Norbertine priests gather around the table to share a meal, as they have for the past 900 years.

900 Years Together With God Among the People: A Jubilee Begins

by Rob Kaiser

This November marks the start of a 14-month jubilee celebrating the 900th anniversary of a Roman Catholic order started by Norbert of Xanten, who established the first Norbertine monastery, in Prémontré, France, in 1121.

The jubilee, which consists of dozens of events in the United States and Europe, begins with a November 21, 2020, conference in Budapest and culminates in the U.S. with Daylesford Abbey’s Founders’ Day, on November 14, 2021. It also includes the distinctly Norbertine Feast of the Blessed Hugh, one of Norbert’s early disciples. 

If that schedule seems ambitious, so be it. Nine hundred years is a long time and deserves a proper feting, says Prior Emeritus Eugene Gries of Santa María de la Vid Abbey in Albuquerque. “It’s a significant benchmark, a time to celebrate with gusto!”

That Norbertine life has been around 900 years “means we have been faithful to our charism,” says Father Chrysostom Baer, prior of St. Michael’s Abbey in Silverado, California. It means, Abbot Joel Garner says, that “the order has been resilient during the many periods of deep turmoil over the centuries.”  

It means that Norbertines have filled a need, says Father Brad Vanden Branden, prior of St. Norbert Abbey in De Pere. 

“To be part of something that’s 900 years old – there’s something about this way of life that can stand the test of time, especially in a time of hatred and sickness,” Vanden Branden says. 

“It gives us some hope.”

Against the backdrop of the multinational jubilee, U.S. Norbertines have plans to mark the anniversary in their individual communities, too, from opening a new abbey building, which is the plan at St. Michael’s, to reviewing the life of Norbert. 

“I’ve already started dusting off my primary-source documents, reading the vitae of Norbert, Vita A, Vita B,” Vanden Branden says. 

Also marking the anniversary is Bayview Immaculate Conception Priory in Middleton, Del., where the Rev. James Herring is prior.

Even the order’s headstrong founder would have been amazed at the staying power of the Norbertine way of life, says Daylesford Abbey’s Father Andrew Ciferni. (Ciferni is also chair of the board of trustees at St. Norbert College in De Pere.) 

“The spiritual context of [Norbert’s] time was apocalyptic,” Ciferni says. “There was an expectation that Christ would be returning, which meant we really needed to get everybody evangelized. So I don’t think he thought that far ahead.”

A new life, flashed before his eyes
The thunderstorm that changed everything blew in suddenly as Norbert of Xanten rode his horse to the German village of Freden in the year 1115. Rain slashed mercilessly at the nobleman’s fancy coif and clothes, drenching him to the bone. Then lightning flashed, the horse bucked, and Norbert went flying.

Norbert hit the ground, lost consciousness, and awoke to experience a spiritual conversion that led him to become an itinerant preacher, and eventually establish an abbey and found the Norbertine order. 

It was quite a change for the once-pleasure seeking nobleman, whom one medieval biography calls “frivolous.”

“Until then, I call him an opportunistic cleric,” Father Andrew Ciferni of Daylesford Abbey says. “He put ordination off. He was leaving his options open – you know, maybe he could find the right lady, or whatever – and he was plugged in.

“(Then) he has this conversion experience, and it’s like boom – ‘All right, I want to be ordained a deacon and a priest on the same day,’ which is absolutely forbidden. But I think he just browbeat the Archbishop of Cologne” to get what he wanted.

“It seems to me like in many ways he would have been accustomed to having things his way,” says Father Brad Vanden Branden, prior of St. Norbert Abbey in De Pere. “There was a real expectation on his part that he had something to say and that people should listen.

“I get the sense he was a very zealous person. That was both good and bad. It made people uncomfortable. He called them out in public for their faults. But he had this mission to accomplish.”

After his fall from the horse, Norbert disposed of his estate and gave his wealth to the poor. He became an itinerant preacher, often traveling barefoot – even in snow and ice – and begging for bread for nourishment.

“He’s got disciples. They’re traveling barefoot in the snow. The first disciples die of overexposure,” Ciferni says.

“He’s preaching everywhere without a license to preach. He’s wearing the very simple woolen robes of a monk but he’s not a monk and he has violated church law by being ordained a deacon and a priest on the same day. He’s wearing the very simple woolen robes of a monk; but he’s not a monk, and he has violated church law by being ordained a deacon and a priest on the same day. So he’s called to a council to be reprimanded, and, lucky for him, the cardinal running the council is on his side. [So] he goes down to the south of France and gets a license to preach anywhere he wanted.”

Norbert was extremely charismatic, Ciferni said. He was wealthy, handsome, thin, and somewhat tall, according to an early biography. “He had a compelling way of speaking. He was like a magnet. People were drawn to him spontaneously,” Ciferni said.

In 1119, Pope Calixtus II asked the Bishop Bartholomew of Laon to look after Norbert, settle him down, and keep him in the service of his diocese. Norbert was run-down. He was asked to establish a house to recover his strength and lower his profile.  He chose Prémontré, a lonely, marshy valley in France, shaped in the form of a cross. 

“It’s interesting because when he became the archbishop in a certain sense he reverted to the creature comforts of his pre-conversion period,” Ciferni says. “Because he had really no choice. Because that’s how archbishops lived. He winds up in this position of trying to keep peace between the pope and the emperor. Once again he is a reconciler and peacemaker.”

The order spreads across the world
Though a relatively little-known figure historically, Norbert and the order he established have had a big impact.

“You don’t see the impact as universally as you see it with Jesuits, Franciscans, and Dominicans,” Father Andrew Ciferni says. 

“With Norbertines, the impact was local. In the Middle Ages, when these abbeys were founded in the low countries, one of the things they did was develop land agronomically. They drained the swamps. They built great libraries. And they were the suppliers of lots of needs besides he spiritual. Often they were the beer makers for the area. The pharmacist. Or the physician.”

“One could argue,” Abbot Joel Garner says, “that [the order] certainly has made its mark in the regions in which an abbey has grown up. The men that have been nourished by Norbertine spirituality have come to serve in parishes, hospitals, and schools. Thousands of people have been influenced by the ministries of Norbertines.” 

Though there have been between 600 and 700 Norbertine abbeys since the order’s founding, Ciferni estimated, there are only 35 today. Some were lost in the Thirty Years’ War. Thirty-two were dissolved by Henry the VIII. Ninety were closed during the French revolution. And many were secularized by the Spanish government. 

By 1835, the Norbertine order existed only in Austria, Hungary, Bohemia and Slovakia. 

Eventually the abbeys in Belgium reopened and many Norbertines went to Africa, Belgian Congo and Brazil in response to pressure from the Vatican to do missionary work. But by the end of the 19th century the most significant expansion of the order was happening in the United States. In 1893, the Dutch priest and educator Father Bernard Henry Pennings was sent as a missionary to the U.S. to help prevent the threatened religious defection of Belgian immigrants in the Green Bay, Wisconsin, area. And in 1898 he founded the priory of St. Norbert and St. Norbert College, in De Pere, Wisconsin.

Norbertines have made a lasting impact on education in the United States, said Prior Emeritus Eugene Gries of Santa María de la Vid Abbey, in Albuquerque. 

“What became very clear,” Ciferni says, “was that American bishops were very interested in schools.”

Read an excerpt.

Nov. 2, 2020