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Normandy under Louis IX known as Saint Louis Period 1226 – 1270

This whole period was marked by the reign of Louis IX, known as the Prudhomme and called Saint Louis, fourth son of Louis VIII the Lion and Blanche of Castile, crowned on 29 November 1226 at the age of twelve.
1226 – Blanche of Castile rules the kingdom. It settled the discontent of certain lords, including Philippe Hurepel, half-brother of Louis, Count of Clermont, Boulogne, Aumale and Dammartin.
1227 – On January 6, at the request of several lords, Blanche and her son, release Ferrand of Flanders, who had betrayed Philip Augustus at the Battle of Bouvines, in exchange for a ransom and his loyalty. Then, Louis IX made an effort towards overly restless lords, he promised to marry his brother Jean to the daughter of Pierre Mauclerc, Duke of Brittany, by giving her several towns as pledges, to Hugues X de Lusignan he also promised to marry his brother Alphonse to one of his daughters and his sister Isabelle to one of his sons.
In April, a truce was concluded between the King of France and Richard of Cornwall, brother of the King of England. The following month, Henry III formally asked Louis for a truce.
  Louis IX 
 

In the summer, Philippe Hurepel and Pierre I Mauclerc, Count of Brittany, at the head of barons who could no longer bear to be ruled by a child and a woman, who was also a foreigner, planned to separate the son from his mother and his advisers in order to govern in his name by appropriating power, land and wealth. On his return from negotiations with the barons of the west, Louis was stranded in Montlhéry. With the support of the Parisians, Ferrand of Flanders and Thibault IV of Champagne, he entered Paris triumphantly.
1228 – The coalition is reformed, led by Enguerrand III de Coucy, Count of Roucy. She did not attack the king and Blanche directly, but one of her strongest supporters, Thibault IV of Champagne. Rumors accuse Blanche of emptying the kingdom's coffers and having a lover.
1229 – In October, Pierre Mauclerc, Duke of Brittany takes an oath of allegiance to the King of England.
Pierre I. Mauclerc  

1230 – Louis IX sets out on a campaign against Pierre Mauclerc.
In May, Henry III of England, called for help by Pierre Mauclerc, landed in Saint Malo and went to shut himself up in Nantes. He was joined by sixty Norman knights, led by Fulk Pesnel, who, paying homage to him and swearing fealty to him, asked him to invade Normandy, assuring him that the province would promptly submit to the son of its former duke-king. Hubert de Burgh, the kingdom's chief justiciary, strongly opposes what he considers an adventure. The bailiff of Rouen, Jean des Vignes, was quickly sent to the rebellious lands. He immediately attacked the main fortress of the rebel leader, La Haye Pesnel, whose castle he razed to the ground and put in a state of defence strongholds close to Brittany. Cut off from their base, the Norman rebels had nothing to do but to follow the King of England in his retreat.
On 10 October, Henry III promised Fulk Pesnel to restore his English possessions, as his Norman possessions had been lost.
On 28 October, Henry III landed ingloriously for England.
In the winter, Blanche of Castile, anxious to put an end to the Norman rebellion once and for all, showed clemency, and Fulk Pesnel returned to favour and recovered his fief of La Haye Pesnel.
1231 – In the spring, Louis IX undertakes a new campaign and imposes a three-year truce on Pierre Mauclerc. It was renewed in 1235 and again for five years in 1238.
1234 – In November, Pierre Mauclerc submits, the barons have fallen into line.
1242 – On May 20, Henry III landed at Royan, in Saintonge.
On 21 and 22 July, he was defeated by Louis IX's troops at Taillebourg and Saintes. Normandy didn't budge.
1243 – A new five-year truce is concluded.
1244 – Louis IX, aged 30, after being seriously ill, takes a crusade vow against the advice of his mother, Blanche of Castile, who plays an essential role with him.
1247 – Saint Louis hopes to settle the conflict between him and the King of England before his departure, a mission impossible. Domestically, he sought to remedy the abuses of his administration. He ordered a series of investigations entrusted to religious belonging to the mendicant orders: Dominicans and Franciscans. The investigators stop in localities where they get information from the inhabitants. These results, entitled "Querimoniae Normannorum", are transcribed into Latin.
1256 – Saint Louis makes his first major tour of Normandy, a tour that allows the population to see the king in the flesh.

