Norbert von Xanten

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St. Augustine gives Norbert von Xanten his rule of the order, from a copy of Norbert's Vita (around 1140)

Norbert von Xanten (* 1080/1085 in Gennep or Xanten ; † June 6, 1134 in Magdeburg ) was the founder of the Premonstratensian Order and from 1126 to 1134 Archbishop of Magdeburg and briefly represented the Archbishop of Cologne under Emperor Lothar III. Imperial Chancellor for Italy. He has been venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church since 1582 . He is the patron saint of the diocese of Magdeburg and the Magdeburg Land and one of the patrons of Bohemia. The Protestant Church in Germany has also been commemorating him in a calendar since 1969.

Two breaks determined his life: he changed from a rich canon to an ascetic who worked as an itinerant preacher and gathered a religious community around him, but finally returned to the world as Archbishop of Magdeburg.

Life as a canon and court chaplain

Norbert von Xanten was the son of Heribert von Gennep and his wife Hedwig. As a child he entered the St. Viktor monastery in Xanten. A secure life awaited him on a profitable benefice . Accompanying the Cologne Archbishop Friedrich I (1100–1131), the canon , who as a subdeacon was not yet a priest, came to the royal court. As court chaplain of Emperor Heinrich V, Norbert took part in his procession to Rome , on which Salier was crowned emperor in 1111 .

In 1113 the emperor offered him the bishopric of Cambrai , but Norbert was not ready to take over this office. After witnessing how the emperor had the pope and cardinals imprisoned for two years, Norbert's refusal should indicate an increasing distance from the emperor. Norbert now leaned towards the papal camp and refused an investiture from the hand of the emperor.

In 1115, according to the saints vitae (Vita A and Vita B), which probably originated in the middle of the 12th century , an experience of conversion should have taken place: A lightning strike hit him during a ride to the local women's monastery on the Master's field in the monastery hook between the Vredener Farmers Gaxel and large mast pulled to the ground. According to the conventions of the genre, the descriptions of life emphasize the portrayal of Norbert's holiness. They are the only source for many details.

Life as a hermit and traveling preacher, foundation of the Premonstratensian order

Pope Honorius II confirms the Premonstratensian rule to Norbert von Xanten; Nova Rise Monastery Library (Czech Republic)

Norbert settled for priests consecrate and exchanged his silken clothes with a hairy garment. Inspired by the ideas of monastic and canonical reform and in close contact with the reform strict Benedictines of Siegburg and the ascetic canons regular of the Abbey Kloosterrade (Klosterrath ; today Rolduc in Kerkrade in Aachen ) Norbert tried in vain to reform its home pen Xanten. He chose the way of life of a hermit (his hermitage was on the Fürstenberg near Xanten), but also moved around as an itinerant preacher. His charismatic reform and penance sermons aroused the suspicion of the official church - Norbert ran the risk of being condemned as a heretic . At the synod in Fritzlar in 1118 there was no reconciliation, although Norbert was able to successfully defend himself against accusations of heresy. So he decided to give up his Xanten benefice and leave home.

In the south of France, the pilgrim met Pope Gelasius II , who gave him permission to preach on the wandering. Norbert preached in northern and western France for some time. In 1119 he appeared at the Council of Reims.

The official church tried to integrate the personality, which was fascinating for many people but uncomfortable for the church: In Laon , Norbert was supposed to reform the St. Martin monastery, but as in Xanten, the canons were unwilling to reform. In his sermons Norbert called for the following of Christ and the apostles. His model was life according to the pattern of early Christianity (Vita apostolica). With his rejection of the ecclesiastical structures regarded as worthy of criticism, he addressed many dissatisfied people who were looking for new paths. Perhaps on the advice of Pope Kalixt II , the Bishop of Laon created the conditions for Norbert to found and manage a monastery. Here, too, the motive was probably to contain the unbound preacher. At first, Norbert was reluctant to give up his previous life, and eventually he chose the remote forest valley of Prémontré for a settlement. So he became the "unwilling monastery founder".

The community of lay people and clergy became the nucleus of the Premonstratensian Order, which adhered to the Augustine Rule and was committed to hermit ideals. 1126, Pope Honorius II. , The Canons Regular of St. Augustine after the customs of the Church of Prémontré . A women's convent was also affiliated in Prémontré until 1137/40. Like many Premonstratensian monasteries, Prémontré was a double monastery .

