Philip

/fil"ip/, n.

1. one of the 12 apostles. Mark 3:18; John 1:43-48; 6:5-7.

2. one of the leaders of the Christian Hellenists in the early church in Jerusalem who afterwards became an evangelist and missionary. Acts 6; 8:26-40.

3. King (Metacomet), died 1676, North American Indian chief: sachem of the Wampanoag tribe 1662-76; leader of the Indians in King Philip's War.

4. Prince, Duke of Edinburgh, born 1921, consort of Elizabeth II.

5. a male given name: from a Greek word meaning "lover of horses."

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(as used in expressions)

King Philip

Armour Philip Danforth

Benjamin Judah Philip

Berrigan Daniel Joseph and Philip Francis

Carey Peter Philip

Charles Philip Arthur George prince of Wales

Freneau Philip Morin

Glass Philip

Henslowe Philip

Johnson Philip Cortelyou

King Philip's War

Larkin Philip Arthur

Massinger Philip

Murray Philip

Neri Saint Philip

Ondaatje Philip Michael

Philip III

Philip the Good

Philip II

Philip of Macedon

Philip the Bold

Philip Augustus

Philip IV

Philip the Fair

Philip Morris tobacco companies

Philip of Hesse

Philip VI

Philip of Valois

Philip V

Philip duke of Edinburgh

Prince Philip

Philip of Swabia

Randolph Asa Philip

Rathbone Philip St. John Basil

Reuther Walter Philip

Roth Philip Milton

Schuyler Philip John

Sheridan Philip Henry

Sidney Sir Philip

Philip Silversmith

Snowden of Ickornshaw Philip Snowden Viscount

Sousa John Philip

Stella Frank Philip

Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart

Noel Baker of the City of Derby Philip John Noel Baker Baron

Philip John Baker

Rosebery Archibald Philip Primrose 5th earl of

Archibald Philip Primrose

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▪ Roman emperor

byname  Philip the Arabian , Latin in full  Marcus Julius Philippus 

born , Shahba [near modern Damascus, Syria]

died 249, Verona [Italy]

 Roman emperor from 244 to 249.

      A member of a distinguished equestrian family of Arab descent, Philip was praetorian prefect when the emperor Gordian III was killed in a mutiny (perhaps with Philip's connivance). Philip became emperor and quickly concluded a peace ending a war with Persia. After undertaking a series of campaigns against the Goths and other tribes on the Danube, he returned to Rome in 248 to celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of the city. Philip's reign saw the true beginning of the crisis of the 3rd century, which was marked by a series of barbarian invasions across the Danube and internal civil war led by dissident generals. The initial success of Decius, sent by Philip to face the Goth invasion of 248, led Decius's army to proclaim him emperor. In 249 their armies met near Verona, where Philip was defeated and slain.

      Philip was an excellent administrator who had risen through the ranks from the equestrian order to become ruler in a time that required not administrative skills but military competence.

▪ antipope

flourished 8th century, Italy

      antipope in July 768. Temporal rulers coveted the papal throne following the death (767) of Pope St. Paul I, and Toto, duke of Nepi, had his brother Constantine II, a layman, elected pope. The Lombard king Desiderius then sent troops to Rome, killing Toto and deposing Constantine. Backed by some Romans, the Lombards, in 768, secretly set Philip up as pope. Philip had been a monk in the monastery of St. Vito. He was ejected, however, and Stephen III (Stephen III (or IV)) (IV) was elected pope on Aug. 1, 768, at which time Philip retired to his monastery.

▪ king of Germany

also called  Philip of Swabia,  German  Philipp von Schwaben 

born 1178

died June 21, 1208, Bamberg, Ger.

 German Hohenstaufen king whose rivalry for the crown involved him in a decade of warfare with the Welf Otto IV.

      The youngest son of the Holy Roman emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, Philip was destined for the church. After being provost of the cathedral at Aachen, he was, in 1190 or 1191, elected bishop of Würzburg. Shortly after the death of his brother Frederick (1191), however, he abandoned his ecclesiastical career. Another brother, the Holy Roman emperor Henry VI, made him duke of Tuscany in 1195 and duke of Swabia in 1196. In May 1197 he married Irene, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Isaac II Angelus.

