Norbert was born about 1080 at Xanten in the Rhineland, of a noble family, and spent his early years as a well-connected cleric at the court of the archbishop of Cologne and of the Emperor Henry V, holding church income without serious commitment to the priestly life. Tradition, echoing the conversion of Saint Paul, tells that he underwent a sudden change of heart after a brush with death in a thunderstorm, when he was thrown from his horse. Whatever the occasion, he gave up his comfortable prospects, was ordained, sold his property for the poor, and obtained papal permission to become an itinerant preacher, travelling barefoot through northern France and the Low Countries calling clergy and laity to reform. His zeal and his poverty drew crowds and disciples, and the wandering preacher soon found himself at the head of a movement in search of a settled form of life.
In 1120, having been offered and having refused a wasteland valley near Laon by its bishop, Bartholomew, Norbert settled there with a handful of followers at a site tradition says had been foretold to him in a vision, hence Premontre, "the meadow made known." There, on Christmas Day 1121, he formally established the community as Canons Regular, adopting the Rule of Saint Augustine with additional austerities of his own devising. The Premonstratensians, or Norbertines, as the order became known, grew with striking speed across the German lands and the Low Countries within Norbert's own lifetime, eventually admitting women as well in double, later separated, monasteries.