In the context of the canon reform, Norbert represented a legal model that Stefan Weinfurter called libertas Norbertina . As a private church lord, he had the property rights of the respective monasteries transferred to him, took over the management himself and strove for a kind of "bishop-free zone". For his reform group, which was spread over many pens, he was father, abbot and bishop at the same time. His community was completely tailored to him, lived according to his example without written norms prescribed by Norbert. When Norbert left for Magdeburg, the community fell into a crisis, to which Norbert's student Hugo von Fosses (1128–1161) responded by institutionalizing the Premonstratensian Order and turning away from centering on a single person.

Archbishop of Magdeburg

Saint Norbert as Archbishop, Schlägl Abbey , a work of the 19th century

In the winter of 1125 Norbert traveled to Rome and was honored by the Pope . After the death of Archbishop Ruotger von Magdeburg, the second major turning point in Norbert's life came. The charismatic founder of a rapidly expanding religious community was, to the astonishment of his confreres, Pope Honorius II and King Lothar III. take responsibility and was appointed Archbishop of Magdeburg on a court day in Speyer . He moved there on July 18, 1126, where the legends report that he arrived barefoot and in poor clothes. Now he showed himself to be an unyielding reformer who made himself just as unpopular with the noble canons of the episcopal church as with the simple priests who had to observe celibacy . He advocated a general reform of the clergy and the church and questioned established acquisitions.

In 1129 he replaced the canons of the monastery of Our Dear Women in Magdeburg with Premonstratensians. There should have been two attacks on his life, and the citizens also rebelled against the archbishop, who was perceived as harsh, who had to flee the city. With the interdict, he forced them to submit. His unsuccessful attempts to proselytize east of the Elbe and to extend his archbishopric rights to Poland are only sparsely documented.

In addition to the monastery of Our Dear Women, Norbert also succeeded in converting the Pöhlde Monastery into a Premonstratensian branch. A new monastery of God's grace was founded near Calbe on the Saale. (Usually the Premonstratensians also speak of monasteries , although they are regular canon pens.)

Norbert was one of Lothar III's confidants. and accompanied him to Italy in 1132/33 , where Lothar was crowned emperor. Since the Archbishop of Cologne was absent, he even temporarily acted as Imperial Arch Chancellor for Italy. After returning from Italy, Norbert stayed at the king's court. Back in Magdeburg since the beginning of 1134, he died on June 6th, 1134, possibly from malaria .

The ascetic traveling preacher and the father abbot of his reform community had become an imperial prince and courtier. In the biography of Count Gottfried von Cappenberg , who had given his fortune to Norbert and who himself had joined the order, it is reported that Gottfried was so repulsed by the splendor of Norbert's court during a visit to Magdeburg that he left immediately.

reformer

Norbert von Xanten was not a writing theologian . Even if the Premonstratensians ascribed a number of writings to him in the early modern period , only two short documents that he issued as archbishop are authentic.

His reform spirit was practically oriented. The old apostolic order was to be restored. He wanted, writes Stefan Weinfurter about his time as a traveling preacher, "not only to save himself, but to reach the Church as a whole, address as many people as possible through the word of the sermon in apostolic succession and convince them to imitate the way of life of the early Church".

Death, burial place and canonization

From the Missale Praemonstratense, Strasbourg around 1502/04

Norbert died on June 6, 1134 in Magdeburg. On June 11th he was solemnly buried by the bishops Godebold von Meißen , Ludolf von Brandenburg and Anselm von Havelberg in the church of the monastery of Our Lady. The vites show that the archbishop was initially buried with his predecessors on the cross altar and a few years later was transferred to the church choir .

Unlike comparable personalities, Norbert was not canonized for a long time. In any case, in the 16th century the order he founded no longer wanted to accept that its founder did not belong to the group of ecclesiastically venerated saints. 1582 allowed Pope Gregory XIII. the order to celebrate him on June 6th as holy bishop and confessor. In 1621 the worship was extended to the entire Catholic Church.

In 1982 Pope John Paul II made Norbert the patron saint of the Magdeburg region.

Thanks to the efforts of Abbot Kaspar von Questenberg from Prague, the Convent of Our Lady came into the possession of the Premonstratensians again in the course of the Counter-Reformation . In 1626, when the political situation during the Thirty Years' War permitted, this abbot had the bones of the order's founder Norbert - against the opposition of the council and citizenship of the Lutheran Magdeburg - transferred to the Strahov Premonstratensian Monastery in Prague, where they still rest today. Of the contemporary sources on the elevation of the bones and their transfer to Prague, the most important is certainly the Narratio translati e Saxonia in Boemiam sacri corporis… Norberti… .

