Saint Norbert

Founder and Bishop (1080-1134)

Feast-June 6

St. Norbert also known as Norbert Gennep, was born at Xanten in the Rhineland near Cologne in Germany, about the year 1080. His father, Heribert, Count of Gennep, was a member of the high nobility of the Holy Roman Empire and related to the imperial house and also to the House of Lorraine. His mother was Hedwig of Guise.

Saint Norbert, of noble rank and rare talents, passed a frivolous youth, abandoning himself to the pleasures and vanities of the world. Though he was a canon of the church, he refused to receive ecclesiastical Orders so as to continue to live in his caprices. He went to the court of the Archbishop of Cologne, then he gained an appointment as a chaplain (religious counselor) to that of the Emperor Henry IV, the famous adversary of Pope Saint Gregory VII, known also as Hildebrand. The salaries from the Xanten fund and the royal treasury were enough to equip him to live in the style of the nobility of the times.

Norbert had always chosen the easy way, would never have deliberately gone on a journey that promised danger, risk, or discomfort. He had moved easily from the comforts of the noble family he was born into to the pleasure-loving German court. He had no hesitations about joining in any opportunity to enjoy himself, no matter what the source of that pleasure. To ensure his success at court, he also had no qualms about accepting holy orders as a canon and whatever financial benefices that came with that position, although he avoided ordination to the priesthood and even declined an appointment as bishop of Cambrai in 1113.

One day in the spring of 1115, as he rode his horse to Vreden, in the western part of the Münsterland, a thunderbolt from a sudden storm struck at his horse’s feet. The animal threw him and he lay unconscious for nearly an hour. Even the rain soaking his clothes and the howl of thunder did not bring him back to consciousness and life. When he awoke his first words were, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” — The same words Saul spoke on the road to Damascus. In response Norbert heard in his heart, “Turn from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it.”

He renounced his appointment at Court and returned to Xanten to lead a life of penance, placing himself under the direction of Cono, Abbot of St Sigeberg, near Cologne. In gratitude to Cono, in 1115, Norbert founded the Abbey of Fürstenberg, endowed it with a portion of his property, and made it over to Cono of Siegburg and his Benedictine successors After a severe and searching preparation, he went to the Archbishop of Cologne and humbly asked to receive Holy Orders. St. Norbert was then in his thirty-fifth year ordained a priest and began to preach against all the abuses and vices of his time. His complete conversion and new ways caused some to denounce the former courtier as a hypocrite. St. Norbert’s response was to give everything he owned to the poor, visited Pope Gelasius II, who gave him permission to become an itinerant preacher.

With this commission in hand, he preached traveling through Europe with his two companions. In an extreme response to his old ways, he now chose the most difficult ways to travel — walking barefoot in the middle of winter through snow and ice, wore a tunic which was a hair shirt, fasting all year long, being credited with a number of miracles.

His example spoke still more eloquently than his words. He was compared to John the Baptist by his austerity and by the fervor of his preaching. Unfortunately, the two companions who followed him died from the ill-effects of exposure, but St. Norbert was gaining the respect of those sincere clerics who had despised him before. In every place where St. Norbert preached, those in attendance saw sinners converted, enemies reconciled and usurers return extorted wealth.

In Paris he would have witnessed the Canons of St. Victor, who had adopted the ascetic ideals of William of Champagne. At Clairvaux and Citeaux he would have seen the Cistercian reforms among the monks. He also became acquainted with the Cistercian administrative system that created an international federation of monasteries with a fair amount of centralized power, though local houses had a certain amount of independence. These reforms, written up in their “Charter of Charity” would affect him significantly in his own future work.

The bishop of Laon wanted Norbert to help reform the canons in his see, but the canons wanted nothing to do with Norbert’s type of reform which they saw as far too strict. The bishop, not wanting to lose this holy man, offered Norbert land where he could start his own community. In a lonely valley called Premontre, began his community with thirteen canons. Despite the strictness of his regulation, or perhaps because of it, his reforms attracted many disciples until eight abbeys and two convents were involved. Even the canons who had originally rejected him asked to be part of the reform.

