Saint William, Abbot
S. Guilelmi Abbatis
Saint William of Vercelli, a hermit and pilgrim drawn to a life of penance, founded the monastery of Montevergine in southern Italy and gathered disciples into a new religious family.
Saint William was born at Vercelli in northern Italy about the year 1085, of a noble family, but was left an orphan early and was raised in piety. From his youth he was filled with a great desire for penance and for God, and while still very young he set out as a poor pilgrim, journeying to the shrine of Saint James at Compostela and embracing a life of hardship and prayer for the love of Christ.
Hermit and founder
Returning to Italy, Saint William sought out solitude and gave himself to the life of a hermit. About the year 1119 he withdrew to a high and lonely mountain in Campania, known thereafter as Montevergine, the Mount of the Virgin, and there he served God in prayer and penance. Disciples were drawn to his holiness and gathered around him, and so there grew up under his guidance a monastery and a new religious community dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
A man of deep humility, Saint William did not cling to authority for its own sake, and when difficulties arose he was willing to withdraw and to found other houses elsewhere in southern Italy, ever seeking the will of God rather than his own. He won the esteem of princes and people alike, and his counsel was sought by the great, yet he kept always the simplicity and austerity of a poor servant of God.
His holy death
Saint William spent his last years guiding the communities that had grown from his labours, and he died on the twenty-fifth of June, 1142, at one of the monasteries he had founded. His memory was held in honour, and the abbey of Montevergine, which still crowns its mountain, has remained through the centuries a place of pilgrimage and prayer.
The collect of his feast, drawn from the common of an abbot, asks that the intercession of blessed William the Abbot may commend us to God, so that what we cannot obtain by our own merits we may receive through his patronage. In him the Church honours the love of solitude and penance, and the quiet fruitfulness of a life wholly given to God.
The Collect
May the intercession of blessed William the Abbot commend us to thee, O Lord, we beseech thee: that what by our own merits we may not obtain, we may receive by his patronage.
Intercessio nos, quæsumus, Dómine, beáti Guilélmi Abbátis comméndet: ut, quod nostris méritis non valémus, eius patrocínio assequámur.
Patronage
He is venerated as the founder of the abbey of Montevergine and as a patron of the surrounding region in Campania.
In the Modern Calendar
In the modern calendar this feast is not kept on the universal calendar, though Saint William of Vercelli continues to be venerated locally and within the religious family he founded.
Common Questions
When is the feast of Saint William the Abbot?
His feast is kept on 25 June in the calendar of the 1962 Roman Missal, as a Third Class feast.
Who was Saint William the Abbot?
He was Saint William of Vercelli, a twelfth-century hermit and pilgrim who founded the monastery of Montevergine in southern Italy and gathered disciples into a new religious community devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. He died in 1142.
What is Montevergine?
Montevergine, the “Mount of the Virgin,” is the mountain in Campania where Saint William established his chief monastery about the year 1119. The abbey founded there remains to this day a place of pilgrimage and prayer.
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