Saint William of Montevergine

He was not long in this place without being visited by a crowd of people attracted by the report of his miracles and the desire to receive his instructions and to commend themselves to his prayers. Several secular priests, charmed by his pious conversations, threw themselves at his feet to beg him to admit them to the number of his disciples and to lead them on the path of perfection; it was thus that he began the establishment of the Congregation known to this day as Monte-Vergine, in the year 1119, under the pontificate o f Callixtu Calixte II Archbishop of Vienne who became pope, present at the Pleas of God in 1116. s II. It is not possible to explain with what fervor these new religious embraced the practice of virtue, being animated by the powerful exhortations and the beautiful actions of their holy founder. Abstinence was the most delicious dish of their meals; interior and exterior mortification was their principal exercise; prayer and union with God were their continual occupation; and manual labor, outside the time of their offices, served as their recreation. They lived thus in peace and in beautiful concord, and were advancing with great strides toward perfection, when the devil sowed division among them and excited in them a spirit of murmuring against the blessed William, because of the austerity of the rules he prescribed for them and which they began to find excessive and unbearable, and the great alms they saw him give every day and which they believed to be extremely prejudicial to the monastery. This bitterness of the religious made him take the resolution to withdraw, because it is hardly possible to reduce embittered spirits except by removing from before their eyes the object of their distress; he judged, therefore, that his presence, far from being useful to them, would rather be very disadvantageous to them. However, God, who only permits evil to draw from it a greater good, had only permitted this persecution against his servant to give him the means to extend further the new Order he had instituted: thus, abandoning Monte-Vergine, he founded several other monasteries, both for men and for women, in various places in the kingdom of Naples; which he could not have done easily while remaining always in his first solitude. The spirit of his institute was to lead a penitent life; that is why he forbade his children wine, meat, and all kinds of dairy products, and ordered that three days of the week they would eat only raw herbs with a little bread.

The reputation of his holiness spreading everywhere, it reached Roger I, King of Naples, who soon had Roger Ier, roi de Naples Count of Sicily who expelled the Saracens. him come to his court to have the consolation of conversing with him. He was so edified by his angelic conversation that he had a house of his Order built in Salerno, opposite his palace, in order to have him near him more often. He frequently conversed with this holy man. William knew how to take advantage of this to speak to the king about his duty and lead him to virtue. He represented to him that he should not forget himself amidst the splendor of his greatness, nor let himself be dazzled by the brilliance of his crown; that this worldly happiness would one day pass; that he had a sovereign Judge to whom he must render an account of all his actions; that he should think of meriting His grace by loving Him with all his heart, and of appeasing His anger through a filial fear of offending Him; that, to attract the blessings of heaven upon his kingdom, he must be entirely submissive to the holy Church, ensure justice is rendered in all his States and repress injustice; declare himself the father and protector of the poor, fight vice and banish the vicious, always take the side of virtue and good people, prohibit the pomp and luxury that are the ruin of families; and finally, live himself in such a way that he served as an example to everyone. He made similar exhortations to the great lords, trying to imprint in them a horror for sin and a love for piety. Nevertheless, as devotion finds enemies everywhere, and particularly in the court of princes, some courtiers put it into the king's mind that our Saint was not what one thought, and that, if His Majesty wished for him to be tested, one would soon see that his virtue was only hypocrisy. Roger, too credulous, listened to this proposal: a courtesan was tasked with soliciting him to evil and making him fall into sin. This miserable woman therefore came to find the Blessed one with all the charms she believed capable of inspiring love in him, and, through lascivious speech, she pressed him to consent to the pleasure she offered him. He pretended at first to acquiesce and asked her to return. The courtesan imagined she had won the victory and ran to bring the news to the king. But she was very surprised when, in the evening, having returned to the Saint, she saw him lie down on a bed of burning coals and invite her to do the same. This prodigy astonished her so much (for the fire did no harm to the servant of God) that, bursting into tears, she prostrated herself on the ground, asking him for forgiveness for her crime; and, from an infamous sinner, she became a penitent Magdalene. Since then, she published this miracle everywhere to confirm the good opinion one had of our Saint. Selling everything she had, she helped William to found a convent for women in Venosa, enclosed herself there under the guidance of the Saint, and became its abbess; she is known by the name of the blessed Agnes of Veno sa. Saint William, having le bienheureuse Agnès de Venosa Former courtesan converted by William, who became an abbess. arned by revelation that he would soon go to receive in heaven the reward for his labors, warned the king, recommended to him for the last time the practice of the instructions he had given him, and retired to the monastery of Guglielmo, near the city of Nusco, to prepare for death. This happy Nusco Town near which the saint died. day having arrived, just as he had predicted some time before, he had himself carried to the church; there, lying on the bare earth, without wanting to allow anything to be placed under him to relieve him, he exhorted his religious to perseverance, asked them to bury him with the same habit he was wearing, and rendered his blessed soul to God, which went to enjoy His presence in the year of Our Lord 1142. Some authors say it was June 7; but the Reverend Father Renda, prior of Montevergine, who wrote his life, places his death on this day: in which he has been followed by Cardinal Baronius, in his Remarks on the Roman Martyrology. His body was buried in the same church, which changed its name from Saint-Sauveur, to whom it was dedicated, to that of Saint-Guillaume, founder of Montevergine.

