Saint Norbert of Magdeburg

Norbert spent his entire youth there. At the age of thirty-three, he was riding one day, followed by only one servant, to a village called Freten , in W Freten Site of the miraculous conversion of Norbert in Westphalia. estphalia. He was crossing a beautiful meadow. The sky suddenly covered with clouds, and such a horrible storm arose, accompanied by lightning and thunder, that his servant, frightened and as if moved by a divine impulse, cried out: "Lord, where are you going? Turn back, lord, turn back; the hand of God is surely against you!" Then he heard another voice crying out to him from above: "Norbert, Norbert, why do you persecute me? I destined you to build up my Church, and you scandalize the faithful!" At the same time, lightning, falling at his feet, threw him to the ground, where he remained unconscious for the space of an hour; but having come to himself and reviewing all the years of his life, in the bitterness of his heart, he said with a sigh: "Lord, what would you have me do?" And having heard another voice from heaven answering him: "Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it," Norbert resolved to abandon the court and retire to his house in Santen. During this stay, he often saw Conon, a person of great merit and abbot of the monastery of Siegberg, three leagues from Cologne; and he learned from him the first rudiments of the religious life: so that he began to accustom himself to receive with a good heart all that happened to him that was annoying and contrary to his inclinations, to wear, under his silk clothes, a very rough hair shirt, and to practice other similar mortifications.

Finally, the fullness of the time of grace having arrived for Saint Norbert, he absolutely wished to break with the world. To this end, he went to find the Archbishop of Cologne and begged him most humbly to admit him among the clerics who were preparing to receive Holy Orders. Having obtained this favor, he left his secular clothes, which had always been very fine, put on a poor cassock made of lambskin, and took a rope for a belt: in this habit, he was ordained deacon and priest on the same day; which was nevertheless granted to him only with great difficulty, because the holy Canons are contrary to it. Then he retired to the monastery of Siegberg to learn the ceremonies and prepare himself for his first sacrifice: which he did for forty days with incredible fervor. Having said his first mass in the church of Xanten, of which he was a canon, he applied himself to preaching with such zeal and inveighed so strongly against the vices, even of his fellow ecclesiastics whose lives were disorderly, that many, touched by his words, converted and resolved to lead a better life in the future. However, as this apostolic freedom did not please everyone, there was a cleric so impudent that he spat in his face in the middle of an assembly: some others, who, for being less insolent, were no less malicious, denounced him to Conon, Bishop of Palestrina and Legate of the Pope in Germany, as an innovator, a hypocrite, who, under the guise of austerity, hid evil designs. The Saint, knowing that his reputation was necessary for him to preach the word of God, justified himself against all these slanders in a Council held at Fritzlar in 1118.

To make himself more worthy of the ministry to which God was calling him, he resigned all his benefices, which were considerable, into the hands of his archbishop; then he sold his patrimony and all his furniture to give the money to the poor, and reserved for himself only the ornaments necessary to say mass, ten silver marks, and a mule; and even then, it was not long before he sold his mount and distributed to the needy the little that remained. Thus stripped of everything, he went barefoot to the abbey of Saint-Gilles, in the diocese of Nîmes, in Languedoc, where Pope Gelasius II, fleeing the persecution of Emperor Henry, had retired under the protection of the King of France. Nor pape Gélase II Predecessor of Callixtus II, died at Cluny. bert, having prostrated himself at the feet of His Holiness, first asked him for absolution for the fault he had committed in receiving, against the holy Canons, the diaconate and the priesthood on the same day; then, having given him an account of the disorders of his past life, he begged him to allow him, as his penance, in addition to the fasts and other austerities that it would please him to order, to go and preach the holy Gospel everywhere. The Pope willingly consented, although he would have very much wished to retain such a worthy personage near his person.

Saint Norbert, endowed with this apostolic power, began to preach in France the terrible morality of penance; but, however eloquent he was, to persuade what he said, his example was even more powerful and effective than his word; for he walked barefoot in the middle of winter and in the midst of the snow. He had for clothing only a rough hairshirt in the form of a tunic and a penitent's cloak. He perpetually observed the life of Lent, according to the rigor of the first centuries of the Church, and added to it that he ate almost no fish and drank wine only very rarely. He fasted every day and ate only in the evening, except on Sundays. In short, he was another Saint John the Baptist in his austerity and the fervor of his preaching.

He had brought with him from Germany two lay companions who did not abandon him; but while passing through Orléans, he found a subdeacon who begged him to receive him among his disciples. With this help, he went to Valenciennes, where he preached with such vigor and grace that all the inhabitants begged him not to leave them and to continue the functions of his mission among them. He did not wish to accede to their request, because his intention was to go promptly to carry the word of God into the diocese of Cologne; but Our Lord stopped him for some time in this place by the illness and death of his three companions (1119). However, Burchard, Bishop of Cambrai, having come there, Saint Norbert wished to speak to him, because they had been together at the emperor's court and knew each other familiarly. When this prelate saw him barefoot, poorly dressed, and in a state so different from that in which he had seen him a few years earlier, he embraced him with great tenderness and said to him with tears in his eyes: "O Norbert, Norbert, who would have ever believed this of you? Who would have ever thought of it?" One of the bishop's chaplains, who had introduced Saint Norbert, being surprised by this welcome, asked his master the reason for it. He told him that he should not be surprised; that the one he saw in such poor attire had been one of the most elegant and cheerful courtiers of the emperor; that he had formerly refused great advancements in the ecclesiastical state, and even the bishopric of Cambrai, to which he himself had only risen upon his refusal, and that it was not necessity, but a generous contempt for the world that had thus stripped him. This answer touched this good chaplain so much that, leaving from then on all the advantages he could hope for in the world, he joined Saint Norbert and became his disciple. His name was Hugh, and he became so perfect under his guidance that he deserved to be his successor in the general government of the Order of Prémontré, of whi ch we Hugues First disciple of Norbert and his successor as abbot general. are about to speak.

