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Norbert of Xanten

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Norbert of Xanten
Born c. 1075, Xanten, Duchy of Lower Lorraine
Died 6 June 1134, Magdeburg, Holy Roman Empire
State of life Canon regular, religious founder, preacher, and archbishop
Religious institute Premonstratensians (O.Praem.)
Ecclesial status Saint; immemorial cult confirmed and extended in 1582
Recognition Ancient cult formally confirmed by Gregory XIII
General Roman Calendar 6 June — Optional Memorial
Dies natalis 6 June 1134

Norbert of Xanten was a reforming priest, itinerant preacher, founder of the Premonstratensians, and archbishop of Magdeburg who joined canonical common life to Eucharistic worship and mission.

Overview

Norbert of Xanten (c. 1080 – 6 June 1134), also known as Norbert Gennep, was a German Catholic bishop who was the Archbishop of Magdeburg, founder of the Premonstratensian order of canons regular, and is venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. Norbert was canonized by Pope Gregory XIII in the year 1582, and his statue appears above the Piazza colonnade of St. Peter's Square in Rome.

Life

Origins and formation

Norbert was born about 1075 near Xanten into a noble family and entered the clerical establishment as a canon, receiving benefices while living amid the imperial court. Early sources portray a conversion sharpened by a near-fatal encounter in a storm or with lightning. Whatever the narrative form of that episode, his life changed from comfortable clerical status to penitential reform. He received priestly ordination in 1115, gave away substantial property, and sought authorization to preach. Pope Gelasius II permitted his itinerant ministry. Norbert traveled barefoot through northern France and the Rhineland, calling clergy and laity to repentance, reconciliation, and fidelity. His reform was not a rejection of ordained ministry but a demand that clerical life correspond to the holiness of its sacramental office.

Ministry and historical setting

At Prémontré near Laon, Norbert and companions established a community in 1120 or 1121 under the Rule of Saint Augustine. The Premonstratensians were canons regular rather than monks: common liturgical life nourished priestly ministry, preaching, pastoral care, and mission. Houses spread rapidly, serving parishes and frontier regions. In 1126 Norbert became archbishop of Magdeburg, where he attempted reform of cathedral clergy, defended ecclesiastical property, and supported mission east of the Elbe. Resistance was fierce, and some stories of attempted assassination reflect the intensity of the struggle. During the schism after 1130 he supported Pope Innocent II and worked with Emperor Lothair III. Norbert died at Magdeburg on 6 June 1134. His relics were transferred to Strahov Abbey in Prague in 1627 amid confessional warfare.[1]

Teaching and Christian witness

Doctrine and spirituality

Norbert’s spirituality united solemn common prayer, evangelical poverty, priestly ministry, and reform of the Church from within. Premonstratensian devotion gives particular prominence to the Eucharist, and later art often depicts him defeating the Eucharistic errors associated with Tanchelm. The historical details of that encounter are debated, but Norbert clearly served a Church in which sacramental teaching and clerical credibility were inseparable. His life also shows that reform is not private purity set against hierarchy: he accepted papal mission, founded under an approved rule, and carried the heavier burden of an archbishopric. Authority required correction of abuse, but reforming zeal itself remained subject to charity and law. Modern Premonstratensian life continues the pattern of contemplative liturgy flowing into pastoral service.

History, tradition, and evidence

Norbert’s early lives were written to edify and to establish the identity of a rapidly expanding order. They preserve valuable memories but also shape episodes around biblical models of conversion, apostolic poverty, and conflict. Claims that he formally instituted every later Eucharistic devotion or single-handedly eradicated a heresy exceed the evidence. His disputes at Magdeburg involved property, local privilege, imperial politics, and reform as well as doctrine. Nor should O.Praem. be treated as a postnominal he personally wrote in the modern fashion; it identifies the Premonstratensian institute descended from Prémontré. Catholic veneration confidently names him a saint while allowing scholarship to distinguish the founder’s actual twelfth-century program from later customs and iconography.

