In July 1252, while Louis and Gilles were in
Jaffa, Gilles was compensated for the loss of his archdiocese with an annual income of 200
livres parisis, which he was set to receive until he could be appointed to another see. This occurred shortly afterwards in 1253, when a raid from
Damascus killed 800 of Louis's men at
Sidon. Louis himself helped bury them, along with Gilles and the archbishop of Tyre,
Nicholas Larcat. Several days later, Nicholas died. Louis nominated Gilles as the new archbishop.
Pope Innocent IV finally confirmed his election in January 1254, although Gilles was not officially consecrated until the autumn of 1255, just before Eudes de Chateauroux returned to France. In the meantime, in the summer of 1254, while he was still archbishop-elect, Gilles bought a house from the
Hospitallers for 40 bezants and founded a hospital for
Breton pilgrims. Eudes authorized the construction of an
oratory dedicated to
St. Martin, the patron saint of the
province of Tours; Tours was the metropolitan archdiocese of Angers as well as the dioceses of Brittany. In early 1255 Gilles also acquired another house from the Hospitallers. These properties were located in the Montmusard suburb of Acre on the
vicus Anglorum, the street of the English, which had been settled by English crusaders after the
Third Crusade. The foundation of the Breton hospital was confirmed by
Pope Alexander IV in March 1256. In April 1255, Gilles was assigned to govern the church of Jerusalem, which had been without a patriarch since the death of
Robert of Nantes in June 1254. Gilles administered the church until the arrival of the new patriarch,
James Pantaleon, in June 1256. During this time, Gilles was also involved in a dispute with an Italian cleric named Signoretto, who falsely claimed to have received
benefices in the
cathedral of Acre. Florent, the
bishop of Acre (and a suffragan of the archbishop of Tyre) was in Rome complaining to the pope about this matter in person, so it was Gilles who settled the dispute with Signoretto in Acre. During this time the
War of Saint Sabas broke out between the Venetian and Genoese merchant communities in Acre. Both communities had been attempting to take possession of a house owned by the
monastery of Saint Sabas, after which the war is named. In 1251 a Venetian merchant had killed a Genoese merchant in Acre, and in 1256 the two sides attacked and captured each other's ships in the harbour. The Pisan community was also involved, initially in support of the Genoese, but it switched allegiances and supported the Venetians in 1257. In 1258 the war ended after a naval battle between the Venetians and Genoese. Because of these conflicts the Venetians decided to promote their representative in Tyre. Previously there had been a
bailo in Acre, to whom the representative in Tyre was subject. In 1254 the official in Tyre was also raised to the status of
bailo. One of the first acts of Andrea Dolfin, the new bailo in Tyre, was to negotiate an agreement with Gilles on the relationship between the Venetian community and the local church. Gilles was also involved in the annulment of the marriage of
Balian of Arsuf and
Plaisance of Antioch. An agreement could not be reached, so in 1257 Gilles sent the case to the papal court. The pope succeeded in annulling the marriage in 1258. Gilles then travelled to Italy to meet with the pope and to explain, in person, the difficulties faced by the crusader kingdom due to the recent
Mongol incursion into the Middle East. The Mongol threat was well-known to the pope, as they had already
invaded eastern Europe in the 1230s and 1240s. Now, the Mongols
sacked Baghdad in 1258 and were threatening the crusader states as well. While Gilles was in Italy, Alexander IV died and Gilles's metropolitan, the patriarch Jacques Pantaleon, became Pope Urban IV. Urban was very attentive to the needs of the crusader states. He sent Gilles and
John of Valenciennes,
lord of Haifa, to France to preach and raise money for the organization of a new crusade. In July 1262 he met with Louis IX and
James I of Aragon at
Clermont-Ferrand, and in the autumn of 1263 he met
Robert de Sorbon in Paris. Urban also assigned Gilles to collect 1% of the income of all French clergy for the next five years. Gilles was also allowed to collect income from the dioceses of
Cambrai,
Toul,
Liège,
Metz, and
Verdun in the
Holy Roman Empire. The
archbishop of Rouen Eudes Rigaud and the
bishop of Bayeux Eudes de Lorris were assigned to make sure that Gilles and John received this money. When Urban IV died in 1264, his successor
Pope Clement IV was less interested in the fate of the crusader states; he preferred to divert the money that had been raised so far toward the ongoing war between the papacy and
Manfred of Sicily. Gilles, frustrated with the policies of the new pope, asked to be relieved of his assignment to preach the crusade so that he could live out the rest of his life in Tyre. The pope agreed but the message never reached Gilles. ==Death==