Saint Bruno

Bruno was born in Cologne around the year 1030. Gifted and studious, he became head of the cathedral school at Reims, one of the most respected in Europe. Among his students was Odo of Châtillon, who would later become Pope Urban II.

For two decades Bruno taught and served the Church of Reims. But a desire had been growing in him for a life given wholly to prayer, and in middle age he acted on it.

The Chartreuse

In 1084 Bruno and six companions came to Hugh, the Bishop of Grenoble, who led them to a remote valley in the Alps called the Chartreuse. There they built a small group of hermitages around a chapel. Each man lived, prayed, and worked largely alone, and they gathered for parts of the liturgy. This balance of solitude and community became the Carthusian way of life.

Bruno did not set out to found an order and left no written rule. The customs of the Chartreuse were written down by a later prior, and the order that grew from them still exists.

Called away

After only six years, Pope Urban II summoned his former teacher to Rome as an adviser. Bruno obeyed, though the life of the papal court was the opposite of what he had chosen. He declined to become an archbishop, and eventually the Pope allowed him to return to solitude, on the condition that he remain in Italy. He founded a second hermitage in Calabria, where he died on October 6, 1101.

What Bruno teaches

Bruno was never formally canonized; the Carthusians have always shunned public honors. The Pope approved his feast for the order in 1514, and it was extended to the whole Church in 1623.

Few of us are called to a hermitage. But Bruno’s life asks a question that fits every vocation: is there any silence in my day where God can be heard? A few protected minutes, kept faithfully, are a small Chartreuse.

Prayer to Saint Bruno

Original prayer by Take Jesus Home.