St. Bruno

Their story

Bruno was born around 1030 in Cologne, Germany. He studied at the cathedral school of Reims, in France, and became its head, teaching there for about twenty years. One of his students later became Pope Urban II. Bruno was respected for his learning and holiness, but he refused to go along with a corrupt archbishop who had bought his office, and he lost his position for it. Bruno longed for a life of solitude and prayer. In 1084 he and six companions went to the bishop of Grenoble, St. Hugh, who gave them a remote valley high in the mountains called the Chartreuse. There they built a small community of hermits who lived in separate cells, praying and working in silence and coming together only for worship and certain meals. This was the beginning of the Carthusian order, which still lives in much the same way today and has never needed reform. In 1090 Pope Urban II called his old teacher to Rome to advise him. Bruno obeyed, but he longed for silence, and with the pope's permission he founded a new hermitage in the mountains of Calabria, in southern Italy. He died there on October 6, 1101. The Carthusians' motto expresses the steadiness of his life: "The cross stands firm while the world turns."