NORBERT, Saint. - Founder of the Canons Regular of Prémontré (hence Premonstratensians), at present in the department of the Aisne, b. at Xanten, duchy of Cleves, ca. 1080, from the noble Limburg family of Gennep, d. 6 June 1134. He was at first a worldly ecclesiastic, devoted to the emperor Henry V, whom he accompanied to Rome in 1111 on the occasion of his imperial coronation and of the scandalous outrages inflicted on Pope Paschal II.

Converted afterwards by a fright he had during a hurricane, he gave himself over to an ascetic life under the direction of the abbot Cuno of Siegburg, and was ordained a priest. Later, encouraged by Gelasius II and by his successor Callistus II, N. preached peace and concord in northern France and in the Low Countries, especially at Antwerp. The bishop of Laon settled him at Prémontré; from there, in numerous journeys, he populated the branches of Prémontré with white canons; at his death, in 1130, they were 15; six years later they reached a hundred. Devoted at first to poverty, then to the service of rural parishes, the Norbertines added to the Rule of St. Augustine their own customs or statutes, which were drawn up in 1138 by Hugh of Fosses, the successor of N. In 1126 N. became archbishop of Magdeburg, then chancellor of the Empire. A faithful supporter of Honorius II at the time of the schism of Anacletus, he, like St. Benedict, was one of the most influential ecclesiastics of his time. Feast on 11 June.

Bibliography8 works

BIBL.: E. Maire, St Norbert, Paris 1922; G. Madelaine, Histoire de St Norbert, Tongerloo 1928; P. E. Valvekens, Norbert van Gennep, Bruges 1943; E. de Moreau Histoire de l'Église en Belgique, III, Brussels 1945, p. 438 f.; P. L. Lefèvre, Les statuts de Prémontré, Louvain 1946; F. Petit, La spiritualité des Prémontrés aux XIIe-XIIIe siècles, Paris 1947; C. Derelne, Les origines de Prémontré, offprint from the Rev. hist. eccl., of Louvain 1947; id., Le premier « ordo » de Prémontré, in Rev. bénéd., 58 (1948), pp. 84-92.

Guglielmo Mellat

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Norbert, Saint

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