St. Norbert

St. Norbert of Xanten was born around 1080 in the Rhineland town of Xanten, into a noble family connected to the imperial court. As a young man he served as a canon at the Church of St. Viktor in Xanten, though the sources suggest his early years were marked more by the privileges of his station than by visible piety. He was ordained and, by his own later admission, lived for some time in a way that fell short of the calling he had received.

The conversion that reshaped his life came after a dramatic experience around 1115. Tradition holds that during a storm a stag appeared with something luminous between its antlers, and that Norbert understood this as a direct divine summons. Whether or not the details of the encounter can be verified, the change it produced in him was unmistakable. He gave up his position at Xanten, embraced voluntary poverty, and began preaching repentance across the region, initially without any formal backing from the Church.

After years of itinerant preaching, Norbert sought authorization from Pope Gelasius II, who in 1120 gave him permission to live as a wandering preacher. In 1122, in the valley of Prémontré in northern France, he founded the religious community that would become known as the Premonstratensians, or Norbertines. The order combined elements of the monastic and apostolic life: the canons lived in community under a rule based on that of St. Augustine, but they also undertook preaching and pastoral work, which was unusual for a monastic foundation of the period. The order grew quickly and established houses across Western Europe.

Norbert's reforming zeal soon drew him into the wider life of the Church. In 1126 he was appointed Archbishop of Magdeburg, a post he had not sought, and he used it to press for clerical discipline and an end to simony and clerical concubinage. He also became a trusted figure in the political conflicts of the day, and was involved in negotiations and missions on behalf of Emperor Lothar III. The traditional patronage of St. Norbert as a figure associated with peace likely reflects this work of mediation, though it is hard to separate his historical activity from the later devotional image that grew around him.

Norbert died on June 6, 1134, in Magdeburg, relatively soon after taking up the archbishopric. He was venerated as a saint locally almost immediately, and was formally canonized by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The Premonstratensian order he founded survives to this day and continues to mark his feast day on June 6. He is remembered as the patron of Bohemia and is also invoked by expectant mothers, by those seeking peace, and by victims of abuse, though some of these patronages appear to be of more recent origin and are not all firmly documented.