Let us first report a heroic action of generosity and trust in God that our blessed canon performed before beginning his travels. A large spider having unfortunately fallen into his already consecrated chalice while he was saying mass, he courageously swallowed it. After mass, he knelt at the foot of the altar to wait for what would happen; for, at that time, it was believed that the venom of this animal was dangerous to man. But God made him expel this spider through his nose by sneezing. His faith grew wonderfully thereafter: as it was said that Saint Bernard surpassed all those of his time in charity, and that Milo, Bishop of Thérouanne, surpassed them in humility, so it was said of Saint Norbert that he surpassed everyone in the strength and excellence of his faith.

Having left Valenciennes, he began to travel through the cities, towns, and villages to preach penance, confession, reconciliation with enemies, and restitution on all sides; his word, joined to the admirable example of his life, had such great effects everywhere that an infinite number of sinners were seen to convert, enemies to reconcile, and usurers to restore the property of others. His reputation flying everywhere, he was continually surrounded by a crowd of people, either following him or coming to meet him; and they had so much respect for everything he said that the most stubborn dared not refuse him anything. The few who did immediately felt the hand of God, which weighed heavily upon them and punished them severely for their obstinacy. Witness a Flemish lord, who had not wanted to reconcile with one of his neighbors: he fell shortly after, according to the prediction of the man of God, into the hands of his enemies; the lord of Cauroi, near the abbey of Gibleu, in Brabant, is also cited: he had mounted his horse to escape and not be forced by the Saint to embrace his enemy; he could never take a step and was forced to dismount, to ask the blessed Preacher for forgiveness, and to reconcile perfectly with the one he hated to death.

However, Pope Gelasius having died at the Abbey of Cluny, Guy, French by birth and Archbishop of Vienne, who was elected in his place under the name of Callixtus II, assembled a council at Reims on October 20, 1119, to remedy the evils with which the Church was then afflicted. Four hundred and twenty-four prelates, both bishops and abbots, were present, and the Pope presided himself in the presence of King Louis VI, known as the Fat. Saint Norbert also went there with Hugh, his companion, to ask the Pope for the continuation of the permission that Gelasius had granted him to preach the evangelical truths everywhere. He was very well received there by all the Fathers, and there was no one who did not admire his austerity of life, his detachment from all earthly things, his apostolic zeal, and the marvelous strength with which he preached the maxims of the Christian religion. He easily obtained from the Pope what he asked; but the Bishop of Laon, considering within himself what a great blessing it would be for his diocese to possess such a rich treasure, begged the sovereign Pontiff to give him to him to reform the Abbey of Saint-Martin of Laon, which belonged to canons regular.

The Pope, who approved of the holy bishop's zeal, ordered Saint Norbert to follow him. He excused himself as best he could, knowing well the difficulty of the enterprise; but, not wishing to fail in obedience, he finally consented to take charge of this abbey, provided that the canons were willing to receive the laws of evangelical austerity and poverty that he would propose to them. This condition exempted him from working there for a long time, for he found in their minds no disposition to embrace the reform he wished to give them, nor to change their way of life, which had become entirely secular. He did not, however, leave the Bishop of Laon for that; but he remained with him for the rest of the winter; and, as he received from his charity a thousand bodily assistances, by which this good prelate tried to restore his body ruined by vigils, fasting, cold, heat, disciplines, and the austerities of penance, so he filled him, in return, with spiritual riches through the words of life and grace that came from his mouth, and which brought light and unction into the souls of those who had the happiness of listening to him.

The more the holy bishop enjoyed the conversation of Saint Norbert, the more the fear of losing him and the desire to have him always in his diocese increased in his heart. To retain him, he proposed that he build a new monastery in some nearby solitude, where he could receive disciples and establish a new Order in accordance with the austere and penitent life of which he gave the example. The Saint having consented, the bishop first led him to a place called Foigny, where nothing was lacking for the convenience of a religious house; but the Saint, having begun to pray, knew by revelation that this place was not intended for him, but for the religious of Cîteaux, who have since established themselves there. Then the bishop led him to another place named Thenaïlle, which also seemed very favorable; but Norbert, having again begun to pray, learned that this was not the place that divine Providence had prepared for him either. Finally, he led him to a spot in the forest of Coucy called Vois, and showed him a valley named Prémontré, where th ere was a Prémontré Founding site of the eponymous monastic order. chapel of Saint John the Baptist, which the religious of Saint-Vincent of Laon, to whom it belonged, had abandoned. The Saint had no sooner perceived this desert than he exclaimed: "This is the place that the Lord has chosen for us." And, having entered the chapel, he begged the bishop to be pleased to let him spend the night there in prayer. It was during this night that he saw a great number of people dressed in white who were walking in procession around this place with crosses and lights, and that the Blessed Virgin having appeared to him, showed him the place where he was to found the head of his Order, and the form of habit he was to give his religious.

The next day, the bishop, who had retired to his house in Anisy, having returned, our Saint declared to him what he had seen and begged him to give him this place of Prémontré for his dwelling and that of a great company of holy religious who would be called there to the service of God. The bishop felt extreme joy at this request, and, having arranged it with the abbot and the chapter of Saint-Vincent, he gave in property to Saint Norbert and to those who were to join him this famous desert with three neighboring valleys for their subsistence; which was confirmed by the letters patent of King Louis the Fat.

A few days later, on January 25, when the Church celebrates the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, in the year 1124, this excellent prelate removed from Saint Norbert and Hugh, his companion, the habits of penance they were wearing, and clothed them in a religious habit. It was a white habit, such as the one the Blessed Virgin had shown the Saint when she appeared to him. This is how the holy Order of Prémontré began, which has since spread so marvelously throughout Europe, and which has given so many Saints, Blessed, Prelates, Doctors, and most perfect Virgins to the Church. Saint Norbert at first had only one companion; but, having gone to preach in Cambrai, Nivelles, Laon, and other cities, he made such happy conquests during Lent that he returned at Easter with thirteen disciples. He then returned to Nivelles, where he delivered a twelve-year-old girl possessed by a very cruel and stubborn demon; and, having passed through Cologne, he brought back two holy bodies to enrich his new abbey, namely: that of one of the companions of Saint Ursula, and that of Saint Gereon, one of the illustrious martyrs of the Theban Legion, whom he found still intact and dressed in his military clothes. The troop of his children also increased during his travels; and, upon his return, he saw himself the Father of forty religious destined for the choir, and of several lay brothers, whom he needed for external service.

