William was from the Loire Valley,[1][2] the brother of fellow poet Peter of Blois.
[2] William moved to the Kingdom of Sicily, either arriving with his brother Peter in September 1166,[3] or shortly afterwards in 1167.
Major themes were guile, deception, lust and sexual scheming and were produced in elegiac verse modeled on that of Ovid.
[9] In 1167 William was the candidate for the vacant diocese of Catania as the choice of the French party that had come to Sicily in the following of the chancellor Stephen du Perche.
[4] Around this time, perhaps as compensation for the lost bishopric, William became the abbot of the monastery of Santa Maria della Matina in Calabria.
There is some confusion over the name of this abbey, but in letters from his brother Peter, William is referred to as abbas Matinensis or Mathinensis, a name which became emended to Maniacensis (Maniaci) in the Histoire Littéraire de France, which nonetheless correctly identifies the abbey.