Archbishop, Eucharistic Devotion, and Cult

In 1126 Norbert was made Archbishop of Magdeburg, on the eastern edge of the German lands, where he pressed a demanding programme of reform against considerable opposition and supported the papacy of Innocent II in the schism of the day. He was renowned for his ardent devotion to the Eucharist, and tradition links him with the preaching against Tanchelm, a figure at Antwerp accused of denying the Real Presence in the sacrament, so that Norbert became associated with the defence of Eucharistic belief, hence his portrayal in art holding a monstrance or ciborium, vested as an archbishop. He died at Magdeburg on 6 June 1134 and was canonised in 1582; his relics were later translated to the abbey of Strahov in Prague. His feast is kept on 6 June. He is honoured as patron of Magdeburg and of Bohemia and, in popular devotion, invoked by expectant mothers.

As vice-chancellor of the empire for Italy, Norbert accompanied Emperor Lothair III on his 1132 to 1133 expedition into Italy, working to reconcile the emperor with Pope Innocent II and firmly backing Innocent's claim to the papacy against the rival antipope Anacletus II, joining Bernard of Clairvaux in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to win Anacletus over by persuasion. He was present in Rome for Lothair's imperial coronation at the Lateran on 4 June 1133. Norbert contracted malaria on that Italian campaign, an illness from which he never fully recovered before his death the following year.