Some time later, he had them all put to prayer to learn from heaven what Rule they should embrace and what kind of life they should follow; their prayer, accompanied by fasting and tears, was soon answered: for Saint Augustine appeared to him, holding a gold en Rule in his saint Augustin Cited for his definition of fraternal charity. hand, and, having declared that he was the famous Bishop of Hippo, he told him that the will of God was that he should follow his Rule and that he should only add a few constitutions for the preservation of regular discipline, assuring him, moreover, that if his brothers were faithful in observing it, they would appear without fear at the terrible judgment of God. Thus, Saint Norbert gave his children, whom he made canons regular, the Rule of the great Saint Augustine, and they all made their profession on Christmas Day of the year 1122.

He served them himself as a living rule and a model of all religious virtues; and his example was so powerful that nothing seemed difficult to them in conforming to the life and practices of such an excellent master. There were especially three things that he recommended to them most often: the first was purity of heart and external cleanliness in what concerned the divine offices and the service of the altars; the second, the expiation of their faults and negligence in the chapter; and the third, hospitality and the care of the poor. He also said that a religious house could not become disordered when the superiors were united among themselves and with their community.

This admirable Father of the Congregation was not content with assembling men to celebrate the praises of God continually: he also established, at the same place of Prémontré, a holy community of girls and widows who were the good odor of Jesus Christ throughout the Church. Then, he had a new monastery built at Floreffe, through the liberality of Godfrey, Count of Namur, and Ermensende, his wife; it was there that, while celebrating Mass, he caused a drop of the blood of Jesus Christ to flow onto the paten, with the sensible appearance of blood, which he took with much devotion and an abundance of tears. Meanwhile, his church of Prémontré having been built in nine months, in a miraculous manner, it was solemnly dedicated on April 28 of the year 1122, by the bishops of Laon and Soissons. It was an illustrious trophy of the victories that he and his children had won over the demon, who had opposed with all his power the completion of this church, and had employed a thousand tricks to divert and discourage the workers. Soon after, another Godfrey, Count of Cappenberg, and Otto, his brother, embraced the Saint's Institute; and as they had great lordships near the Rhine, they gave him lands and revenues to found three new monasteries, which were in a short time filled with a great number of holy canons. Theobald, Count of Champagne, wished to imitate the fervor of Godfrey; but Norbert declared to him that the will of God was that he should serve Him in marriage; and yet he aggregated him to his Order, giving him a small white scapular to wear under his clothes, and prescribing a Rule for him to live holily and in a religious manner in the midst of the world. He has since granted the same grace to an infinity of secular persons, who have composed the Third Order of Prémontré.

We shall not pause here to recount his other foundations: it is enough to say, in general, that his congregation soon became like that vine which, according to the King-Prophet, covers the mountains and the cedars with its shadow, and, extending its branches from one sea to the other, fills, so to speak, the entire surface of the earth. It flourished above all through the signal victory that this great servant of God won in Antwerp over a pernicious heresiarch, who threatened nothing less than to ruin the faith throughout the Low Countries. He was a man nam Tankelin Lay heresiarch opposed by Norbert in Antwerp. ed Tanchelm, a simple layman, who, having neither authority nor mission, nevertheless encroached upon the function of prelates and took it upon himself to dogmatize the people. His principal errors were that the order of bishops and priests was but a vain fiction, and that the adorable sacrament of our altars was useless for salvation. He was followed by three thousand people so strongly infatuated with his holiness that they considered themselves fortunate to approach him and drink the water with which he had washed his hands. The drunkenness, gluttony, and impurity that he permitted gained him disciples from all the voluptuaries of his time; and he had so furiously abused them that they could, without shame and without contradiction, corrupt wives in the sight of their husbands, and daughters in the presence of their mothers.

As the city of Antwerp was then but a parish of the diocese of Cambrai, Bishop Burchard, who occupied that see, felt obliged to oppose these infamies; he thought there was no one more capable of stopping their course than Saint Norbert, who was in his desert of Prémontré. He ordered the canons of Antwerp, who then possessed the collegiate church of Saint-Michel, to call him to their aid and to beg him to come and fight this new monster with them. They faithfully executed this order; the Saint, having received their deputation, immediately left his solitude like a generous captain to go and attack this impious man, who had the boldness to make war on the Spouse of Jesus Christ. He was received in Antwerp with extraordinary joy and applause, and immediately began, with some of his disciples whom he had brought with him, to preach with such vigor and light against the impostures of the heresiarch that he manifestly showed their falsehood, undeceived many of those who had allowed themselves to be seduced by his false reasoning, brought them back into the bosom of the Church, and forced the man himself to flee and seek a safer retreat in another country; he did not find it: divine justice, wishing to make him bear the penalty for his crimes, permitted him to be killed like a public plague while crossing the river Scheldt. The canons of Antwerp were so grateful to Saint Norbert for this signal victory that they gave him their own church of Saint-Michel to establish a community of his canons there and retired to the church of Notre-Dame, which is now the cathedral. Furthermore, a thing extremely remarkable in this glorious expedition of Saint Norbert, those who converted confessed that, having received consecrated hosts ten or fifteen years prior, and having placed them out of contempt and infidelity in holes in walls and in dirty and damp places, they had remained there without corruption; and, indeed, they brought them back sound and whole into the hands of the Saint and those of his children, whom he left in the church of Saint-Michel to finish bringing the strayed back to the path of salvation.

