St. William of Bourges

St. William of Bourges was a French nobleman who renounced the world to become a monk, first among the Cistercians, embracing a life of severe penance and humility in the cloister. Against his own wish he was drawn from the silence he loved and, in the year 1200, made archbishop of Bourges, a dignity he accepted only under obedience and which changed nothing of his personal austerity, for he continued to wear a hair shirt and to practice great mortification beneath the robes of his office.

As a bishop he was a tireless shepherd, generous to the poor, firm against injustice, and zealous for the conversion of heretics and of those far from the faith, whom he sought to win more by gentleness and the example of his holiness than by force. He was preparing to preach the Gospel among the Albigensians when he died in 1209, worn out by his labors and penances. Miracles reported at his tomb led to his canonization in 1218, and he is commemorated on 10 January.