The Premonstratensian Order

The Premonstratensian order was founded by St Norbert, who was born of a noble Rhenish family from Xanten, on the left bank of the Rhine, near Wesel, in the Electorate of Cologne in Germany, son of Herbert, count of Gennep.

Norbert became a secular canon in the church of St Victor in Zanten, from where he was called to serve the court of the emperor Henry V. His life was transformed after he narrowly escaped death when thrown from his horse during a thunderstorm in 1114, and Norbert resigned his secular office.

He joined a Benedictine house at Siegburg, but alienated the clergy there by his zeal and criticism of them. Giving away most of his goods, he dedicated himself to an apostolic life, wandering and preaching.

His life was of such asceticism that his first two companions died of their privations in 1118–9. Fortunately, he secured the support of Bartholomew, bishop of Laon and of Pope Callixtus II (1119–24). They endorsed his apostolic mission, but urged him to moderate his mode of life.

Norbert was briefly placed in charge of the collegiate church of St Martin at Laon: his asceticism led to another row, so Bartholomew offered him a chapel as a site for a permanent house in the remote valley of Prémontré in the forest of St Gobain. Here, Norbert established a new community of 13 priests.

By 1121, it had expanded to include nearly 40 canons and some laymen. Norbert rejected proposals that they should adopt the Cistercian rule, electing to follow the Rule of St Augustine, as better fitted to his evangelical aims, to go out and preach the gospel.

The distinctive point about the new order was that they were canons, not monks: that is, they were all ordained as priests rather than taking monastic vows. (1)

Norbert was evidently a charismatic figure, and his asceticism and zeal won him friends in high places, notably the Holy Roman Emperor Lothair II. In 1126 the emperor appointed him as bishop of Magdeburg, an area in which paganism was still strong.

In 1133 he urged the emperor to invade Italy in support of the ousted Pope Innocent II (1130–43): he and Bernard of Clairvaux (died 1153) accompanied Lothair II and Innocent II when they entered Rome in triumph that year. Lothair appointed Norbert as his chancellor, but his health was failing. He returned to Magdeburg, and died there in 1134. (2)

For all his remarkable gifts, Norbert lacked the temperament or the organizational skills to lead a growing organisation, and his early departure from Prémontré deprived it of his leadership in any case. The new order might have collapsed without the support of Bishop Bartholomew, and the election of Hugh de Fosses (died 1161) as abbot in 1128. It was Hugh who drew up the first statues of the Premonstratensians after 1131. If Norbert had provided the initial inspiration for the order, it was really built by others.

Although Norbert had declined to join the Cistercian order, he admired Bernard of Clairvaux, and from the first the Cistercians were a major influence on his new order. The Premonstratensians borrowed their capitular organization and system of filiation (the idea that houses would found daughter houses, all owing allegiance to the mother house).

They borrowed the Cistercians’ rules for founding abbeys, for lay brethren, and governing daily life. Howard Colvin observed that ‘the whole constitutional framework’ of the new order could be called Cistercian. Like the Cistercians, they adopted white robes: they were to be 'the white canons'. (3)

Canons are ordained priests, with the authority to celebrate mass and administer sacraments, which monks were not. They were termed ‘regular’ canons, meaning that they lived together in a community according to a rule, as distinct from ‘secular’ priests, who operated within the framework of episcopal rule and jurisdiction.

The largest group of regular canons were the Augustinians, a loose grouping of houses following the Rule of St Augustine. The Premonstratensians were the second most numerous group of regular canons, who had a positive organisation in a way which the Augustinians did not. There were a number of smaller orders of canons, notably the Arrouaisians, Gilbertines, Victorines and the Trinitarians.

Just as the early to mid 12th century had been the great age of new Cistercian foundations in England, the mid to late 12th century saw the founding of new houses of regular canons at its peak.

New houses of canons continued to be founded in large numbers through the 13th century, when the number of new houses of monks was diminishing. By the end of the Middle Ages, there were more houses of canons than monks, with around 274 of the former to 210 of the latter. (4)

The canons proceeded from a different intellectual and spiritual viewpoint to the monks, and existed for rather different purposes.

Monks of whichever order ultimately base their life and work on the 6th century Rule of St Benedict, which ordained that they should live communally, renouncing the world in favour of a contemplative life. The successive Cluniac and Cistercian reforms referred back to the original ideals and objectives of St Benedict. They carried out works of charity, but essentially the objects of their charity had to come to them, to receive hospitality or alms.

The regular canons based their lives on the older Rule of St Augustine, with a different concept of spirituality and an ideal of serving the communities around them by preaching, teaching, charitable work, and sometimes by direct service as parish priests. Although they were supposed to live communally, they remained more concerned with the outside world.

Nevertheless, understanding the differences in practice between a house of monks and a house of canons in the Middle Ages is very difficult. (5) Certainly, so far as their architecture is concerned, there seem to be no essential differences between a Premonstratensian house and a Cistercian one.

(1) Bond 1993, 153–5; Colvin, 1951, 1–2; Gasquet 1906, 102.

(2) Bond 1993, 153–5.

(3) Colvin 1951, 1–8.

(4) Fergusson 1989, 335 and note 6.

(5) Brooke 1985.

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