Thus, our holy abbot returned to Prémontré, victorious over heresy, and with the consolation of having avenged the honor and restored the frequenting of the holy Sacrament of the altar. He then worked to have his Order and its Constitutions approved and confirmed by the authority of the Holy See: which was necessary for its propagation in various dioceses. Peter of Leon and Gregory of Saint-Angelo, cardinals and legates a latere throughout the kingdom of France, granted him this grace by a bull given at Noyon, in the year 1125. But as it was appropriate to have it from the Pope himself, he traveled to Rome, where Honorius II had succeeded Calixtus. The Pope received him there with great kindness, and, after informing himself of the great utility of this institute, he gave him his apostolic confirmation and received him under the protection of the Holy See, as appears by his bull, dated February 26, 1126.

It was in this city that this blessed patriarch learned, by revelation, that he would be elected Archbishop of Mag deburg; he Magdebourg Archiepiscopal see where Norbert was appointed. felt great sorrow at this: his humility made him believe that he was incapable of such a charge. On his return, he passed through Würzburg, in Germany, where he was asked to say High Mass on Easter Day, in the presence of Lothair, King of Lothaire King of Lotharingia whose divorce was a state affair handled by Ado. the Romans, and his entire court. After the celebration of the divine mysteries, he gave sight to a blind woman by breathing into her eyes; and, by this miracle, he touched three brothers, young nobles from the first families of the city, so powerfully that they threw themselves at his feet, offered him all their goods, and consecrated themselves to God in his Order. Such was the origin of the monastery of Prémontré, near Würzburg, which was called Haute-Celle. Fearing to be named to the vacant bishopric of that city, the Saint left as soon as possible to return to his abbey. But he could not avoid the election that Providence had prepared for him from all eternity.

As he had told Theobald, Count of Champagne, that God wanted him in the state of marriage, he had also declared to him that God had joined him in His eternal ideas with Matilda, daughter of Angilbert, a most illustrious marquis in Germany, and niece of the Bishop of Regensburg, a virtuous princess worthy of such a holy spouse. Theobald, having submitted to this order, begged the Saint to accompany him on the journey he was obliged to make to Speyer, an imperial city, for the fulfillment of this marriage, and even told him that he could not go without him. The Saint, who loved him singularly for the great qualities with which God had adorned his soul, did not want to refuse him this good office. He therefore went to Speyer, where the king had come, and again edified the whole court by the examples of his piety and by the words of life that flowed continually from his mouth. It happened at the same time that Roger, Archbishop of Magdeburg, died, and that the clergy and the people sent deputies to Lothair, to beg him to name an archbishop for them. The great reputation of the Saint caused this prince to immediately cast his eyes upon him, and he named him archbishop of that see, with the advice of Cardinal Gerard, apostolic legate, who, since then, has been Pope under the name of Lucius II. The difficulty was to make him consent to this nomination, to which he opposed with all his might. But as the legate used his authority to compel him, it was necessary that he let himself be consecrated and that he finally accept this charge, however heavy it seemed to him. He was led as if in triumph to Magdeburg, and he made his entry there to the general applause of the whole city; but with such humility on his part, being barefoot and mounted on a donkey, that the porter of the church wanted to prevent him from entering, believing that it was some poor man who had mingled in the crowd.

This new dignity did not make him change his ways at all; he gave up none of his former austerities; he was always the same regarding his fasts and his vigils, his table and his bed. He applied himself with apostolic vigor to banish from his clergy and his people an infinity of disorders that had crept in. Above all, he insisted courageously on the celibacy of ecclesiastics, many of whom violated the holy law. He first used gentleness to bring the debauched back to their duty; but, when he saw that this conduct was useless for many, and that they took him for a timid man, he used all his authority to reduce them. He did not respect the nobility of their condition, he did not fear their credit in the country, where he was only a stranger, and even mocked their threats: he put some in prison, interdicted others, and took away from the latter the benefices they were abusing. This firmness having driven an unchaste archdeacon to despair, rage led him to the excess of inciting an assassin to kill the blessed prelate, by pretending to want to confess to him. This plot was not hidden from the servant of God; he was warned of it inwardly, and, seeing the assassin approach, he had him arrested and searched by his officers, who found the dagger with which he was to commit the deed. His confession was very different from the one he had come to make: for he was forced to admit his evil design and to discover the primary author of such a sacrilegious attempt. Another wicked cleric fired an arrow at the Saint, thinking to kill him; but he wounded another. Popular seditions were incited against him: once, in his very church, a villain discharged a sword blow at his shoulder that would undoubtedly have struck him down if God, his protector, had not rendered it useless by making the sword bounce as if it had struck an anvil. To all these violences, Norbert opposed only his patience and his charity; but they were finally victorious over malice, and, after three years of furious storms, he enjoyed a very profound tranquility.

The lords of his diocese had made many usurpations of ecclesiastical goods: the Saint could not suffer them either, because they took from the Church the revenues necessary to maintain the officers and to feed the poor, and because they made these very usurpers guilty of eternal damnation. He therefore worked with an intrepid courage to remedy this. The interested parties stirred up many traps for him to make him perish; but God miraculously withdrew him from them: they attacked him with open force, but the same hand, to which nothing can resist, delivered him from all their persecutions. He was blamed for pursuing the most considerable of his diocesans through lawsuits, to increase his revenues, and he was accused of avarice; but the use he made of his goods justified him enough of this calumny: for he had nothing that he did not employ for the maintenance of the parishes, the monasteries, and which was not dispensed according to the rules of a perfect charity. His vigor and his patience disarmed his persecutors again, and he had the consolation of finally seeing his Church flourishing through the possession of the goods that legitimately belonged to it, and through the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline.

The labors of the episcopate did not make him forget the needs of his Order: he took care to have an abbot general elected in his place, to govern the house of Prémontré, and to watch over all the other houses of the same Institute. It was upon the blessed Hugh, his first disciple, that this lot happily fell. He brought some of his children to Magdeburg, and he put them in possession of the collegiate church of Our Lady, whose secular canons, by their disorder, justly deserved to be driven out; he sent others into various provinces of Germany to work there for the conversion of the infidels and the reformation of the morals of the Christians.

They did so with such success that they were given, on all sides, as a reward, large and beautiful lordships, where monasteries of monks and nuns were built: thus, the Order of Prémontré became very powerful in the lands of the empire; there were even places where the abbots were sovereign princes.