In a Jena script from 1709, the so-called Pseudonorbertus ex narratione Pragensi translati e Saxonia in Boioemiam corporis Norberti , Franz Büttner tried to prove that the Strahov abbot Kaspar von Questenberg and his companions had the wrong grave opened on December 3, 1626. Allegedly those responsible for the exhumation in Magdeburg wanted to deliberately mislead the Strahov abbot. After the imperial order to move the Norbert relics could no longer be averted or postponed, a trick was allegedly used: even before the abbot's arrival, all the bones were removed from the real Norbert's grave and secretly buried in the ground inside the church. The abbot of Strahov mistakenly assumed the bones of Magdeburg Archbishop Heinrich († 1107) to be the bones of Norbert and transferred them to his monastery, so that a pseudo-Norbert has been venerated in Prague since 1627. But the real bones would rest in Magdeburg.

The Protestants in Magdeburg also cherished Norbert's memory. In 1683, the Jenenser theologian Johannes Christian Schneider declared "it is not only the duty of the Magdeburg canons to preserve what Norbert had started, but also to follow him in his loyalty to the Gospel and the zeal in his preaching".

During archaeological excavations from 1975 Norbert's grave under the crossing of the Magdeburg Church of Our Lady was uncovered. The room, decorated with Renaissance pilasters , was probably built on the occasion of his canonization in 1582. With the transfer of Norbert's bones to the Strahov Monastery in Prague in the 17th century, it lost its importance and was built over. A white marble slab with an inscription on the west wall of the north transept was probably also created in connection with the canonization.

It was not until the 17th century that attempts were made in Xanten to identify places and objects that were significant for Norbert's life. Even today, an inscription on the passage to the cathedral reminds of the alleged Norbert cell below the Michaelskapelle.

No coins were minted during Norbert's tenure as Archbishop of Magdeburg.

Cult and iconography

The depiction, created around 1750, shows Norbert triumphing over Satan and a heretic
Norbert defeats Tanchelm; Sculpture in the in the parish church of St. Potentinus in Wehr (Eifel)

Up until the present day, Norbert's veneration was essentially limited to the Premonstratensian order, even if there are some parishes who venerate him as a patron. To this day he is not a popular saint .

Its usual attributes on pictorial representations are the chalice (sometimes with a spider) and the monstrance . The spider refers to the legendary tale that Norbert once fell into the measuring cup with a poisonous spider. Trusting in Holy Communion , he swallowed it and the spider came out again to the nose.

The first cycle of pictures in his life was commissioned by Abbot Jakob Murer von Weißenau in a manuscript for the monastery around 1525 (traditional codex today in Zeil Castle ). After his canonization in 1582, a number of pious writings appeared on his life. The series of copper engravings in the picture vita published by Theodor Galle in Antwerp in 1622, which the local prior Johannes Chrysostomus van Sterre commissioned and provided with accompanying texts, served as a template for local depictions of Norbert in the Premonstratensian monasteries .

The Premonstratensian Benedikt Fischer from Schlägl Abbey published a Latin biography in Nuremberg in 1670 , the title of which reveals the merits Norbert was ascribed to at the time: There he is called the founder of the Premonstratensian Order, Apostle of Antwerp - founding of the Abbey of St. Michael  -, Saxony and the Slavs, Archbishop of Magdeburg, Patron of the Kingdom of Bohemia and Primate of Germany. There was also a German version of this font.

During the time of the Counter-Reformation, Catholic propaganda made Norbert, who had fought the supporters of Tanchelm in Antwerp in 1124 , an exponent of orthodoxy . In the depictions he is now equipped as an insignificant dignitary with a pallium, a double cross staff reserved for the archbishops, chalice and monstrance and the heretic Tanchelm is placed at his feet. Norbert wears a coat of arms with a red cross on a silver background with a chalice and a peace palm.

In the 19th and 20th centuries he was claimed as a German saint against the Dutch (his possible place of birth Gennep is in the province of Limburg ), Belgians and French . In the most recent representations of the Premonstratensian order, the monstrance, which was still unknown in the 12th century, is replaced by a pyxis or a ciborium . The coat of arms of the Lords of Gennep appears.

There are a number of Catholic parish churches that are consecrated to Norbert ( see Norbert Church ). The Sankt-Norbert-Kirche was built in Magdeburg in the years after 1885 .

