He commissioned translations from Latin into Old French of classical works of rhetoric and logic as well as legal and devotional documents from the Hospital's archives.
[1] He was probably a relative of Daniel of Santo Stefano, who was the lieutenant of the prior of Lombardy in 1315 and in that year commissioned a copy of the order's statutes.
He had John of Antioch translate Cicero's De inventione and the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium from Latin into Old French.
[8] William's other translation project from Latin into French was of certain documents in the archives of the Hospital in Acre, including the order's statutes, prayers and privileges.
When even Roger Bacon thought it insufficient for formal logic, a codex prepared for William contained one of the earliest vernacular texts on the subject in Europe.
[4] It is crudely structured around the grand masters, but William displays a critical eye to his sources, which he always carefully cites.
[1] He swept aside numerous legends about the Hospital's foundation, including some that pushed it as far back as the second century before Christ, as fabrications designed to encourage donations.
[12] In 1296 while on Cyprus, William wrote a treatise on the order's statutes, in which he displays his legal training by discussing the principles of natural law and citing Gratian, Cicero, Isidore and Augustine.