All the great lords in Germany honored the holy archbishop as their father. Lothair especially had such great affection for him that he made him his chancellor and his principal confidant, and he found it difficult to live without him. The Saint did not, however, allow himself to be engaged at court, but used this benevolence of the prince to procure the good of his Order, of his diocese, and of the whole Church. Pope Innocent II, against whom Cardinal Peter of Leon had made a schism, by posing as pope under the name of Anacletus II, having taken refuge in France, the ordinary asylum of persecuted sovereign Pontiffs, assembled a Council at Reims to repress the audacious sacrilege of this antipope. Saint Norbert was there with the other prelates, and supported with admirable vigor the cause of this legitimate successor of Saint Peter. He also procured some graces there for his metropolitan Church and for the whole Order of Prémontré, which was the object of his most lively solicitude. Having returned to Magdeburg, he showed himself there more than ever the father of the poor, the widows, the orphans, and all the unfortunate, through the great alms and the bodily and spiritual assistance with which he anticipated them. But King Lothair having formed the design of going to Rome, as much to have Pope Innocent received there as to be crowned emperor there, Norbert was obliged to accompany him. This journey succeeded wonderfully well; the antipope was driven from Rome; the legitimate pastor was placed on his pontifical throne in the church of Saint John Lateran; Lothair received the golden crown from his hand and was proclaimed emperor, and the Saint, as a reward for the many services he had rendered to the Church, besides the Pallium he had already received, was named primate of all Germania.

But God was preparing for him a much more august reward in heaven. He was not yet old: for he was hardly fifty-two years of age, and it had only been twenty years since he had renounced the vanities of the world to give himself to the service of Jesus Christ; but he had walked during this time with such great strides in the path of virtue that one could say of him that he had filled the course of several centuries. Scarcely had he returned to Magdeburg, when a violent illness having seized him, he rendered, at the end of four months, his blessed spirit into the hands of his Creator. This was on June 6 of the year 1134, which was the eighth of his episcopate.

There were immediately striking testimonies of the glory of his soul. One of his religious, being in prayer, saw him change in an instant into a lily flower, of admirable whiteness, which the angels carried up into heaven. Another perceived him descending from heaven with an olive branch in his hand: he asked him where he came from and where he was going; the Saint answered him that he came from paradise, and that he was going to Prémontré to transplant this heavenly branch there, as a mark of the peace that was to reign there. A third, Hugh, abbot general of his Order, saw him in a magnificent palace and all penetrated by the rays of the sun, and, having asked him what his soul had become at the hour of his death, the Saint answered him that he had been told: "Come, my dear sister, rest yourself."

Saint Norbert is depicted with the Blessed Virgin, who appears to him and presents the white habit that his Order is to wear. Because of this, the demon called Saint Norbert a white dog. He is also depicted with a chalice and a ciborium, because of his reverence for the Holy Eucharist, of which we have reported an account.

## CULT AND RELICS. — ABBEY OF PRÉMONTRÉ.

As for his holy body, after having been carried for nine months without corruption through all the churches of Magdeburg, it was deposited in that of his Order, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, as he himself had ordered: but the city of Magdeburg having fallen under the domination of the Lutherans, Emperor Ferdinand II had it transported, in the year 1627, to Prague Prague Capital of Bohemia and final burial place. , in Bohemia, where it is exposed to the veneration of the faithful.

Dom Zeidler, abbot of the Premonstratensian Order of Prague, of the canonical Chapter of Strahof, and prelate of Bohemia, kindly sent us a copy of the life of Saint Norbert in German. We have extracted the following from it, concerning the relics of this Saint:

« Since the day when, with the city and the church of Saint Mary of Magdeburg, the relics of Saint Norbert fell into the hands of the Protestants (1598), from that day the dignitaries of his Order did not cease to take steps to remove the bones of their holy founder from the city of the heretics. Kaspar von Questenberg, abbot of the Premonstratensian convent of Strahof in Prague, had this honor. By the permission of Emperor Ferdinand II, he solemnly transferred the holy relics in 1627. Deposited then in the very middle of the church of the Strahof convent, in a chapel built expressly for that purpose, the location of which can still be seen, they remained there until 1811. It was then necessary, in order to embellish the church, to remove the chapel of Saint Norbert, which occupied its center. Since that time, one can see above the tabernacle of the high altar a beautiful sarcophagus adorned with bas-reliefs. Inside is the coffin that contains the precious bones.

« A jubilee feast has been instituted and is celebrated every fifty years, in memory of the translation of the relics of Saint Norbert. The city has already seen this great feast four times: in 1677, 1727, 1777, and 1827 ».

There remain in Germany only eight convents of the Premonstratensian Order, including two in Austria, two in Hungary, and one in Moravia. The Abbey of Strahof, or Mount Zion, in Prague, still possesses the relics of Saint Norbert. Five Premonstratensian abbeys have been re-established in Belgium.

Saint Norbert was canonized by Pope Innocent III; Gregory XIII ordered his feast to be held on June 6 in all the churches of his Order, and attached great indulgences to it in the year 1582. Paul V made these indulgences plenary in the year 1616. Since then, this feast has been placed in the Roman Breviary, and from semi-double it was made double.

At the moment when Saint Norbert was obliged to accept the episcopal office, he had wished for his religious to proceed by free election to the choice of an abbot; he himself had not borne this title. Hugh of Fosses, the first and dearest of his disciples, received all the votes. He did not show himself unworthy of replacing Norbert. It was under his long administration, which lasted thirty-two years, that the Order received its definitive form.

