s
destroyed, and a chapel was erected on the spot where the child was
martyred. God honored this innocent victim with many miracles. The
relics lie in a stately tomb in St. Peter's church at Trent: and his
name occurs in the Roman Martyrology. See the authentic account of
Tiberinus, the physician who inspected the child's body; and the
juridical acts in Surius and the Bollandists, with Henschenius's notes
on this day: also Martenne, Ampl. Collectio Vet. t. 2, p. 1516, and
Bened. XIV. de Canoniz. l. 1, c. 14, p. 105.

ST. WILLIAM OF NORWICH, M.

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, thoug