the existence of a ...