St. William of Vercelli

William of Vercelli was one of the more restless founders of his age. Born in Piedmont in 1085 and orphaned young, he left home at fourteen as a poor pilgrim to Compostela and began a life marked by deliberate hardship. He wore iron bands fastened around his body in addition to the ordinary miseries of travel. After time in Spain he reappeared in southern Italy, first with a hermit, then in friendship with St. John of Matera, and already acquiring a reputation as a wonder-worker after restoring sight to a blind man. His first intention was to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but when robbers attacked him on the road he took it as a sign that God wanted another kind of labor from him. That labor became foundation after foundation. On Monte Vergine he first tried to live alone, but disciples gathered around him. He organized them, built a church of Our Lady in 1124, and gave the mountain the name by which it is still known. The cost of such leadership soon became clear. The rule was so austere, with no wine, meat, or dairy and with repeated fasting, that murmuring soon broke out.

William did not force the unwilling. He appointed a prior and left, carrying the harder life elsewhere. The pattern repeated itself. He founded more communities, withdrew once they were stable, and began again in another difficult place. That makes him unusual: a founder who repeatedly refused to settle into being simply a governor. There was also a more public side to his holiness. King Roger II of Naples drew him to court, and jealous courtiers tried to expose him as a fraud by sending a corrupt woman to tempt him. William answered by stretching himself unharmed upon burning coals and inviting her to lie beside him. The shock led to her conversion and strengthened his standing with the king. He died at Guglietto in 1142, leaving Monte Vergine as the one surviving house of his original foundations and a memory of penance, prayer, and repeated acts of beginning again.