(A.D. 1209.)
[Gallican Martyrologies. His life, written by a contemporary, was
published, with the style altered and shortened, by Surius; the
same is re-published by the Bollandists, together with a second
life, written by another contemporary, from a MS. at Antwerp.
Another life by a Canon of Bourges, date uncertain, was published
by Labbe, Bibl. nova II., p. 379, 386.]
On the death of Henry de Sully, Archbishop of Bourges, the clergy of
that church, unable to agree upon a successor, requested Eudo, Bishop of
Paris, to nominate. For this purpose, the bishop came to Beauvais, but
found it no easy matter to decide, without causing an eruption of party
feeling. In his desire to choose a good man, and one who would commend
himself to all, in consultation with two friends, he resolved on
committing the matter to God. Accordingly, all the most advisable names
were written on slips of parchment, and were sealed, and then deposited
beneath the corporal on the altar. The Bishop celebrated very early,
with great devotion, and earnestly besought God to indicate him whom he
had chosen. When mass was over, he put his hand beneath the corporal,
and drew forth one of the billets. He broke the seal in the presence of
his two friends, and saw that the name of William, abbot of Challis, was
written on the parchment.
No one else was privy to this appeal. As he left the church, the clergy
whom he had convened to elect cried out "that they desired William of
Challis as their bishop," and on him the majority of votes fell. Then
the bishopric was offered to William, but he recoiled from accepting it,
with the greatest dismay, for he was a man of retiring habits and of
singular humility. However, on an order coming to him from the superior
of the society, the abbot of Citeaux, and also from the papal legate,
he was unable to refuse; and he was consecrated in the year 1200. After
the ceremony was over, he laid aside the vestments in which he had
received his ordination, and which were of little value, in a press,
till his dying day.
In his new dignity he omitted nothing of the severity of his cloister
life, disciplining himself more strictly than before, because his
business was calculated to distract his thoughts, and his high position
was dangerous to humility.
He was gentle and loving to penitent sinners; and towards the
incorrigible he was stern, but he refused to have recourse to the civil
power against them; he had a horror of shedding blood, so that he looked
with the utmost repugnance upon the violence and warlike customs of his
time. When the crusade against the Albigenses was resolved upon, William
of Beauvais resolved on accompanying the expedition. Perhaps his
earnestness would move the heretics to repentance, and his horror of
bloodshed might serve as a check upon the crusaders. The Albigensian
heresy, which was a revival of Paulicianism, ate as a canker into the
Church of France. It was not even a form of Christianity, but was a
heathen philosophical sect which had adopted a few Christian tenets.
The history of the sect was as follows:--Manes, a Persian heathen,
flourished in the middle of the third century, dying about 277, the
founder of a new religion, after having been, like Simon Magus, a
temporary and nominal convert to the Gospel. He was not an inventor of
his religion, but merely a blender of the earlier Gnostic heresies with
the Persian doctrines of Zoroaster, added to a somewhat larger element
of Christianity than the Gnostics had chosen to accept. The Paulicians
were a sect which took shape about 660, out of Manichaeism, or the
religion of Manes. They were cruelly persecuted by the Byzantine
Emperors, during two whole centuries, and spread to the West by
degrees; one stream emigrated to Bohemia, where it became the parent of
Hussitism; the other to the south of France, where it was called
Albigensianism.
The fundamental dogma of this new Manichaeism was a dualism of good and
evil principles or gods, equally matched. The evil was the origin of the
visible creation, the world and men's bodies; the good God was the
creator of the invisible world and men's souls. The opposition of matter
and spirit constituted the basis of their moral systems. These systems
were diverse; some, regarding everything natural as evil, abstained from
meat, from marriage, and from all employments; whilst others, regarding
the soul as so distinct from the body as to be incapable of being soiled
by any of its actions, gave themselves up to the grossest
licentiousness.
The moral condition of Provence, where Albigensianism held sway, was
like Sodom and Gomorrah, as may be seen by the poetry of the
troubadours; so that God's wrath could not but fall on a land so
polluted. The licentiousness which this creed encouraged, helped to make
it spread, and the Christianity of the whole of the south of France was
imperilled. At the head of these heretics, the Count of Toulouse invaded
the lands of the King of Aragon, devastated them, robbed the churches,
burnt the monasteries, and ill-treated the clergy, "and slaughtered the
Christians of either sex, and every age, without mercy," says Matthew
Paris. "But this being at length made known, their heretical aggression
was put down by the faithful Christians, who, at the command of Pope
Gregory, had come as crusaders from various parts of the West, for the
defence of the Christian faith."
William of Beauvais was not, however, destined to play a part in that
sanguinary war. He was called to his rest in January, 1209. Drawing
near his end, he received first extreme unction, and then, as the
Blessed Sacrament was brought to him, he struggled up in his bed, and
falling on his knees, with many tears, and hands outspread in the shape
of a cross, he adored the presence of his Saviour. The night following,
he began as usual to recite the Office of Nocturns, but was unable to
pronounce more than the first two words, and sign himself with the
cross. Then he was laid, at his desire, on ashes, and the vestments in
which he had been consecrated bishop were produced, that he might be
laid dressed in them in his grave. His body was buried in the Cathedral
of Bourges, but was burnt, and the ashes scattered to the winds, by the
Calvinists, on the occasion of their plundering the Cathedral in 1562.
Patron of Bourges, and of the ancient University of Paris.
In art, he is represented holding a monstrance, or in adoration before
one, to represent his great devotion towards the Blessed Sacrament. He
is also represented with tears on his cheeks, for he is said to have
wept whenever he was told of some scandal of his diocese, or wrong done
to the poor. It may be noted, as a coincidence, that his festival was
the day of Archbishop William Laud's martyrdom in 1644.