page_title: Philip V of France
section_title: "Leper scare"
hierarchical_section_title: Philip V of France / Final year / "Leper scare"
caption_attribution_description: English: Tomb of Henry II and his wife Catherine de' Medici with gisant effigies of Philip V of France, Jeanne d'Évreux and Charles IV (sculptured with a trunk of female proprotions and an almost female neck) Français&#160;: Tombeau de Henri II et Catherine de Médicis, Philippe V le Long, Jeanne d'Evreux et Charles IV le Bel (exposé avec proprotions feminines du tronc et un cou prèsque feminin) עברית: מצבות קבר וצלמיות בבזיליקת סן-דני: במרכז - אנרי השני, מלך צרפת, ורעייתו, קתרין דה מדיצ'י, למטה משמאל - פיליפ החמישי "הגבוה", ז'אן ד'אברו, רעיתו השלישית של שארל הרביעי, ושארל הרביעי
context_page_description: Philip V, known as the Tall, was King of France and Navarre. He reigned from 1316 to 1322.
  As the second son of king Philip IV, he was granted an appanage, the County of Poitiers, while his elder brother, Louis X, inherited the throne in 1314. When Louis died in 1316, he left a daughter and a pregnant wife, Clementia of Hungary. Philip the Tall successfully claimed the regency. Queen Clementia gave birth to a boy, who was proclaimed king as John I, but the infant king lived only for five days.
  At the death of his nephew, Philip immediately had himself crowned at Reims. However, his legitimacy was challenged by the party of Louis X's daughter Joan. Philip V successfully contested her claims for a number of reasons, including her youth, doubts regarding her paternity, and the Estates General's determination that women should be excluded from the line of succession to the French throne. The succession of Philip, instead of Joan, set the precedent for the French royal succession that would be famously known as the Salic law.
context_section_description: In 1321 an alleged conspiracy – the "leper scare" – was discovered in France. The accusation, apparently unfounded, was that lepers had been poisoning the wells of various towns, and that this activity had been orchestrated by the Jewish minority, secretly commissioned by foreign Muslims. The scare took hold in the febrile atmosphere left by the Shepherds' crusade of the previous year and the legacy of the poor harvests of the previous decade.
  The French Jews were, by 1321, closely connected to the French crown; Philip had given orders that royal officials assist Jewish money lenders in recovering Christian debts, and some local officials were arguing that the crown was due to inherit the estates of dead Jewish merchants. Following the events of 1320, Philip was involved in fining those who had attacked Jews during the Shepherds' Crusade, which in practice added further to the dislike of this minority in France. Rumours and allegations about lepers themselves had been circulated in 1320 as well, and some had been arrested during the Crusade.
  Philip was in Poitiers in June, involved in a tour of the south aimed at reform of the southern fiscal system, when word arrived of the scare. Philip issued an early edict demanding that any leper found guilty was to be burnt and their goods would be forfeit to the crown. The King's southern tour and reform plans, although administratively sound by modern standards, had created much local opposition, and modern historians have linked the King's role in Poitiers with the sudden outbreak of violence. This all put Philip in a difficult position: He could not openly side with those claiming wrongdoing by the lepers, Jews, and Muslims without encouraging further unnecessary violence; on the other hand, if he did not ally himself to the cause, he encouraged further unsanctioned violence, weakening his royal position. Some Jews did leave France as a result of the leper scare, but Philip had successfully resisted signing any formal edict, which limited the impact to some degree.
caption: Effigies of Philip, his brother Charles and sister-in-law Joan
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