Multiplied and considerable donations rapidly increased the resources of Prémontré. They were necessary to provide for the great number of religious men and women who inhabited this once-deserted place (in 1131, there were nearly five hundred brothers and one thousand nuns at Prémontré), to support the expenses of new establishments, and to continue the charitable works begun by Norbert. The numerous charters given by the bishops of Laon and by the Popes, at the solicitation of the first abbot of Prémontré, can give an idea of the goods brought by the generosity of the faithful every day, and the mention of the lands designated therein can serve the history of many localities. It was not, however, without reservation that Abbot Hugh accepted these donations: we shall give an example. Méchaine of Montmorency, widow of Guy, lord of Guise, had given to Prémontré, for the remedy of her soul, that of her husband, and of her relatives, the allod she possessed at Germaine, a village in the canton of Vermand; but, as her children were of tender age, Abbot Hugh believed he should not hasten to take possession. When Bouchard of Guise, the eldest, had been knighted, and when Godefroy, the second, had reached the rank of squire, their mother brought them to Prémontré with several witnesses; and the act of donation of Germaine was freely and fully ratified by them, as is confirmed by the charter given in 1135 by the bishop of Noyon. Shortly after, Méchaine herself took the veil in the abbey of Fontenelle, of which we shall speak.

Almost every year, one or more swarms of fervent religious went to found new dwellings, which were rapidly populated and which in turn became mothers of other abbeys. During the administration of Abbot Hugh, the foundations and affiliations became so numerous that before his death one could see at the General Chapters held each year at Prémontré more than one hundred abbots, each of whom governed a principal monastery and the more or less numerous priories that depended on it. The necessity of these Chapters was felt to maintain in unity of spirit and uniform conduct this multitude of religious, spread throughout all the regions of Europe. It was following their deliberations that the statutes of the Order were definitively drafted and perfected. To meet the expenses required by these assemblies, Enguerrand II of Coucy, son of Thomas de Marle, gave to Prémontré in 1138 considerable dues and tithes in Vervins, Coucy-la-Ville, and other places. It was not always at Prémontré that the General Chapters were held; many took place at Saint-Martin of Laon, others at Saint-Quentin, etc.

It was in one of these General Chapters, around 1141, that it was decreed that the monasteries of the nuns would be placed at a certain distance from the abbeys of the men. Those who were at Prémontré itself were placed at Fontenelle, a hamlet today dependent on Wissignicourt, near Anizy, in a house given by Barthélemy, bishop of Laon: "Not wishing," said the generous prelate, "that these daughters leave my diocese, and principally in consideration of my spiritual affection for the lady Agnès, wife of André de Baudimont (countess of Braine), who has consecrated herself to the service of the Lord in the society of the said sisters, I have built at my own expense a monastery in my neighborhood, near the farm of Fontenelle, which I had formerly given to Norbert, man of God." Similar measures were taken in the other abbeys. At the end of the second century of the Order, there were nearly five hundred monasteries of nuns; but most of these houses did not have a long existence, at least in our regions. As they did not have foundations of their own; as they remained dependent on the abbeys of men, which were charged with providing for their needs; they were little by little suppressed in France. They only subsisted in the last century in a few places in Belgium and Hungary.

The Order of Prémontré continued to prosper after Abbot Hugh of Fosses. One thousand abbeys of Canons Regular, and three hundred provostships or less important houses, without counting the parishes and particular services that depended on them, looked to Prémontré as their center, and were divided into thirty circaries or provinces. In the 16th century, Protestantism destroyed a great number of them in England, Sweden, and Germany. Most had been preserved until the end of the last century, and some still subsist in Belgium and Hungary.

The Premonstratensians maintained their primitive fervor for a long time. The historians of the Order have left us memoirs on many illustrious personages, to whom they give the name of Blessed or even Saints, and to whom they attribute miracles; however, Saint Norbert seems to have been the only one honored with a public and general cult in the Church. Several of these servants of God belong to our regions. We have already spoken of Hugh of Fosses, the first abbot. We shall also point out the phrase Bicuvère of Clastres, Yves de la Chaîne, the nineteenth abbot general of Prémontré, Jean de Rocquigny, so called from the place in the Thiérache where he was born. After taking the religious habit at Prémontré, he was sent to Paris to follow the lessons of the famous Alexander of Hales, and he obtained very brilliant successes at the University of Paris.

A Summa of Theology that he composed, as well as other works, prove the extent of his science. He was abbot of Clairfontaine in the diocese of Laon when, in 1247, he was called by unanimous voices to govern the entire Order. Already the need for Reform was being felt; he undertook it with courage, and he procured it with all his strength during the twenty-two years that his administration lasted. He worked to maintain and develop the hospice that Saint Norbert had established at Prémontré. But what did him the most honor was the establishment of the college of the Premonstratensians, which he founded solidly in Paris so that the religious of his Order could follow the courses of the University. He also had it decreed by the General Chapters that no novice would be received unless he had made sufficient progress in grammar and could express himself suitably in Latin. It is said that, feeling his end approaching, he had himself carried before the altar of the Holy Virgin, and that, after remaining there a long time in prayer, he expired there in 1269.

The more or less rapid enumeration that we could make of the fourteen houses of Premonstratensians that were founded in the current diocese of Soissons and Laon would give us the natural occasion to recall the memory of several other personages who honored the country by the holiness of their lives; but the length of this notice does not permit us to do so.

Various mitigations, admitted successively in the houses of the Order, caused Prémontré to fall from its first renown. It was about one hundred and twenty years after the foundation that these relaxations began to be introduced, regarding long fasts and the perpetual abstinence from meat. The Sovereign Pontiffs themselves judged it prudent to authorize this change, while maintaining the practice of certain austerities. In the 18th century, generous men worked to recall the primitive austerity. Such was the object of the reform established by Father de Léruels in his abbey of Pont-à-Mousson, approved by Paul V in 1617, and admitted afterwards by a certain number of other houses, which formed a distinct branch of the Institute. In the diocese of Laon, the abbeys of Cuissy and Bacilly embraced this reform.

The Premonstratensians of the Common Observance did not fail to make laudable efforts to raise its regularity. With a view to strengthening the studies that were especially suitable for religious frequently called to the pastoral ministry, the last abbots general had formed plans whose development the revolution of the last century prevented; moreover, it struck the entire body even to its ruin. (See in the Supplement, at the end of this volume, the details we provide on the restoration of the Premonstratensians in France).