      At Henry VI's death in September 1197, his son, the future emperor Frederick II, was less than three years old, and the German princes were unwilling to accept him as king. The princes favourable to the Hohenstaufens elected Philip German king in March 1198. The opposing party, led by Archbishop Adolf of Cologne, elected Otto (Otto IV), a son of Henry the Lion of Brunswick of the rival Welf dynasty, king in June of that year. Otto was crowned at Aachen, the proper place for the ceremony, by Archbishop Adolf. Philip's coronation, by another prelate, did not take place until September 1198 at Mainz.

      In the ensuing civil war the Hohenstaufen cause prospered at first. In 1201, however, Pope Innocent III recognized Otto as king and excommunicated Philip. Philip's fortunes were only restored in 1204, by a series of defections from Otto's side, culminating in that of Adolf of Cologne himself. In June 1205, Adolf crowned Philip at Aachen.

      The city of Cologne, which, notwithstanding its archbishop, had sided with Otto, was captured in January 1207, and Otto's cause seemed lost. Late in 1207, however, when Philip offered to give Otto one of his daughters in marriage and to enfeoff him with either the duchy of Swabia or the kingdom of Arles, Otto, buoyed by hopes of financial, if not military, support from the kings of England and Denmark, rejected the offer. Nevertheless, a truce was arranged that lasted until June of the following year.

      In 1208 Pope Innocent III recognized Philip as king and promised to crown him emperor. Philip, who had mobilized his army at Bamberg in order to move against Otto, was waiting for the truce to expire when he was murdered by Otto of Wittelsbach, count Palatine of Bavaria, to whom he had refused to give one of his daughters in marriage. Eventually his daughters were married: Beatrix the Elder to his old rival Otto, Cunigunda to King Wenceslas of Bohemia, and Beatrix the Younger to Ferdinand III of Castile.

      A brave man, Philip was praised by contemporaries for his mildness and generosity.

▪ king of Judaea

born 20 BC

died AD 34

      son of Herod I the Great; he ruled ably as tetrarch over the former northeastern quarter of his father's kingdom of Judaea.

      When the Roman emperor Augustus adjusted Herod's will, Philip was assigned to the region east of the Sea of Galilee, in modern northern Israel, Lebanon, and southern Syria. In AD 6, he may have joined in charging his half brother with misgoverning Judaea, but with little benefit to himself, for Judaea then became a Roman province.

      Of his father's inheritance his was the poorest share, but he ruled it well. Because he had few Jewish subjects, he pursued a policy of Hellenization. His coins bore the Emperor's image, and he rebuilt a town, Beth-saida (on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee), renaming it Julias in honour of the Emperor's daughter. Near the source of the Jordan he founded another town and allowed it a large degree of self-government, on the Greek pattern.

      Philip was less extravagant a ruler than any of his brothers. He avoided prolonged trips to Rome, instead travelling extensively in his territory and devoting his time to his subjects. Late in his reign he married Salome, the daughter of Herodias, who was her mother's tool in securing from Herod Antipas the execution of John the Baptist.

▪ landgrave of Hesse

Introduction

byname  Philip The Magnanimous,  German  Philipp Der Grossmütige 

born Nov. 13, 1504, Marburg, Hesse (Hessen) [Germany]

died March 31, 1567, Kassel

 landgrave (Landgraf) of Hesse (1509–67), one of the great figures of German Protestantism, who championed the independence of German princes against the Holy Roman emperor Charles V.

Early years.

      Philip was the son of Landgrave William II, a cultivated, austere man and an experienced soldier. He died when Philip was barely five years old. Philip's mother, Duchess Anna of Mecklenburg, was a passionate, energetic, and ambitious woman; her relations with her son, however, were cool and were impaired by her second marriage in 1519 and by Philip's conversion to the doctrines of Martin Luther. As a victim of political forces he spent a gloomy youth, attaching himself increasingly to his older sister Elizabeth, later duchess of Saxony; throughout his life no one was closer to him than she.

      In March 1518 the emperor Maximilian I declared Philip to be of age. While assuming the government in name, he retained his parents' capable counselors, mostly lawyers by training, who imbued the young man with his parents' single-minded devotion to the welfare of the state. Philip eventually developed into a self-reliant politician. From his youth, he characteristically thought in terms of the territorial state, an attitude that was to determine his future relations with the Habsburg emperors. He ruled his territory in the spirit of an early enlightened despotism.

