Today, October 6, is the memorial of Saint Bruno.
Founder of the Order of Carthusians (O.Cart.).
In 1030, Bruno was born to a principal family in Cologne. He studied in Paris and Rheims, France. He was ordained in 1055 and taught theology. In fact, one of his students became Blessed Pope Urban II.
He was known to criticize the worldliness, and the hunger for power and wealth of his fellow clergy. He opposed Manasses de Gourna, Archbishop of Rheims, who was seen as a violent aristocrat with no real vocation. Bruno contradicted Manasses’ laxity and mismanagement and vowed to live a life given to God alone.
In a vision, Bruno saw a secluded hermitage where he could spend his life becoming closer to God. He retired to a mountain near Chartreuse in Dauphiny in 1084 and, with the assistance of Saint Hugh, built a hermitage made up of wooden cabins. That became the first house of the Carthusian Order. He and his brothers earned a living as manuscript copyists.
Pope Urban II called Bruno to be his assistant in 1090, and supported his efforts at reform. Retiring from public life, Bruno and his companions built a hermitage at Torre, where the monastery of Saint Stephen was built. Bruno combined eremetical and cenobitic ways of life, making the Carthusian Order the strictest religious order in the world.
At one point Bruno was about to become a bishop. Bruno insisted on his vow to renounce secular concerns and so withdrew from the scene.
He died in 1101. He was never formally canonized, as the Carthusian Order keeps the strictest observance of humility. In 1623, Pope Gregory XV included Bruno in the General Roman Calendar.