St Norbert

Norbert is one of those saints whose whole direction changes in a moment and then never turns back. Born into noble surroundings and holding church benefices while still living the easy life of a court cleric, he is shaken into conversion by the thunderstorm in which his horse throws him and he hears inwardly the call to turn from evil and do good. It then follows the severe aftermath of that awakening: prayer, retreat, ordination, public renunciation of luxury, selling his estates, giving what he can to the poor, and setting out barefoot to obtain papal permission to preach. His early apostolic years are hard and not especially smooth. He is denounced as an innovator, travels in poverty, and wins followers only gradually. But the work clarifies when he receives the lonely valley of Premontre and gathers there the first white-robed canons who will become the Premonstratensian order.

This life makes clear that Norbert is not simply founding another cloister for escape from the world. He is reforming the life of canons, combining common observance, poverty, preaching, and pastoral usefulness. The second half of this life is equally large. Against his own wishes he is made archbishop of Magdeburg, enters the city like a beggar, and then governs with a firmness that makes him hated by those who had grown comfortable with laxity or with stolen church property. It also places him in the great schism around Innocent II, where Norbert helps win imperial support for the true pope. By the time he dies in 1134, worn out after twenty crowded years of work, he has been courtier, penitent, preacher, founder, reformer, bishop, and defender of the Church.