Our Saint did not give a written Rule to his religious, but always governed them by word of mouth and by his examples. Albert, whom he put in his place when leaving Montevergine, continued to lead them in the same manner; but Robert, who succeeded him, foreseeing that the order would not be maintained by simple traditions and customary practices, which are easy to alter and change entirely, had recourse to the sovereign pontiff Alexander III, to plac Alexandre III Pope who proceeded with the canonization of Bertrand in Toulouse. e it under the Rule of Saint Benedict, under which it has remained with great reputation. Thus, this Robert is counted as the first abbot of the Congregation.

There is, on this pious mountain of Montevergine, a fa mous image of Our Lady, whi célèbre image de Notre-Dame Miraculous image gifted by Emperor Frederick II. ch was, it is believed, given by Emperor Frederick II. It is said that one cannot cast one's eyes upon this lovely portrait without being seized with compunction and touched by regret for one's past sins, and that even those who go there only out of curiosity do not fail to experience the same effect. The devotion there is so great that one sees pilgrims kissing the ground from the door of the monastery to the foot of the altar where the holy image rests.

The kings of Naples have always held this church in great veneration. Louis of Taranto, who had married Queen Joanna, chose it as his burial place, and one can still see his tomb there, the magnificence of which is worthy of royal majesty. It once possessed the body of Saint Januarius; but the religious gave it up to enrich the city of Naples, capital of the entire kingdom. It nevertheless preserves an infinity of other very precious relics, among which are counted the three children known as those of the Furnace, and a few drops of the blood of John the Baptist. A very remarkable thing is also reported concerning this holy mountain: since Saint William, one has never been able to eat anything there but Lenten foods; which has been confirmed by several miracles; for those who have tried to bring other meats there have either found them all corrupted and full of worms, or the rains, thunderbolts, and lightning that suddenly occurred, in a dreadful manner, forced them to flee. This shows us that this holy place is consecrated by heaven to penance.

Our Saint is quite commonly painted kneeling before an image of Mary, undoubtedly to recall the name of the mountain that became the cradle of the Benedictine Congregation established by him. At his side, a wolf is sometimes seen: it is the one that replaced the loss of the donkey it had strangled at the moment it was hauling materials intended for the construction of the church of the monastery of Saint William.

We have particularly used, to make this summary, Sylvestre Maruill, of the Order of Cîteaux, who wrote the life of Saint William in his book entitled: The Sacred History of all the religions (Religious Orders) of the Catholic world.