Premontre and the White Canons

In 1120, in a wooded valley called Premontre near Laon in northern France, Norbert and a small band of followers settled to live in community. Rather than found a monastery of monks, he established a house of canons regular, clergy living under a common rule while remaining committed to preaching and pastoral care, and he adopted for them the Rule of Saint Augustine together with strict observances of his own.

From this beginning grew the Order of the Premonstratensians, known also as the Norbertines or, from the colour of their habit, the White Canons. The order combined the contemplative discipline of the cloister with an active mission of preaching and the care of parishes, a pattern that spread rapidly across Europe; within Norbert's own lifetime and the decades after, Premonstratensian abbeys were founded from Spain to the Baltic, and the order remains active today.