Saint Bruno of Cologne

Bruno was born in Cologne around 1030 and went to Reims very young, where from 1057 the bishop put him in charge of the cathedral school — the most important in northern France. He taught for twenty years, and among his students was the future Pope Urban II. In 1076 he publicly accused his own bishop, Manasses of Gournay, of simony. It cost him his post, and he had to take refuge with Count Ebles of Roucy; he was able to return only in 1080, when Manasses was deposed by a council. He was then offered the archbishopric of Reims, and he said no. It was in those difficult years that his monastic vocation was born. He tells it himself in a letter: with two friends, in the garden of a certain Adam, he had made a vow to consecrate himself to God. In 1084 he went to Hugh, bishop of Grenoble, and asked him for a solitary place. Hugh gave him a piece of land in the mountains, rugged, above a gorge that can’t be crossed in winter: the Chartreuse. There they built separate cells, one for each, and a shared church. From there the Carthusian Order was born, an order that has never needed reform because it has never grown lax. Urban II called him to Rome as an adviser; he stayed only a short time and asked to return to solitude. He was granted Calabria. He died on October 6, 1101, in Serra San Bruno, where he still rests. If your name is Bruno, today is your name day.