Ecclesial recognition and cult

Recognition and present status

Norbert’s cult developed in the Premonstratensian Order and the territories connected to his episcopate. In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII formally confirmed and extended his veneration, an act often described as equipollent canonization or confirmation of immemorial cult rather than a modern solemn canonization rite. His exact status is Saint, founder, and bishop. The distinction in procedure matters historically but does not create a lesser class of saint. O.Praem. names the Premonstratensians, also called the Order of Canons Regular of Prémontré. Public veneration is authorized throughout the Church, while the order’s present governance and ministries follow current law and approved constitutions. Norbert’s historical importance lies in a durable form of canonical life, not only in later legends attached to his person.[2]

Liturgy and devotion

The General Roman Calendar keeps Saint Norbert, Bishop, as an Optional Memorial on 6 June, his dies natalis. When the day coincides with a Sunday, solemnity, feast, or another celebration of higher precedence, the memorial is omitted in the universal Roman Rite. Premonstratensian houses, Magdeburg, Prague, and other proper calendars may observe him under approved ranks and texts. His received cult authorizes public veneration, and his sainthood and heavenly intercession do not depend on whether the optional celebration is taken in a particular parish. Fitting devotion includes Eucharistic adoration in harmony with the Mass, solemn celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, prayer for priests and canons regular, reconciliation among enemies, and works of pastoral mission rooted in common life rather than individual celebrity.

Early life

As the third son of a nobleman, Norbert's parents destined him for an ecclesiastical career. They made sure he was well educated, and he dutifully received minor orders as a subdeacon. He received a comfortable position as a canon at the church of St. Victor in Xanten. Holy Roman Emperor Henry V was impressed with Norbert and appointed him to the position of almoner. However, Norbert underwent a profound conversion after he was thrown from a horse when a bolt of lightning frightened the animal. Following this incident, he returned to Xanten and pursued a devout, penitent life.[3]

Early priesthood

Deeply repentant for his worldly way of life, Norbert began praying, fasting, and performing physical mortifications. When he preached against worldliness, the other canons of Xanten denounced him as an innovator at the Council of Fritzlar in 1118. He then resigned his benefice, sold all his property and gave the proceeds to the poor. He visited Pope Gelasius II, who gave him permission to become an itinerant preacher. Norbert and his earliest companions began their journey, walking in the snow in the middle of winter. However, while Norbert's zeal seemingly made him impervious to the cold, his earliest companions grew sick and died.[4]

Norbert preached throughout lands in what is now western Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and northern France, being credited with a number of miracles. In village after village, he encountered a demoralized clergy, lonely, often practicing concubinage and feeling that the official Church did not care about them.[5]

In Paris, Norbert would have witnessed the Canons of St. Victor, who had adopted the ascetic ideals of William of Champeaux. At Clairvaux and Citeaux he would also have seen the Cistercian reforms among the monks. He became acquainted with the Cistercian administrative system that created an international federation of monasteries with 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.[5]

Canons Regular of Prémontré

At the Council of Reims in October 1119, Pope Calixtus II requested Norbert to found a religious order in the Diocese of Laon in France. On Christmas Day, 1120, Norbert established the Canons Regular of Prémontré.[6]

For a Rule of life, Norbert chose the Rule of St. Augustine as was common among communities of priests—"canons". In addition he adapted some of the customs of the Cistercians. Even more of these would be brought in later by Norbert's successor, Abbot Hugh of Fosse. In effect he produced a community that would be somewhat monastic as far as house ministry. The whole idea was that his active priests needed an ascetic and contemplative haven and that was the purpose of the abbey discipline.[7]

Norbert chose a valley in the Forest of Coucy (a grant from Barthélemy de Jur, the Bishop of Laon), about 10 miles from Laon, named Prémontré. Hugh of Fosses, Evermode of Ratzeburg, 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 Ursula and her companions, of Gereon, and of other martyrs lay hidden.[8] In 1125/6, the constitution for the order was approved by Pope Honorius II.[9]

Norbert gained adherents in Germany, France, Belgium and Hungary, and houses of his order were founded in Floreffe, Viviers, St-Josse, Ardenne, Cuissy, Laon, Liège, Antwerp, Varlar, Kappenberg, Nagyvárad (Oradea/Großwardein) and elsewhere. Count Theobald II of Champagne wanted to enter the new order, but Norbert counseled him to remain a layman and marry. Norbert prescribed a few rules and invested Theobald with the white scapular of the order, and thus, in 1122, the Third Order of St. Norbert was instituted.[10] He continued to preach throughout France, Belgium and Germany and was successful in combatting a eucharistic heresy in Antwerp proposed by one Tanchelm. In commemoration of this, Norbert has been proclaimed the "Apostle of Antwerp".[10]

