Biography
William Tempier
About William Tempier
William Tempier served as bishop of Poitiers from 1184 until 1197. The archdiocese’s succession list identifies him as its sixty-fifth bishop and calls him Saint Guillaume Tempier.
Before his episcopate, he belonged to the community of regular canons at Saint-Hilaire-de-la-Celle in Poitiers. His burial was at the abbey of Saint-Cyprien in the same city.
Nominis remembers him for personal piety and integrity, and describes his reputation for holiness among the faithful.
His later veneration has a complicated history. The early twentieth-century Catholic Encyclopedia calls him blessed and reports Barbier de Montault’s objection to his local treatment as a saint without a papal canonization.
That historical criticism should not be confused with the terminology of the present diocesan list, which calls him a saint. No formal canonization date is established by these sources.
His local remembrance included prayers for people suffering from bleeding. A litany quoted by Barbier de Montault invokes William’s intercession for that particular need. It is evidence of devotional practice, not independent evidence for the healings reported in the same text.
A later material witness to his remembrance is a reliquary catalogued by the French Ministry of Culture at the Carmelite convent of the Incarnation in Migné-Auxances. The record describes a container of gilded wood and glass, made between 1707 and 1812, holding relics and objects reported as recovered from his burial. This later object documents his continuing veneration; its catalogue description does not establish the authenticity of every relic it contains.
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