| Birth: | unknown | | Death: | 1201 | 
Roman Catholic Saint. As a youth he had a reputation for wildness, but he grew up to devote himself entirely to the service of God. He was a baker by trade and gave every tenth loaf he produced to the poor. While attending mass one morning he found a child abandoned on the threshold of the church and adopted him and taught him his trade. He and his adopted son later embarked upon a pilgrimage, staying for three days at Rochester with the intention of going on to Canterbury. While in Rochester the boy struck him over the head, cut his throat and robbed him. A local mad woman discovered the crime and placed a garland of honeysuckle on his head and then on her own and was thereby cured. In recognition of this miracle his body was taken to the cathedral for burial and he was honoured as a martyr because he had been murdered while on a pilgrimage. He was canonized by Pope Innocent IV at the request of Bishop Lawrence de San Martino of Rochester and a shrine was built to his memory, first in the crypt and later in the northeast transept. His shrine was a popular place of pilgrimage until its destruction in the reformation and the so called "pilgrim steps" approaching it still show signs of wear from the thousands of pilgrims that visited it. A damaged stone slab in the northeast transept is believed to represent all that survives of the shrine today. (bio by: js)
Search Amazon for William of Perth | | | Burial:
Rochester Cathedral
Rochester
Kent, England
Plot: Northeast transept, exact site now lost. |
Maintained by: Find A Grave
Originally Created by: js
Record added: Sep 10, 2009
Find A Grave Memorial# 41798968 |
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