As a child, Philip was initially prepared for an ecclesiastical career. He learned to read and also learned Latin. and was placed at the Premonstratensian Monastery in Adelberg for his further education. From April 1189 to July 1193 Philip was provost at the collegiate church of Aachen Cathedral, while his father left Germany for the Third Crusade in 1189, but he drowned in the Göksu (Saleph) River in Anatolia the next year. In 1190 or 1191 Philip was elected Prince-bishop of Würzburg, though without being consecrated, probably due to intervention of his brother Henry VI. In 1186 Henry VI married with Constance, the aunt of the reigning King William II of Sicily; this gave the Hohenstaufen the possibility of a union of the Kingdom of Sicily with the Holy Roman Empire ("unio regni ad imperium"). As a result, however, the relationship with the Pope deteriorated, because the Holy See wanted to maintain the feudal claim over the Kingdom of Sicily. In the spring of 1193 Philip forsook his ecclesiastical calling, perhaps because of the childlessness of the imperial couple; also, Philip's three other brothers were also childless: Duke Frederick VI of Swabia had already died in 1191 and Conrad of Rothenburg, who succeeded him as Duke of Swabia, was unmarried. In addition, Otto I, Count Palatine of Burgundy, although already married, had no male descendants yet. However, the concerns of the imperial couple turned out to be unfounded. Empress Constance gave birth to a son on 26 December 1194 in Jesi, the later Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. While the Emperor was absent, the princes elected his two-year-old son Frederick as King of the Romans in Frankfurt at the end of 1196; with this move, Henry VI wanted to see his succession secured before he prepared for the Crusade of 1197.