Saint Bruno of

Cologne
Saint Bruno of
Cologne
Bruno of Cologne (c. 1030 – 6 October 1101) was the founder of the Carthusian
Order, he personally founded the order's first two communities. He was a
celebrated teacher at Reims, and a close advisor of his former pupil, Pope Urban
II. His feast day is October 6.

Bruno was born in Cologne about the year 1030. According to tradition, he belonged
to the family of Hartenfaust, or Hardebüst, one of the principal families of the
city.[2] Little is known of his early years, except that he studied theology in the
present-day French city of Reims before returning to his native land.

His education completed, Bruno returned to Cologne, where he was most likely
ordained a priest around 1055, and provided with a canonry at St. Cunibert's. In
1056 Bishop Gervais recalled him to Reims, where the following year he found
himself head of the episcopal school, which at the time included the direction of
the schools and the oversight of all the educational establishments of the diocese.
For eighteen years, from 1057 to 1075, he maintained the prestige which the
school of Reims attained under its former masters, Remi of Auxerre, and others.

Bruno led the school for nearly two decades, acquiring an excellent reputation as a
philosopher and theologian. Among his students were Eudes of Châtillon,
afterwards Pope Urban II, Rangier, Cardinal and Bishop of Reggio, Robert, Bishop
of Langres, and a large number of prelates and abbots.

Chancellor of the Diocese of Reims

In 1075, Bruno was appointed chancellor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of
Reims, which involved him in the daily administration of the diocese. Meanwhile, the
pious Bishop Gervais de Château-du-Loir, a friend to Bruno, had been succeeded by
Manasses de Gournai, a violent aristocrat with no real vocation for the Church. In
1077, at the urging of Bruno and the clergy at Reims, de Gournai was suspended at
a council at Autun. He responded, in typical eleventh century fashion, by having his
retainers pull down the houses of his accusers. He confiscated their goods, sold
their benefices, and even appealed to the pope. Bruno discreetly avoided the
cathedral city until in 1080 a definite sentence, confirmed by popular riot,
compelled Manasses to withdraw and take refuge with Henry IV, Holy Roman
Emperor, the fierce opponent of Pope Gregory VII.

Refusal to become a Bishop

On the verge of being made bishop himself, Bruno instead followed a vow he had
made to renounce secular concerns and withdrew, along with two of his friends,
Raoul and Fulcius, also canons of Reims.

Bruno's first thought on leaving Reims seems to have been to place himself and his
companions under the direction of an eminent solitary, Robert of Molesme, who had
recently (1075) settled at Sèche-Fontaine, near Molesme in the Roman Catholic
Diocese of Langres, together with a band of other hermits, who were later on (in
1098) to form the Cistercians. But he soon found that this was not his vocation.
After a short stay he went with six of his companions to Hugh of Châteauneuf,
Bishop of Grenoble. The bishop, according to the pious legend, had recently had a
vision of these men, under a chaplet of seven stars, and he installed them himself
in 1084 in a mountainous and uninhabited spot in the lower Alps of the Dauphiné, in
a place named Chartreuse,[4] not far from Grenoble. With St. Bruno were: Landuin,
Stephen of Bourg, Stephen of Die (canons of St. Rufus), Hugh the Chaplain and two
laymen, Andrew and Guerin, who afterwards became the first lay brothers.

They built an oratory with small individual cells at a distance from each other
where they lived isolated and in poverty,[4] entirely occupied in prayer and study,
for these men had a reputation for learning, and were frequently honored by the
visits of St. Hugh who became like one of themselves.
At the time, Bruno's pupil, Eudes of Châtillon, had become pope as Urban II (1088).
Resolved to continue the work of reform commenced by Gregory VII, and being
obliged to struggle against Antipope Clement III and Emperor Henry IV, he was in
dire need of competent and devoted allies and called his former master to Rome in
1090.

It is difficult to assign the place which Bruno occupied in Rome, or his influence in
contemporary events, because it remained entirely hidden and confidential. Lodged
in the Lateran with the pope himself, privy to his most private councils, he worked
as an advisor but wisely kept in the background, apart from the fiercely partisan
rivalries in Rome and within the curia. Shortly after his arrival in Rome, the papal
party was forced to evacuate to the south by the arrival of Henry IV with his own
antipope in tow.

Bruno's legacy

After his death, the Carthusians of Calabria, following a frequent custom of the
Middle Ages, dispatched a roll-bearer, a servant of the community laden with a
long roll of parchment, hung round his neck, who travelled through Italy, France,
Germany, and England, stopping to announce the death of Bruno, and in return, the
churches, communities, or chapters inscribed upon his roll, in prose or verse, the
expression of their regrets, with promises of prayers. Many of these rolls have
been preserved, but few are so extensive or so full of praise as that about St.
Bruno. A hundred and seventy-eight witnesses, of whom many had known the
deceased, celebrated the extent of his knowledge and the fruitfulness of his
instruction. Strangers to him were above all struck by his great knowledge and
talents. But his disciples praised his three chief virtues — his great spirit of
prayer, extreme mortification, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin.

Both the churches built by him in the desert were dedicated to the Blessed Virgin:
Our Lady of Casalibus in Dauphiné and Our Lady Della Torre in Calabria; faithful to
his inspirations, the Carthusian Statutes proclaim the Mother of God the first and
chief patron of all the houses of the order, whoever may be their particular
patron. He is also the eponym for San Bruno Creek in California.