Williamites
Williamites
There were two minor religious orders or congregations of this name: (1) a Benedictine congregation, more often known by the name of its chief house, Monte Vergine (2) the foundations named after St. William of Maleval.
(1) Besides Monte Vergine, St. William of Vercelli founded a considerable number of monasteries, especially in the Kingdom of Naples, including a double monastery for men and women at Guglieto (near Nusco). Celestine III confirmed the congregation by a Bull (4 Nov., 1197). In 1611 there were twenty-six larger and nineteen smaller Williamite houses. Benedict XIV confirmed new constitutions in 1741 to be added to the declarations on the Rule of St. Benedict prescribed by Clement VIII. The mother-house, the only surviving member of the congregation, was affiliated to the Cassinese Congregation of the Primitive Observance in 1879. The community at Monte Vergine retains the white colour of the habit, which is in other respects like that of the black Benedictines. There are said to have been some fifty Williamite nunneries, of which only two survived at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The habit was white with a black veil, and their rule very severe in the matter of fasting and abstinence.
(2) This second congregation was founded by Albert, companion and biographer of St. William of Maleval, and Renaldus, a physician who had settled at Maleval shortly before the saint’s death, and was called the Hermits of St. William. It followed the practice of that saint, and quickly spread over Italy, Germany, France, Flanders, and Hungary. The great austerity of the rule was mitigated by Gregory IX in 1229; at the same time many of the monasteries adopted the Benedictine Rule and others that of St. Augustine. When, in 1256, Alexander IV founded the Hermits of St. Augustine many of the Williamites refused to enter the union and were permitted to exist as a separate body under the Benedictine Rule. In 1435 the order, which about this time numbered fifty-four monasteries in three provinces of Tuscany, Germany, and France, received from the Council of Basle the confirmation of its privileges. The Italian monasteries suffered during the wars in Italy. The last two French houses at Cambrai and Ypres were suppressed by the Congregation of Regulars, while in Germany the greater number came to an end at the Revolution. The chief house at Grevenbroich (founded in 1281) was united to the Cistercians in 1628; the last German house ceased to exist in 1785. The habit was similar to that of the Cistercians.
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I. HEIMBUCHER, Orden u. Kongregationen, I (Paderborn, 1907), 264, Regul= a SS. P. N. Benedicti cum antiquis. . .Declarationibus Cong. Montis Virginis a Cl= emente VIII praescriptis. Novae Constitutiones. . .a SS. D.N. Benedictio XIV conf= irmatae (Rome, 1741).
II. HEIMBUCHER, Orden u. Kongregationen, II (Paderborn, 1907), 180; HELYOT, Ordres religieux, VI (Paris, 1792), 142; HENSCHEN, De ordine eremitarum S. Guglielmi in Acta SS., Feb., II, 472-84. See also WILLIAM OF MALEVAL; HERMITS OF ST. AUGUSTINE.
RAYMUND WEBSTER Transcribed by Michael T. Barrett Dedicated to the religious of the Williamite congregations
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XVCopyright © 1912 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1912. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
Williamites
an order of monks deriving their name from a hermit, who, after conversion from a licentious life, had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem by the advice of hermits and pope Eugenius III, and had then, in 1153. established a hermitage in a desert of Tuscany, near Pisa. Disorderly followers destroyed all prospect of retirement here, and he sought a new refuge in the depths of a forest on Monte Pruno. New disciples gathered about him, who, in time, became offended with him and expelled him from their society. He returned to his original retreat on the island of Lupocavia, but found the community unimproved, and therefore journeyed until he discovered a stony vale containing a cave, in the bishopric of Grosseto, in Siena. Here he settled in 1155 and began all ascetical life, whose rigor was somewhat relieved by the lord of Buriano, who built him a cell. In the following year Albert became his associate, and a year later Rainald arrived, though only in time to assist at the burial of William, who had died February 10, 1157.
These two men remained at the place, which was at first called Stabulum Rhodis, and afterwards Malavalle, and which became the original of all the congregations of hermits which adopted the name of Williamites. Such congregations extended over the whole of Italy and beyond, to Germany, the Netherlands, and France. The institutions of their founder, together with a description of his life, had been transmitted from Albert. They maintained a perpetual fast. Gregory IX gave them the rule of Benedict, and permitted them to wear shoes. Innocent IV issued a bull in 1248 touching the election of a general prior, and conferring privileges on the order. Alexander IV ordered its incorporation with an order of Augustinian eremites, but recalled his bull of April 13, 1256, in view of the violent protest raised against the scheme, though matters had progressed so far as to occasion serious difficulties in the order, which involved the loss of a number of monasteries in 1266. In 1435 the Couficil of Basle confirmed the privileges possessed by the order, which then covered the three provinces of Tuscany, Germany, and Flanders and France. At the beginning of the 18th century only twelve convents remained to the order, all of which were in Flanders, and by the end of the century they too were extinct. An order of knights of St. William has been spoken of, but is entirely apocryphal. See Bolland, Acta Sanctorum, February 10, with Henschen’s Diss.; and Helyot, Hist. d. Ordres Monast. Relig. et Militaires, 1:250; 3:13; 6:142-152; also Herzog, Real-Encyklop. s.v.