THIS martyr was another victim of the implacable rage of the Jews
against our holy religion. He suffered in the twelfth year of his age.
Having been not long bound an apprentice to a tanner in Norwich, a
little before Easter, in 1137, the Jews of that city having enticed him
into their houses, seized and gagged him: then they bound, mocked, and
crucified him, in derision of Christ: they also pierced his left side.
On Easter-day they put the body into a sack, and carried it into
Thorp-wood, now a heath, near the gates of the city, there to bury it;
but being discovered, left it hinging on a tree. The body was honored
with miracles, and, in 1144, {654} removed into the churchyard of the
cathedral of the Holy Trinity, by the monks of that abbey; and in 1150,
into the choir. On the place in Thorpwood, where the body of the
martyred child was found, a chapel was built, called St. William in the
wood. Mr. Weever writes, that "the Jews in the principal cities of the
kingdom, did use sometimes to steal away, circumcise, crown with thorns,
whip, torture, and crucify some neighbor's male-child, in mockery and
scorn of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. St. Richard of Pontoise, in
France, was martyred by them in that manner. As also St. Hugh,
(according to Matthew Paris and John Capgrave,) a child crucified at
Lincoln, in 1255." Nevertheless, it is a notorious slander of some
authors, who, from these singular and extraordinary instances, infer
this to have been at any time the custom or maxim of that people. The
English calendars commemorated St. William on the 24th of March. See the
history of his martyrdom and miracles by Thomas of Monmouth, a
contemporary monk; also the Saxon Chronicle of the same age, and
Bloomfield's History of Norfolk.[1]
Footnotes:
1. Pope Benedict XIV., l. 1, de Canon. c. 14, p. 103, shows that
children who die after baptism before the use of reason, though
saints, ought not to be canonized, because they never practised any
heroic degree of virtue; and because this was never authorized by
tradition in the church. Martyrs only, or infants, whether baptized
or not, which were slain out of hatred to the name of Christ, are to
be accepted, as is clear from the example of the Holy Innocents, who
are styled martyrs by St. Irenaeus, Origen, and other fathers; and
the most ancient missals and homilies of fathers on their festival,
prove them to have been honored as such from the primitive ages.
Hence infants murdered by Jews, out of hatred to Christ, have been
ranked among the martyrs, as St. Simon of Trent, by the authority of
the bishop of that city, afterwards confirmed by the decrees of the
popes Sixtus V. and Gregory XIII.; also St. William of Norwich in
England, (though this child having attained to the use of reason, is
rather to be called an adult martyr.) And St. Richard of Pontoise,
also about twelve years old, murdered in 1182 by certain Jews in the
reign of Philip Augustus, who for this and other crimes banished the
Jews out of France, in April, that same year. The body of St.
Richard was translated to Paris, and enshrined in the parish church
of the Holy Innocents, where his feast is kept on the 30th of March,
but at Pontoise on the 25th. The celebrated F. Gaguin has written
the history of his martyrdom, with an account of several miracles
wrought at his shrine. His head is still shown in that church; the
rest of his relics are said to have been carried off by the English,
when they were masters of Paris.