      The landgraviate of Hesse had suffered greatly during his mother's regency, but Philip succeeded in bringing order to the confused administration of the state and, through skillful management of alliances, in freeing Hesse from its isolation in foreign affairs. In 1523 Philip, fighting alongside the powerful electors of the Palatinate and of Trier, defeated the rebellious imperial knight Franz von Sickingen. This victory also crushed the remaining opposition of the Hessian nobility and undoubtedly strengthened the young man's self-confidence.

      Two years later, in fact, he scored his first personal triumph when he suppressed the peasant revolt in the neighbouring imperial abbeys of Fulda and Hersfeld. He then advanced into Thuringia and, allied with the elector of Saxony and the dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and Saxony, defeated Thomas Müntzer (Müntzer, Thomas), a popular preacher from Mühlhausen/Thüringen, at a battle near Frankenhausen in May 1525. By this victory Philip saved the central German principalities from destruction.

Conversion to Protestantism.

      During these years, while the first storm of the Reformation was sweeping through Germany, Luther's teachings gained a firm hold in many Hessian localities and at the landgrave's court. It was not until the summer of 1524, however, after making a detailed study of the Bible, the writings of the Church Fathers, and the history of the church, that Philip himself joined Luther (Luther, Martin). At the same time, orthodox Roman Catholic princes of southern Germany were uniting to make common cause against the ecclesiastical innovations. After the defeat of the peasants this alliance was aimed to bring down the middle and northern German princes as well, in order “to eradicate the damned Lutheran sect, the source of this revolt.”

      Philip was deeply convinced that the religious question was at the same time a political one, and he was the first to recognize that freedom for the new faith would be secured only if Protestant sovereigns and towns united for defense. In May 1526 he won over the elector John of Saxony for a defensive alliance, which other northern and eastern German princes then joined. Henceforward, he strove to unite the Protestant estates into a powerful alliance, which would render them unassailable and thus allow them to build their state churches.

      Only when the decree of August 1526 of the imperial Diet of Speyer seemed to provide a legal basis for it and when a Hessian “synod” (part church council, part provincial diet) at Homberg had publicly discussed the religious question did Philip carry through the Reformation in his state. The Homberg deliberations led to the Reformatio ecclesiarum Hassiae, unique for its democratic-presbyterian church constitution and the ecclesiastical discipline of the congregations. On Luther's advice this reform, conceived by the former Franciscan Franz Lambert, was not carried out; instead Hesse became Protestant on the model provided by the electorate of Saxony.

      Philip, however, continued to favour the teachings of the southern German and Swiss reformers and consequently resolved to mediate between the Lutherans and the Zwinglians, adherents of the Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli. Within one year, 1527, Philip secularized all the monasteries. The new state-church organization was now methodically built up. In order to ensure a new generation of clergy and officials, the landgrave took the educational system in hand and founded the first Protestant university in 1527 at Marburg. On former monastic and church estates, he set up four hospitals for the insane, the first “psychiatric” hospitals known to medical history. Church and school were subordinated to the “common good.”

      There arose the Protestant authoritarian state, which considered itself a taskmaster responsible for the religious and moral life of its subjects and dictated their beliefs. Like all his fellow princes, Philip was intolerant, but, in contrast to most, he respected the individual's freedom of conscience by permitting dissenters to emigrate. He soon showed this attitude in his dealings with the Anabaptists: his purpose was not to punish them as the imperial laws dictated but to convert them by clemency and instruction in doctrine; in this work Martin Bucer (Bucer, Martin), the reformer from Strasbourg, was his helper. They introduced into Hesse in 1539 the rite of confirmation, which became a model for Protestant churches.

Leadership of the Protestant states.

      His agile and fertile mind, infectious energy, and fearlessness rapidly made Philip the leader of the Protestant estates. He continued to strive for a great Protestant alliance, for he clearly recognized that the situation of the Protestants would deteriorate if the Roman Catholic emperor Charles V were to triumph in the struggle for European predominance. The way to change and reform began in 1529, when the second imperial Diet of Speyer repealed the first imperial Diet's decree of 1526. A group of princes and towns led by Philip protested (hence Protestants) against the repeal on the epoch-making grounds that in questions of faith each imperial estate would have to justify itself before God alone.

