Feast day: June 25

St. William of Vercelli

Abbot, Founder · 1085–1142

Patron of —

An Italian who set out as a young pilgrim, turned hermit on a lonely mountain, and there founded the monastery and order of Montevergine, 'the Mountain of the Virgin.'

William was born at Vercelli, in northern Italy, in 1085, was orphaned in infancy, and raised by relatives. Seized young by a longing for penance and pilgrimage, at about fifteen he set out, barefoot and poorly clad, on the long pilgrim road to the shrine of St. James at Compostela in Spain, and afterward planned to press on to the Holy Land.

Turned back from that journey — by an attack of robbers, and by what he took as a sign from God that he should serve in Italy — he settled instead as a hermit on a remote mountain between Naples and Benevento, Monte Vergine. There, against his wish for pure solitude, disciples gathered around him, and he was obliged to organize them into a community.

Out of this grew the congregation of Monte Vergine, the 'Williamites,' devoted to a strict and austere life of prayer and manual labour. William went on to found a number of other monasteries, for both men and women, through the kingdom of Naples, and won the respect and protection of King Roger II of Sicily.

Famous in his lifetime for miracles and for his severe asceticism, William died at one of his foundations in 1142. He is honoured as the founder of Monte Vergine, which remains a great Marian sanctuary to this day.

Crowds drawn by his holiness followed him into the wilderness, and the hermit's mountain became one of southern Italy's great pilgrim sanctuaries.

Image: Giuseppe Prinzi (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/15639b.htm