Sixty abbots have governed Prémontré immediately from Saint Norbert to the last superior general, who survived its suppression and the dispersion of its members. M. Lécuy, this last abbot, died a canon of Paris on October 24, 1834.

The admirable situation of Prémontré in a deep valley, surrounded by high-timber trees, the memories and the imposing remains of this famous abbey, will long attract all friends of ancient monuments. Monseigneur de Garsignies, current bishop of Soissons and Laon, has recoiled before no sacrifice to save a monument that has done so much honor to his diocese. Shaken by the support of a multitude of generous friends, he bought back the remains of the old abbey, and he brought them out of the rubble; he even attempted to re-establish the extinct Order in France of the Canons Regular of Prémontré; and, in the meantime, he placed in the still-subsisting part of the buildings an asylum for orphans of both sexes. One can no longer at least complain, as Abbot Lécuy did, that there is no trace of divine worship in a place consecrated by the piety of so many centuries. Who would not make vows that these beginnings be crowned by an even more complete success?

M. Lequeux, canon of Paris, former superior of the major seminary of Soissons and vicar general, wrote the preceding lines in 1820. Some time later, death came suddenly to strike the bishop who had undertaken so many great works, and almost all of them disappeared with him. Mgr Christophe, his successor, frightened by the debts of the diocese, had a part of the acquisitions of Mgr de Garsignies sold. Prémontré was bought by the department at a price lower or at most equal, if I am not mistaken, to the acquisition price. The sums used to restore what remained of the old abbey were lost, and a monument that, in the thought of Mgr de Garsignies, was to be again consecrated to meditation and prayer, is today become a madhouse.

At the moment of the great revolution, the monks of the abbey of Prémontré had to abandon their house, which was declared national property.

The Convention, which wanted to develop the momentum of national industry, had thought for a moment of assigning the principal abbeys to the establishment of large factories, and on October 31, 1792, the Administration of national domains asked the Department to draw up a state of the built properties that would seem to it suitable to be erected into manufactures. If this state was drawn up, we have found no traces of it. We only know that, from then on, the abbey of Prémontré appeared eminently suitable to be assigned to such a destination. The lands and meadows that depended on it before the Revolution had been sold in detail, and of this great domain there remained only the forest and the immense and splendid abbatial buildings. A report that Réal presented to the Convention on November 20, 1794, in the name of the united Committees of Public Safety and Finance, informs us that on two occasions these buildings had been adjudicated in the heat of the auctions and to two insolvent buyers: the first time to a carpenter named Dominique at the price of five hundred and nineteen thousand livres, the second time and upon default to a clog-maker by the name of Maurice Prudhomme who became the purchaser for three hundred and ten thousand francs. In his inability to provide even the first down payment, the latter had not waited for the proceedings and had signified his withdrawal to the District of Chauny.

They then wanted to sell in detail, in the hope of attracting more solvent amateurs. A member of the Department proposed to divide the abbey into as many lots as it could present of dwellings and convenient lodgings; but they had to renounce this project, which the construction of the convent itself, its situation in a village of only fifty to sixty-two inhabitants, and its isolation in the middle of the woods, made unrealizable. The municipality of Prémontré and the District of Chauny, consulted by the General Council, were unanimously of the opinion that the most advantageous party for the Nation was to sell, even at the price of the estimate, these buildings to an industrial society, if one presented itself that offered to establish there a factory whose works would bring life to the country perishing of misery and consumption since the dispersion of the monks. But the offers did not come. The Commission of Public Relief near the Committee of Public Safety had a moment's idea of converting Prémontré into a hospital, as Foigny had been for more than a year. On July 25, 1794, it gave orders for a convalescent home to be established there for three thousand wounded or sick who would be covered by the hospitals of the Army of the North. Immense changes were to be made there with the greatest promptness. The seals were therefore immediately lifted. They prepared for the work; but this project was not realized.

A glassmaker—he was named Cagnon—well known for the perfection of his products that pharmacy and chemistry then preferred to the best glasses of the English factory, presented, in the meantime, a submission of acquisition; if he obtained Prémontré at the price of the estimate to be made and without competition, he promised to establish there a glassworks, a potash factory, and saltpeter works. The Department adopted, on July 13, 1794, the principle of the sale in bulk, and this sale, it ordered by a decree of the following August 2. Consulted on the advantages of the proposal of the glassmaker Cagnon, the Department, the District of Chauny, the Commissions of National Revenues, Agriculture, Arts, and Public Relief near the Convention, favorably welcomed the idea of the projected establishment.

"The Commission of Public Relief has especially observed," the rapporteur Réal said to the Convention, "that the glass manufacture would offer precious resources for the service of military hospitals which had a pressing need for pharmacy glasses. Determined by motives of public interest, your Committees of Public Safety and Finance have thought that the Convention should facilitate an establishment that will one day be of some weight in the balance of commerce and which, from now on, will procure for us objects necessary for our armies, objects that we would be obliged to draw in part from abroad. The same motives have engaged your Committees to impose on the purchaser the obligation to maintain the proposed establishment for a determined time. Finally, the adjudicatee who presents himself asks for neither help nor advance. It is on the footing of a rigorous estimate that he prepared the properties that will be alienated to him."

The Convention therefore ordered, on 30 Brumaire Year III (November 29, 1794), that three experts to be named, one by the Commission of National Revenues, the second by the Directory of the Aisne, and the third by the District of Chauny, would proceed immediately, and in the presence of the expert of citizen Cagnon, to the exact and rigorous estimation of the buildings, courtyards, gardens, enclosures, lands, meadows, ponds, mills, and other dependencies remaining to be sold of the abbey of Prémontré; they would address their report to the Convention which would decree the alienation, if there were cause. Such were the conditions imposed on the adjudicatee: he would pay his acquisition price in the terms and in the manner prescribed for the alienation of national domains, and he would be held to realize the proposed establishment within a year from the decree of adjudication and to maintain it at least for the space of ten years; failing for him to fulfill these conditions, he would be evicted from the buildings and other properties adjudicated to him, and could not repeat the first payment he would have effected.

