WILLEHAD
628
WILLIAM
obedience they are not their own masters, and
secondly because of their vow of poverty they are
incapable of ownership (Can. vii, Cau. 19, q. 3).
What they acquire belongs to their monastery.
They may explain or interpret a will made before
their profession. A member of the regular clergy
who becomes a bishop acquires property for his dio-
cese not for his community; but even he is incapable
of making a will without the permission of the Holy
See, since episcopal consecration does not release
him from his religious vows. Goods possessed by
regulars, who with permission hve outside their monas-
tery, belong to the community; the property of those
who dwell in the world without permission and of
those who are perpetually secularized follow the
general law of spoils (Greg. XIII, Officii nostri, a.
1577). Members of orders which have been sup-
pressed by civil authorities may under certain condi-
tions, owing to a special privilege, dispose by will of
property acquired. Those who make simple \ow8
only are not deprived of the power of making a
will- „ ,
Decretals Gre^. IX. lib. Ill, titt. 2.5. 26; S.INTI, PTalect. Jut. Can., lib. III. titt. 2.5, 26: De Angeus, Pnrlect. Jut. Can., lib. Ill, titt. 25, 26; Bbunel in Diet. ChTist. Antiquities, s. v. Wills.
Andrew B. Meehan.
Willehad, S.».int, Bishop at Bremen, b. in North- umberland before 74.5; d. at Blecazze (Blexen) on the Weser, 8 Nov., 789. He was a friend of Alcuin, and probably received his education at York under St. Egbert. After his ordination, with the permission of King Alchred he was sent to Frisia between 765 and 774. He cannot, therefore, have been a disciple of St. Boniface, as Baronius states in the Roman MartjTol- ogy, for St. Boniface had left England in 71S and had died in 7.54 (7.55). Willehad came to Dockum, where St. Boniface had received the crown of martyrdom, and made many conversions. He crossed the Lau- wers, iDut met with little success at Hugmarke (now Humsterland in the Diocese of Munster). He was obliged to leave and went to Trianthe (Drenthe in the Diocese of Utrecht). At first all seemed favour- able, but later he made Uttle progress. In 7S0 he was sent by Charlemagne to Wigmodia near the North Sea, between the Weser and the Elbe. There God's blessing accompanied his labours, and he built many churches. The insurrection of the Saxons under Widukind in 782 put an end to his work, many of his companions were killed and his churches destroyed. Willehad escaped and went to Rome, where he was received by Adrian I. He then retired to the Abbey of Echternac'h, and applied himself to the task of copy- ing books, among others he transcribed the Epistles of St . Paul. When the insurrect ion had been suppressed by Charlemagne Willehad returned to Wigmodia and continued his labours. He was con.'secrated bishop at Worms on 13 July, 787, and fixed his residence at Bremen, where he built a cathedral, dedicated on Sunday 1 Nov., 789, in honour of St. Peter. A few days later, while on a missionary tour, he was attacked with a fever and died. His body, buried at the place of his death, was transferred by his successor St. Willericus to the stone church biiilt by him and placed in a chapel. A feast on 13 July commemor.atcs the date of his consecration. During the Reformation his relics were lost. His fcMt was neglected and then forgotten; by permission, however, of the Sacred Con- gregation of Rites it was reintroduced in 1901 in the Diocese.q of Miinster, Osnabriick, and Paderborn, to be observed on a vacant day after 8 November. His life was wTitten by a cleric of Bremen after .8:?S, but perhaiis before 860. The account of his miracles was written by St. Ansgar.
Btrri-ER Lives of the Saints: STArNTON, .4 Mmologu of Eng- land: HAncK, Kirchengeach. Deutschl.. II (Leipjig, 1904), 350, etc.; Wattenbach, Deutsch, Oeachichtsgu., I (Berlin, 1904), 296.
Francis Mershman.
Willems, Pierre, philologist, b. at Maestricht,
6 Jan., 1840; d. at Louvain, 23 Feb., 1898. Follow-
ing the custom of Belgian students he did not confine
himself to the courses at Louvain but went to Paris
to hear Oppert, Eggcr, and Patin, and to Berlin,
Utrecht, and Leyden, where he followed the courses
of Cobet. On his return in 1865 he was appointed
professor of Latin philology at the University of
Louvain; here he spent the remainder of his life, the
only events being his lectures and his works. His
two chief works are "Le droit public romain," first
issued under the title, "Les antiquites romains
envisagces au point de vue des institutions poUtiques"
(Louvain, 1870; 7th ed. by his son Joseph Willems,
Louvain, 1910), and "Le senat de la repubhque
romaine" (3 vols., Louvain, 1878-85). The first
work is a handbook which stops at Constant ine in
the first three editions and now goes as far as Justin-
ian. The author combined systematic and historical
order by dividing the history of Roman institutions
into "epochs" and "periods", viz., epoch of royalty,
epoch of the repubhc, epoch of the empire, subdivided
into the period of the principate and that of mon-
archy. In each of these sections Willems studies the
conditions of persons, government, and administra-
tion. The book is a clear, concise, and very practical
compendium, provided with a good bibliography, and
is an excellent handbook for students. The book
on the Roman Senate is more learned and shows
more evidence of personal research. It contains a
new opinion concerning the recruiting of the Senate;
Willems does not admit that there were plebeian
senators in the century following the expulsion of
the kings. It was by the exercise of the curule mag-
istracies that the plebs entered the Senate, in fact
after 354-200; a plebiscite proposed by the tribune
Ovinius and accepted at the end of the fourth century
hastened the introduction of the plebeians, and, in
short, made the Senate an assembly of former magis-
trates. This doctrine of Willems was discussed and
eventually accepted. He completed his work by a
series of studies on the composition of the Roman
Senate in 57,5-179, in 699-55 in his great work, and
in A.D. 65 in the "Musee beige" (pubhshed by his
son, 1902). He also contributed to the "Bulletins"
of the Brussels Academy a memoir on the municipal
elections of Pompeii (1902). He assisted in the found-
ation of the second Belgian periodical for classical
philology, "Le Musee beige" (1897), and organized
a "Societas philologa", at Louvain, one of the oldest
members of which was the Liege professor, Charles
Michel, author of the "Recueit d'inscriptions
grecques" (1900-12). He belonged to the Flemish
party and collected materials for a work on the
Flemish dialects, which remains unfinished. While
not especially profound WiUems was an exact and
conscientious scholar.
Brants in /'.(nnuaire de l' .\cadfmie de Bruxelles (1889); Lamv. l:nllrl,,i^,l, V.XcaMmiede BTUielles (1898), 297; Waltzing, Musrr l.,l.,r. II I Is'isi. 94; Sandys, A IHstori/ of Classical Scholar- ship, III (Cambridge, 1908), 306.
Paul Lejay.
William (William Fitzherbert, also called Will- iam OF Thwayt), Saint, Archbishop of York — Tradi- tion represents him as nephew of King Stephen, whose sister Emma was believed to ha\'e married Herbert of Winchester, treasurer to Henry I. William became a priest, and about 1130 he was canon and treasurer of York. In 1142 he was elected .\rchbishop of York at the instance of the king, in opposition to the candidature of Henry Murdac, a Cistercian monk. The validity of the election w.as disputed on the ground of alleged simony and roy.'d influence, and Archbishop Theobald refused to consecrate him pending an api)eal to Rome. St. Bernard exercised his powerful influence against William in favour of Murdac, but in 1143 the pope decided that William