 
 
  Henri III
 

1258 – On 28 May, Saint Louis, a formidable politician and a fine diplomat, like his ancestor Philip Augustus, achieved it with the Treaty of Paris. Eudes Rigaux, Archbishop  of Rouen and Chancellor, accepted the terms of the  treaty on behalf of the King of France and the Normans. Raoul, Archbishop of Tarentaise, brought the surety of the Emperor of Germany, and were sworn by the procurators of the King of England, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, Peter of Savoy, and Hugh Bigot.   
1259 – On December 4, the Treaty is ratified, the King of England Henry III Plantagenet pays homage to Saint Louis.Under the terms of this treaty: Saint Louis retrocedes to Henry III the suzerainty over Limousin, Périgord, Guyenne, Quercy, Agenais and Saintonge in return the King of England undertakes, for these possessions, to render to the King of France the feudal homage due to the overlord. Saint Louis retains Normandy and the Pays de Loire (Touraine, Anjou, Poitou and Maine). This treaty, made of reciprocal concessions and supported by the victories of the French armies, made the King of France the most powerful monarch in the West. It puts an end to what some modern historians have proposed to call "the first Hundred Years' War" which began with the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II Plantagenet.The Normans, relieved, applauded this treaty and appreciated, more and more, that Saint Louis wanted to make France "  the eldest daughter of the church".
1270 – On August 25, Saint Louis dies of plague or dysentery under the walls of Tunis during the Eighth Crusade. Philippe, son of Louis IX and Marguerite de Provence, succeeded him at the age of 15, under the name of Philip III, known as the Bold.Philippe will not really take care of his "beautiful province", busy as he is to war, successfully, in the south of France.
Treaty of Paris 1259  

The Clergy and the Hospices of Assistance under Louis IX, Saint Louis
The Secular ClergyUnlike previous reigns, the effective freedom of bishops is not respected. They were chosen from among the French members of the royal entourage, as well as for high administrative positions. They are at the head of a very large clergy. Normandy has 4,000 small parishes, with the exception of the diocese of Rouen, the richest and most coveted in the kingdom, divided into 6 archdeaconries, 28 deaneries and 1,400 parishes. By way of comparison, the second, Bayeux, has only 600 parishes.The Norman clerics,
like all the clerics of the kingdom, benefited from the  ecclesiastical "forum" and two Norman specificities:  "immunity"  and "lay patronage". The ecclesiastical "forum" exempted them from paying secular, seigneurial and royal taxes. From  the middle of the thirteenth century, the "décimes" owed to the king could only be recovered with the permission of the pope.
"Immunity" refers to abbeys, which are not subject to both the authority of the diocesan bishop and that of the king's local representatives. "Lay patronage" refers to the many churches that are still run by lay people. Local lords or the king himself enjoyed the right to present parish priests in many rural parishes. Finally, the secular clergy were exempted from military service and increasingly respected the prohibition of marriage.
The episcopal hierarchy comprises:
-the archdeacons and canons of the cathedral chapter who reside in the episcopal city and are remunerated by a  "prebend"  (income from land situated in the diocese),-vicars, chaplains and priests form the "Lower Choir" »). The vicars assist the canons and replace them if necessary. The chaplains were in charge of the chapels built around the choir and then along the aisles of the nave of the church. Priests are in charge  of "obit masses" (masses said on the birthday of a donor or recipient).  
The Parish ClergyEach parish usually includes several priests. The parish priest is in charge of his soul, and of the vicars who assist him. As the basic unit of the Society, the parish priest appears as the natural head of a rural community.
The Regular ClergyDespite the decision on both sides of the Channel not to subject monastic establishments to the same choice as lay lords, in practice Norman abbeys could only enjoy their English possessions intermittently.
The appearance and rise of the mendicant orders: Franciscans, Carmelites, Dominicans and Augustinians, introduced great upheavals in religious Normandy.
Eudes Rigaud, born into a family of minor nobility around 1210, joined the Franciscan Friars Minor around 1230, and quickly became one of their greatest intellectuals. Consecrated Archbishop of Rouen (1248-1275), the most coveted post in the kingdom, he is known for his diary of the pastoral visits he made throughout the province in 1250 and 1255. In it, he gives a detailed account of life in Normandy and notes the inadequacy of the reform of the members of the clergy. During his archiepiscopate, he helped and multiplied many foundations: the Knights Templar around 1250, the collegiate  church of Notre Dame de la Ronde (1255), the  Trinitarians (1259), the Carmelites (1260), the Dominican Sisters at Les Emmurés (1261) and consecrated the church of the Franciscan convent of Rouen (1261). An ex-officio member of the Exchequer of Normandy, he played an important role in the conclusion of the peace treaty between Saint Louis and the King of England. On March 15, 1270, after preaching the crusade, he joined the Crusader army. Before he died, Saint Louis named him one of his executors.
 
  Crypt of Bayeux Cathedral
 

Welfare Institutions

In the thirteenth century, Normandy was covered with a veritable network of welfare establishments, increasingly specialised: leprosariums or sickhouses, hospitals or Hôtel-Dieu. The Bishops are very interested in the movement for the creation of these new establishments, some of which are remarkably active, which testifies to a real desire to meet the needs of the population in terms of assistance and relief of the poor and the sick, a traditional activity of the Church. Some establishments, in order to escape the tutelage of the church, applied directly to the king. In 1225, Louis VIII had written in his will donations to 1,500 hospitals in his kingdom. Saint Louis was very attached to the development of these welfare establishments, most often involving the revival of establishments that were vegetating, through substantial donations.
   

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