The foundation of the Norbertines 900 years ago this Christmas Day was the result of an alliance between a bishop seeking to rebuild a troubled diocese and a charismatic preacher with a vision for a new kind of apostolic life

On Christmas Day 1121 Norbert of Xanten and his companions dedicated themselves to the rule of St Augustine. They did so at Prémontré, 18 miles or so to the west of the city of Laon in northern France, within what may have been only a partially completed abbey church. Three hundred years later, sometime before 1422, John Capgrave, an Augustinian friar at King’s Lynn and one of Norfolk’s many literary sons, would celebrate this event in his life of St Norbert in gripping English verse: “Makying profession to God & Seynt Austyn, As very childirn and eyres of his kin.”

What Augustine of Hippo would have made of all this is difficult to say, but he would doubtless have had views. He may nevertheless have been impressed to learn that some of the descendants of those barbarians who transformed his world in the final years of his life – “the overthrowers of the Empire”, as Augustine’s fellow bishop and biographer Possidius described them – should have considered themselves his “childirn and eyres”.

Augustine had composed his Ordo monasterii, very likely in 397, as a set of regulations for himself and his small community of priests who lived in the episcopal palace in Hippo (in what is now Annaba in Algeria). His careful set of injunctions for their shared life of prayer, work and communal interaction was destined to become one of the most successful templates for the communal life ever written. This was the rule to which Norbert and his companions swore to observe 900 years ago this Christmas Day.