St. Bruno

Teacher and Chancellor at Reims

St. Bruno was born around 1030 in Cologne, in present-day Germany, and educated at the renowned cathedral school of Reims in France. Ordained a priest, he returned to Reims as a professor and for nearly two decades directed its school, forming a generation of churchmen that included the future Pope Blessed Urban II. He rose to become chancellor of the diocese, but his integrity brought him into painful conflict with Manasses, the simoniac archbishop of Reims, whose corruption Bruno openly opposed at real personal cost.

Founding the Grande Chartreuse

When the see fell vacant, Bruno was widely favored to become archbishop, but he had resolved instead to leave everything for God. Around 1084, with six companions, he sought out the holy bishop St. Hugh of Grenoble, who, guided by a dream of seven stars, led the little band into the high, remote valley of the Chartreuse in the French Alps. There they built an oratory and simple cells, joining the solitude of hermits with a measured common life of liturgy and labor. From this beginning grew the Grande Chartreuse and the Carthusian Order, famed for silence, solitude, and unbroken fidelity, of which it is proverbially said that it has never needed reform because it has never been deformed.

Papal Adviser and Hermit in Calabria

In 1090 Pope Urban II, his former pupil, summoned Bruno to Rome as an adviser. Bruno served obediently but soon begged leave to return to solitude, declining the archbishopric of Reggio in Calabria. With the pope's blessing he founded a new hermitage at La Torre in the forests of Calabria in southern Italy, where he spent his final years in prayer. His few surviving letters breathe his joy in solitude: the delight of those who dwell in the desert with God. He died there on October 6, 1101.

Recognition of His Cult and Relics

Because the Carthusians shun publicity, Bruno was never formally canonized; Pope Leo X approved his cult for the order in 1514, and in 1623 Pope Gregory XV extended his feast to the universal Church. He is celebrated on October 6 and honored as patron of the Carthusians. His relics rest at the charterhouse of Serra San Bruno in Calabria, which still draws pilgrims, and the Grande Chartreuse above Grenoble remains the silent motherhouse of his sons.

Significance

Bruno turned away from honors that others pursued, preferring to seek God in silence, solitude, and prayer. The Carthusian life he began has kept its fidelity through the centuries, a living sign that some are called to belong to God alone for the sake of the whole Church. In a noisy age, his joy in the hidden life invites every Christian to make room for quiet and for listening to God.