Archbishop of Magdeburg

In 1126 Pope Honorius II appointed Norbert to the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, where he put into practice the precepts he instituted at Prémontré.[6] Several assassination attempts were made as he began to reform the lax discipline of his see.[11] He was instrumental in protecting the Church's rights against the secular power during the Investiture Controversy.[12]

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.[13]

Veneration

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 Norbert'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.[14]

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.[15]

Legacy

Premonstratensian (or Norbertine) Canons in Europe, the US, Canada, the United Kingdom, South America, Zaire, South Africa, India and Australia are involved in education, parochial ministry, university chaplaincy, and also youth work. St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin houses the Center for Norbertine Studies.[16]

See also

References

  1. Back to citation Francis to the Premonstratensians for Norbert’s jubilee — Official papal letter for the nine-hundredth anniversary of Prémontré, recounting Norbert’s conversion, itinerant preaching, foundation, Eucharistic and communal spirituality, episcopal ministry, and continuing charism.
  2. Back to citation Vatican News on the Premonstratensian jubilee — Holy See media summary of Pope Francis’s letter, with the history of Saint Norbert, the Prémontré foundation, canons regular, liturgical prayer, hospitality, and missionary service.
  3. Back to citation Hoever, Reverend Hugo (1977). Lives of the Saints for Every Day of the Year. New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co. p. 224.
  4. Back to citation "The priest whose asceticism killed three disciples". Catholic Herald. 9 June 2011. Archived from the original on 1 August 2012. Retrieved 26 February 2015.
  5. Back to citation occurrence 5.0 Back to citation occurrence 5.1 "Saint Norbert of Xanten", Norbertines of Saint Norbert Abbey, De Pere, Wisconsin (Archived 6 November 2013 at the Wayback Machine)
  6. Back to citation occurrence 6.0 Back to citation occurrence 6.1 ""Norbert of Xanten", St. Norbert College, De Pere, Wisconsin". Archived from the original on 19 June 2013. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  7. Back to citation "About St. Norbert of Xanten". De Pere, Wisconsin: Center for Norbertine Studies, St. Norbert College. Archived from the original on 5 May 2014. Retrieved 5 May 2014.
  8. Back to citation Daniello Bartoli (1855). History of the Life and Institute of St. Ignatius de Loyola: Founder of the Society of Jesus (Original from the New York Public Library, 2006 ed.). E. Dunigan. pp. 324. “God has sometimes announced beforehand the rise, works, and merits, whether of certain Orders whom He has sent to the assistance of His Church or of their founders. We find examples of this in the dream He made known... in the seven rays of light which appeared to St. Norbert, surrounding the head of the crucified Redeemer, and the pilgrims who came to him from the uttermost extremities of the earth”
  9. Back to citation Kirkfleet (1916). History of Saint Norbert. pp. 213–16. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  10. Back to citation occurrence 10.0 Back to citation occurrence 10.1 Geudens, Francis Martin. "St. Norbert." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1811. 16 Jun. 2013
  11. Back to citation Kunkel, Thomas (11 May 2019). Man on Fire: The Life and Spirit of Norbert of Xanten. USA: St. Norbert College Press in association with the Center for Norbertine Studies. ISBN 978-0-9851080-7-6.
  12. Back to citation Kirkfleet (1916). History of Saint Norbert. p. 149. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  13. Back to citation Kirkfleet (1916). History of Saint Norbert. pp. 299–300. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  14. Back to citation "Saint Norbert the fondator", Abbaye de Notre-Dame de Leffe Archived 2014-09-13 at the Wayback Machine
  15. Back to citation "The 140 Saints of the Colonnade: 140, St. Norbert". St. Peters Basilica Info. Retrieved 20 December 2021.
  16. Back to citation "About the Center". St. Norbert College. Retrieved 23 May 2019.
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