A chaplain of the bishop of Cambrai, impressed by the extraordinary changes in the former nobleman of the Emperor’s court, asked to join him; this good priest, by the name of Hugh, later would succeed him in the government of the new religious Order which he was soon to found

There he was favored, during a night of prayer, with a vision of many white-robed monks in procession with crucifixes and candles; the Blessed Virgin also appeared to him and showed him the habit he should give his religious. At the Council of Reims in October 1119, Pope Calixtus II requested Norbert to found a religious order. On Christmas Day, 1120, he gave to some trained disciples the rule of Saint Augustine, in addition he adapted some of the customs of the Cistercians, with the white habit he had been shown, denoting the angelic purity proper to the priesthood. The Canons Regular, or Premonstratensians, as they were called, were to unite the active work of the country clergy with the obligations of the monastic life. The foundations multiplied, and the fervor of these religious priests renewed the spirit of the priesthood, quickened the faith of the people. Blessed Hugh of Fosses, Saint Evermode, Antony of Nivelles, seven students of the celebrated school of Anselm, and Ralph of Laon were among his first thirteen disciples. By the next year the community had grown to 40. They all took their vows and the Order of Canons Regular of Prémontré was founded. The young community at first lived in huts of wood and clay, arranged like a camp around the chapel of Saint John the Baptist, but they soon built a larger church and a monastery for the religious who joined them in increasing numbers. Going to Cologne to obtain relics for their church, Norbert is said to have discovered, through a dream, the spot where those of St. Ursula and her companions, of St. Gereon, and of other martyrs lay hidden.

St Norbert gained adherents in Germany, France, Belgium and Transylvania, and houses of his order were founded in Floreffe, Viviers, St-Josse, Ardenne, Cuissy, Laon, Liège, Antwerp, Varlar, Kappenberg, Grosswardein (Oradea/Nagyvárad) and elsewhere. In Norbert’s community we have the first evidence of lay affiliation with a religious order. This came about when a count Theobald II wanted to join Norbert. Norbert realized that Theobald was not called to holy orders but to marriage and worldly duties. But he did not entirely reject Theobald, giving him a rule and devotions as well as a scapular to wear to identify him as part of the community, and thus, in 1122, the Third Order of St. Norbert was instituted.

St Norbert was a great devotee of the Eucharist and Our Lady. A heretic named Tankelin appeared at Antwerp, denying the reality of the priesthood, and above all blaspheming the Holy Eucharist. The Saint was sent for, to quench the error and its source, since three thousand persons had followed this man, who was allowing every vice to pass for legitimate. By Saint Norbert’s burning words he exposed the impostor, corrected the erring, and rekindled faith in the Blessed Sacrament. Many of the apostates had proved their contempt for the Blessed Sacrament by burying it in walls and damp places; Norbert bade the converted ones search for the Sacred Hosts. They found them entire and uninjured, and the Saint bore them back in triumph to the tabernacle.

In 1126 Pope Honorius II appointed Norbert to the Archbishopric of Magdeburg in central Germany, a territory half pagan and half Christian. Legend has it the porter refused to let Norbert into his new residence, assuming he was a beggar. When the crowd pointed out to the flustered porter that this was the new bishop. Norbert told the porter, “You were right the first time.”

At the risk of his life, he put into practice the precepts he instituted at Premontre. Several assassination attempts were made as he began to reform the lax discipline of his see. He was especially vigilant in protecting the Church’s rights against the secular power.

In the schism following the election of Pope Innocent II in 1130, Norbert supported Innocent and resisted Antipope Anacletus II. In Norbert’s last years, he was chancellor and adviser to Lothair II, the Holy Roman Emperor, persuading him to lead an army in 1133 to Rome to restore Innocent to the papacy.

When Norbert died in Magdeburg on 6 June 1134, both the canons at the cathedral and the canons at St. Mary’s Abbey claimed the body. The two parties resorted to Lothair III who decreed the body should be buried in the Norbertine Abbey. In 1524, Martin Luther preached in the city and, as a result, Magdeburg became a Protestant city. Numerous attempts were made over the centuries by the Abbey of Strahov in Prague to retrieve the saint’s body. Only after several military defeats at the hand of Emperor Ferdinand II was the abbot of Strahov able to claim the body. On 2 May 1627 the body was finally brought to Prague where it remains to this day, displayed as an auto-icon in a glass-fronted tomb.

Saint Norbert was canonized by Pope Gregory XIII in the year 1582, and his statue appears above the Piazza colonnade of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome

References and Excerpts

[1]          F. Media, “Saint Norbert,” Franciscan Media, 06-Jun-2016. .

[2]          C. Online, “St. Norbert – Saints & Angels,” Catholic Online. [Online]. Available: https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=87. [Accessed: 06-Jun-2018].

[3]          “Saint Norbert, Founder and Bishop.” [Online]. Available: http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_norbert.html. [Accessed: 06-Jun-2018].

[4]          “Norbert of Xanten,” Wikipedia. 10-May-2018.