communities more than did the Victorines: their work was missionary
rather than parochial. The Order spread with great rapidity not only
in Western Europe, but, even in its founder's lifetime, to Syria and
Palestine, and for purposes of administration it came to be divided
into thirty provinces.

[Sidenote: St. Norbert in Germany.]

Meanwhile Norbert had come under the notice of the Emperor Lothair II,
who forced him into the archbishopric of Magdeburg. Here he
substituted Premonstratensians in a collegiate chapter for canons of
the older kind, and he eagerly backed up Lothair's policy of extending
German influence upon the north-eastern frontier by planting
Premonstratensian houses as missionary centres and by founding new
bishoprics. Norbert, in fact became Lothair's chief adviser and was an
European influence second only to that of St. Bernard in all the
questions of the day.

[Sidenote: Knights Templars.]

It was upon the model of the Canons Regular that the great military
Orders of the religious were organised. In the year 1118 a Burgundian
knight, Hugh de Payens, with eight other knights, founded at Jerusalem
an association for the protection of distressed pilgrims in Palestine.
From their residence near Solomon's Temple they came to be known as
the Knights of the Temple. They remained a small and poor body until
St. Bernard who was nephew to one of the knights, took them under his
patronage and drew up for them a code of regulations which obtained
the sanction of Honorius II at the Council of Troyes in 1128. From
that moment the prosperity of the Templars was assured. Their numbers