On 3 Nivôse Year III (December 24, 1794), a decree of concession put Mr. Cagnon in possession of Prémontré without auction and on the simple estimation of the experts. He paid for this important domain only two hundred and thirty-three thousand four hundred and ninety-seven livres, and committed himself to begin within the year the works necessary for the transformation of the abbey into a workshop for glass, saltpeter, and potash manufacturing. Instead of executing his engagements, Cagnon then set to the work of demolition. He stripped the buildings of their ironwork, the roofs of their lead, the courtyards of their grilles. He realized in this way one hundred and fifty thousand livres which he paid to the national treasury as a first payment, and from the sale of some parcels of wood he made enough money to pay for the whole domain, the acquisition of which cost him nothing and which he kept almost in its entirety. Freed from his pecuniary debt, he thought himself freed from his debt of honor engagement. But he was denounced to the Commission of representatives of the people charged with the report on the alienations of the property of the State. This Committee ordered the departmental Administration to investigate if Cagnon had raised a factory at Prémontré, if he had alienated all or part of his acquisition, if he had removed the irons and leads and deteriorated the house; the Committee also wanted to know if, in the case where the Nation would return on this alienation, one could bring about the easy re-sale of Prémontré. The Department charged the municipal administration of the canton of Anizy to open an inquiry and to transmit to it serious information.

It was soon learned that Cagnon was demolishing a part of the buildings and announcing the intention to throw down the superb staircase of the abbey church; the degradations imputed to him, as well as the removal of the windows, doors, woodwork, and ironwork were only too real. Already the church was nothing but a heap of ruins. Finally, he had satisfied none of the conditions of the sale and had established neither factory nor workshops; moreover, he had already sold notable parts of the forest to people who continued his work of barbarism.

The departmental Administration had a defense signified to the retrocessionaire to continue the demolitions. Commissioners went to Prémontré to note the state of the places and take information on all the acts of vandalism already committed. The Convention annulled the sale; but Cagnon was powerful and lucky enough to have himself maintained in possession, and he finally opened workshops for glass casting.

The abbey was bought later by the Messrs. Deviolaine, of Soissons, who established there a mirror factory. This factory competing with the large factory of Saint-Gobain, the owners offered the Messrs. Deviolaine an enormous sum to become purchasers of Prémontré; their offer was accepted and Prémontré was put on sale, bought by Mgr de Garsignies, and became what we have said. We borrow from the dictionary of Religious Orders published by M. Migne the account of a visit made to Prémontré at the moment when this establishment was put on sale...

I visited Prémontré, which is enclosed in the parish of Brancourt, but which is currently a civil commune, having its mayor and its municipality. The workers who worked at the glass factory had established their dwelling, and several have built very decent, almost elegant houses in the gorge of the valley which has the remains of the abbey at its extremity. These new dwellings have taken almost nothing from the solitary aspect that Prémontré had kept until its last day. It is surprising that one of the most powerful abbeys in the world had kept all the majestic horror of its deserted state for seven centuries. The forest of Coucy envelops it in a valley of ten minutes' walk, and hides it almost, as in the time of Saint Norbert, from the sight of the world. The beeches of this dark and thick forest are planted a few meters from the walls of the abbey, whose vast enclosure is all preserved. After having skirted the large garden of the abbey church, one sees in front the body of the monastery whose majestic facade, somewhat lowered on both sides by the purchaser, would create an illusion and lead one to believe that everything still subsists; but there is nothing left but this facade, the immense cloister, the dormitory, the surprising and so famous staircase, which, from the dormitory, led to the choir, and the regular places are destroyed. One still sees in its entirety the Chapter, etc., of what is not demolished. The walls of the church are almost at their height in certain parts, and let one see what was the extent of this monument, the most important, the most sacred of Prémontré, and make one understand also that it was far from being in proportion to the wealth and elegance of the other parts of the abbey. The canons had understood it better than anyone, and although this church was, as it seemed to me, of a fairly recent date, they were going to build another if the Revolution had not come to chase them from their dwelling. The plan of the projected church was decided, and in the public library of Laon one sees in relief and on a large scale both the interior and the exterior of this church, which would have been absolutely what the church of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris is.

The entrepreneurs of the glassworks had built within the enclosure of Prémontré a fire pump, workshops, etc., which are still seen there and which in the state of abandonment of this factory make a singular contrast with the other buildings of the abbey which still has its stables, its infirmary, and vast and numerous constructions serving for the use of the religious and for the exploitation of their lands. The part of the facade that still remains would already be sufficient to house a community; but this part is nothing compared to the extent of the procuracy, built on the right in the courtyard, and which is all preserved and which itself is little compared to the abbey church built at the other extremity of the courtyard, and which is like an immense palace, having a majestic entrance with this surprising unsupported staircase that one finds in almost all the houses of the Premonstratensians, and having also kept almost all its luxury and the cleanliness of its apartments, so numerous that they would alone serve a large community.

One also sees at the extremity of the garden of this abbey church the remains of the small church of Saint-Jean, which formerly served as a parish church for those whom the canons had under their jurisdiction.

The cult of Saint John was established in this place, and the vast portal that one sees at the other extremity of the abbey is still called the Saint-Jean gate.

The cult of Saint Norbert is still in honor among the workers who inhabit these deserts. The statue of the founder is preserved at the home of one of them, and, before the July revolution, which annihilated the spirit and habits of religion in so many regions, they carried this statuette solemnly on the day of his feast to the church of Brancourt. Today they limit themselves to bringing him a bouquet at the neighbor's who possesses it and to firing some boxes on the return of his feast, which is July 11 in the Order of Prémontré.

We have several lives of this saint archbishop. Surius reports a very ancient one, which the Rev. Fr. Dom Jean-Chrysostome Vande-Sterre, abbot of Saint-Michel of Antwerp, gave us more correct, with learned notes. The Rev. Fr. Jean Le Paige, syndic of the same Order, gave us another in the second book of the library of Prémontré; and there are two others, one in verse, the other in prose, composed by the Rev. Fr. Pierre de Waghenare, of the same Institute.