      Moreover, the landgrave saw with growing apprehension that doctrinal differences between Protestants endangered the development of an all-embracing Protestant defensive alliance. His attempt at the Colloquy of Marburg (Marburg, Colloquy of), in October 1529, to bring about a theological settlement in personal discussion with the reformers, headed by Luther and Zwingli, essentially failed over the question of the Eucharist. Thus, the ambitious plans he shared with Zwingli for a European alliance against the Roman Catholic house of Habsburg remained only a dream.

      Despite everything, Philip managed in 1531 to unite 6 princes and 10 towns in the Schmalkaldic League, which was to serve as a defensive alliance. Although it had serious organizational shortcomings, the league gradually became the centre of Protestant politics. At the same time, it became a rallying point for the enemies of the house of Habsburg as well as for those Roman Catholic princes who were fearful for their independence. The league, of which the landgrave was the driving spirit, became, moreover, a factor in European politics. Philip reached the peak of his career in 1534, when he executed a campaign to restore Duke Ulrich of Württemberg, who had been driven from his state by the Habsburgs. As a result of his success, Württemberg was opened up to the Reformation, and Austria's power in southern Germany was broken.

Decline.

      It was Philip's tragedy that he destroyed his own leading position a few years later by his extremely provocative marital transactions. In addition to his marriage to the duchess Christina of Saxony in 1523, he contracted a second marriage with Margarete von der Saale, a maid of honour of his sister Elizabeth. As a bigamist he fell under the judgment of the Holy Roman emperor, with whom he now tried to come to terms, but, while Philip and the Schmalkaldic League remained inactive and the other Protestant princes indulged in petty disputes, the emperor Charles V prepared to settle the religious problem once and for all by force of arms. In the summer of 1546 he attacked. The league's unwieldy organization, long deplored by Philip, now took its toll. Mistakes of leadership, lack of finance, and ultimately the attack by the Protestant duke Maurice of Saxony on the territory of his cousin the elector John Frederick of Saxony hastened the collapse.

      After the capture of the Elector, Philip submitted himself to the mercy of the Emperor in June 1547. Deceived by Charles, he, too, was led away a prisoner. His long imprisonment in the Netherlands deeply affected his mental powers of resistance. In order to gain his freedom, he accepted the so-called Augsburg Interim, by which the Emperor attempted to restore the unity of the Catholic faith without interference from the princes. Philip, however, failed in his attempt to gain his freedom, for the Hessian population resisted conversion to Catholicism. Only after his son-in-law, Maurice of Saxony, and Philip's eldest son, William, in alliance with other German princes and Henry II of France, unexpectedly rose against the Emperor in March 1552 were he and John Frederick released.

      Aged and ailing, but also wiser, the Landgrave returned to his homeland. After the victory over the Emperor, the adherents of the Confession of Augsburg—the official Lutheran doctrine—succeeded in gaining a position of legal equality with the Catholics in the empire, in accordance with the Peace of Augsburg of 1555. In this respect Philip, who was far ahead of his time, expressed genuine tolerance for all Christian denominations. He continued to pursue his old plans for a Protestant union and strove on behalf of his embattled co-religionists in France and the Netherlands, but in his later years he cautiously remained in the background of the political stage. He devoted all his strength to the rebuilding of his state, which had been ravaged by war and by its occupation by foreign troops. By the time of his death in 1567, his contemporaries were already referring to the warm-hearted and generous sovereign as the Magnanimous.

Walter Heinemeyer

Additional Reading

A bibliography of literature on Philip is given in K.E. Demandt, Schrifttum zur Geschichte und geschichtlichen Landeskunde von Hessen, vol. 1, pp. 203–212 (1965). General information is found in The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 2, ch. 3 and 6 (1958). Philip's political correspondence is preserved in the Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg and has been calendared in F. Kuech and W. Heinemeyer (eds.), Politisches Archiv des Landgrafen Philipp, 4 vol. (1904–59). Valuable individual research is contained in the publications issued in 1904 to honour Philip: Festschrift zum Gedächtnis Philipps des Grossmütigen, published by the Verein für hessische Geschichte und Landeskunde (1904); Philipp der Grossmütige, published by the Historischen Verein für das Grossherzogtum Hessen (1904); and C.A. von Drach and G. Koennecke, Die Bildnisse Philipps des Grossmütigen (1905).

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