For six years the canons of Antwerp had vainly striven to bring back their wandering sheep. Not matter, perhaps, for wonderment. When the Tanchelm trouble began there was only one parish priest in the city, a man of loose life. At last they gave up the task in despair, and invoked the aid of a stranger--Norbert, the famous mystic of Laon, who had lately founded a missionary order which the world was beginning to talk about. This man, who was born at Xanten on the Lower Rhine, of a rich and powerful family, had taken orders because he thought that for one of his brilliant parts and with his wealth and influence the shortest road to distinction was by way of the Church. And the Church did something for him: she assured him a lasting reputation, she presently set his name down in her register of canonised saints. That was not the kind of fame which Norbert had in those days looked for, but if earthly glory escaped him he had only himself to thank for it. Shortly after his ordination he was named Court chaplain to the Emperor Henry V., later on he obtained a canon's stall at Cologne, and then one sultry afternoon he took it into his head to ride over to a neighbouring village. A storm arose, a flash of lightning struck him from his saddle, and when he came to himself he was a changed man. He resigned his prebend, bestowed his goods on the poor, and for two years, ragged and barefoot, wandered about France and Germany preaching penance. He spoke well, had the gift of address, the charm of personal beauty; he was all things to all men, as his biographer says of him, and he reckoned his converts by thousands. But Norbert was not satisfied. Of all the sheep he had brought to the fold how many would have never strayed if the shepherds had been faithful! The carelessness and incompetency of the parochial clergy, that was the crying evil of the day, and he would do what he could to remedy it. To this end he withdrew to the forest of Coucy, near Laon, with a little band of disciples, and presently there rose up in the midst of a secluded valley which Norbert called _Prémontré_ because, as he said, the place had been pointed out to him in a dream, a rude habitation with a church alongside of it and a few outbuildings. It was the first home of the great Premonstratensian Order, an order whose members, whilst leading the lives of monks, devoted themselves, at the same time, to pastoral work and to preaching. Such was the man and such were the men who now undertook to convert Antwerp, and thanks to their indefatigable labours the Ghost of Tanchelm was at last laid. Whereat the canons, loth to lose their services, ceded to them their own collegiate church and themselves migrated to the Chapel of Saint Mary, a very humble structure in those days, without the city walls, and it will be interesting to note it gradually grew into Antwerp Cathedral.