Bd Godfrey of Kappenberg

Godfrey of Kappenberg had almost everything the world could promise a young twelfth-century nobleman: rank, wealth, marriage, military standing, and a strong future in Westphalia. The decisive change in his life came through the preaching and example of St Norbert, which struck him so deeply that his whole social position began to look different. The castle at Kappenberg was turned into a Premonstratensian house, his wife consented to a life of continence and religion, his brother followed the same path, and Godfrey himself entered not as a patron above the rule but as a novice beneath it. The reversal is striking because it is so complete.

A lord became the servant of pilgrims and the sick, washed feet, embraced poverty, and seemed genuinely happy to lose the honors he once possessed. The life is very short, ending when he was only about thirty, but it never feels trivial. It has the clean force of a man who saw what God asked and did not bargain with it.