On the occasion of the 850th anniversary of his death, the Deutsche Bundespost issued the special postage stamp of St. Norbert von Xanten on May 8, 1984 .

Latin vitae

For a long time only Vita B was known, until the middle of the 19th century in the manuscript of the Berlin State Library Ms. theol. lat. 79 from the 14th century was discovered. This Vita A was edited in 1856 in volume 12 of the MGH Scriptores (in folio). In 1972 a second tradition was discovered, the Hamburg fragment Scrin. 17, fragment 21 (also from the 14th century). In contrast, at least 25 manuscripts of the much more detailed and edifying Vita B have survived. For a long time they argued about the priority of A or B. Recently, it has been assumed that A is older. Both biographies were written around the middle of the 12th century.

Appreciation in the present

The special postage stamp from 1984 on the 850th anniversary of the death of Norbert von Xanten shows one of the saints in the choir stalls of the Church of St. Verena (red on the red) .

For a long time the image of a saint was cultivated, as the two Viten had designed it in order to defend the founder of the order Norbert against his contemporary critics, who resented his turns. In recent times, a rather differentiating point of view of the headstrong and strong-willed personality of Norbert has emerged. Stefan Pätzold (2000) writes:

"The gifted preacher with his outstanding charisma and the founder of the order cannot be denied admiration, the archbishop and missionary, on the other hand, has unsympathetic traits."

Kaspar Elm summarized the more recent judgments about Norbert as follows in 1984:

“Where some see holiness in him, others brand hypocrisy. If, on the one hand, care for the kingdom and the church, for one's own soul and that of others are the real motive for his actions, then on the other hand it is assumed that he was only guided by ambition in all his actions . There is talk of charming generosity, of literary culture, of an almost unbelievable power of fascination for fellow human beings, there Norbert appears as a ruthless hierarch who showed no understanding for friendship and family ties when it came to achieving his goals. "

Elm rejects Dietrich Claude's allegation in 1975 that Norbert failed as Archbishop of Magdeburg and seriously damaged the mission.

Memorial days

See also

Sources and literature

swell

  • Vita Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis , in: Georg Heinrich Pertz u. a. (Ed.): Scriptores (in Folio) 12: Historiae aevi Salici. Hannover 1856, pp. 663-706 ( Monumenta Germaniae Historica , digitized ).
  • Vita Norberti archiepiscopi Magdeburgensis. Life of Saint Norbert, Archbishop of Magdeburg. Translated by Gustav Hertel. The historians of prehistoric Germany 64. 2., unchangeable. Ed. Leipzig: Lorentz [ua], 1941.
  • Narratio translati e Saxonia in Boëmiam sacri corporis beatissimi viri, Norberti, Parthenopolitani olim archiepiscopi, Germaniae primatis, conditoris et patriarchae ordinis Praemonstratensis, cui compendiosa vitae rerumque ipsius s. Norberti historia, commentariolus item de transferendis sanctorum reliquiis, praemittuntur. Referentibus fratribus monasterii Strahoviensis, ejusdem ordinis, in superiore Praga siti… Pragae: Sessius, 1627.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kreisheimatbrief Borken No. 237. (PDF) Kreisheimatpflege Borken, 7 September 2015, p. 48ff. , accessed on July 23, 2015 (file size 2.89 MB).
  2. ↑ Weinfurter 1989, p. 71.
  3. ↑ Weinfurter 1989, p. 73.
  4. ↑ Weinfurter 1989, p. 72.
  5. ↑ Weinfurter 1989, p. 70.
  6. ↑ Prague 1627.
  7. ↑ Elm 1984, p. 291.
  8. ↑ VD17 12: 117817W.
  9. ↑ VD17 14: 627388M.
  10. ↑ Elm 1994, p. 611.
  11. ↑ a b LCI.
  12. ^ Pätzold, p. 247.
  13. ↑ in Elm, ed., Norbert von Xanten, p. 278.
  14. ↑ Elm 1994, p. 610.

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Commons : Norbert von Xanten  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
predecessor Office successor
Rudgar von Veltheim Archbishop of Magdeburg
1126–1134 		Conrad I of Querfurt
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on September 10, 2005 in this version .
personal data
SURNAME Norbert von Xanten
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder of the Premonstratensian Order, Archbishop of Magdeburg
DATE OF BIRTH around 1080 or 1085
PLACE OF BIRTH Gennep or Xanten
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1134
Place of death Magdeburg