Saint Bruno

Saint Bruno, called Bruno the Carthusian (1030?-1101), German monk, founder of the Carthusian monastic order. He was born in Cologne and studied in Reims, where he so distinguished himself that he was appointed director of all the schools in the diocese in 1056 or 1057. Bruno, troubled by the decadence of his time, took refuge with six companions in a mountain valley north of Grenoble and there, in 1084, founded the Carthusians.

In 1090 Pope Urban II, who had been a student under Bruno, summoned him to Rome to be his adviser. Bruno obeyed reluctantly and steadily refused all offers of preferment. He was Urban's companion in his flight to the Campagna from the threatened onslaught of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. In 1094 Bruno left the papal entourage and established a second Carthusian monastery, called La Torre, in a solitary district of Calabria, where he died. He was canonized in 1514 by Pope Leo X. His feast day is October 6.