Saint Bruno is one of the great founders of the Middle Ages, and surely the most discreet. A famous master of the school of Reims, where for twenty years he formed the clerical elite of his time — including a future pope, Urban II — he abandoned, at the height of his success, offices, honours and career to withdraw into the desert. In 1084, with six companions, he plunged into a wild Alpine site in the Dauphiné, the Chartreuse, and there invented an unprecedented way of life: hermits living in community, wedding the solitude of the Eastern Fathers to the monastic stability of the West. From that silence would be born the Order of Carthusians, the only order in Christendom that boasts of having "never been reformed because never deformed".[1][2]
His life holds in a single movement: fleeing the world to find God. Twice he left everything — first Reims for the Chartreuse, then the Chartreuse itself when his former pupil, now pope, recalled him to Rome; and when offered the archbishopric of Reggio, he refused again, to plunge a second time into the desert, this time in Calabria, where he died in 1101. From him remain two letters of limpid beauty, a commentary on the Psalms and on Saint Paul, and a profession of faith pronounced on his deathbed.[3][4]
"What benefit, what divine joy the solitude and silence of the desert hold in store for those who love them!" — Saint Bruno, Letter to Raoul le Verd[5]
This article traces the life of Bruno — the master of Reims, the convert, the founder, the pope's counsellor, the hermit of Calabria — then his spirituality (the desert, silence, the cell, contemplation of Goodness), and finally his death, his relics and his cult. It does not retell the institutional history of the Order of Carthusians nor the detailed account of the foundation of the Carthusians, which have their own articles, nor the biography of his host Saint Hugh of Grenoble.
The master of Reims (about 1030-1080)
Birth at Cologne in the house of Hartenfaust
Bruno was born about 1030 at Cologne, one of the mightiest cities of the Empire, into a family of the Rhenish patriciate traditionally attached to the house of Hartenfaust (or Hardebüst).[6][7] He made his first studies at the collegiate school of Saint Cunibert of Cologne, before leaving, still young, to complete his formation in one of the most renowned schools in Christendom: that of the cathedral of Reims, then directed by Master Hérimann.[8]
Cologne and Reims: Bruno's double homeland sums up his life as a learned clerk. He belongs to that world of the cathedral schools from which, a century later, the first scholasticism would emerge. But this brilliant intellectual would become neither a court bishop nor a professor of theology: he would end as a hermit in a Calabrian forest.
The schools of Reims and Master Hérimann
About 1055, Bruno returned for a time to Cologne, where he received a canonry at Saint Cunibert and, most likely, priestly ordination.[9] But his reputation as a scholar had preceded him: as early as 1056, Bishop Gervase of Reims recalled him to assist Hérimann at the head of the schools. The following year, when Hérimann left the office to enter religion, Bruno quite naturally succeeded him.
Scholaster of Reims: twenty years of teaching
In 1057, Bruno became scholaster (scholasticus, magister scholarum) of Reims: he directed the cathedral school and supervised all the schools of the diocese.[10] He would hold this office for nearly twenty years, until about 1075, and make Reims one of the first intellectual centres of the kingdom. He was known simply as magister Bruno — "Master Bruno" — and that title alone sufficed to designate him.
His learning was broad: his commentaries show that he knew Hebrew and Greek, and that he quoted the Fathers abundantly, notably Saint Augustine and Saint Ambrose.[11] Bruno was no compiler: he was an exegete who worked the texts. The most lasting trace of that teaching would be his commentary on the Psalms and his commentary on the epistles of Saint Paul, to which we shall return.
A pupil destined for the tiara: Odo of Châtillon (Urban II)
A master's glory is measured by his disciples. Now Bruno's school gave the century a bishop of Langres, a cardinal — Rangier, the future archbishop of Reggio — and above all Odo of Châtillon, the future Pope Urban II, the very man who would launch the First Crusade.[12][13] This detail is no anecdote: it is because Urban II would remember his old master that Bruno, years later, would be torn from his solitude and summoned to Rome.
"Among his pupils was Odo of Châtillon, the future Pope Urban II." — Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Saint Bruno the Carthusian"[14]
Chancellor of Reims (1075)
In 1075, Bruno was promoted chancellor of the Church of Reims — one of the foremost figures of the diocese after the archbishop.[15][16] At the summit of his ecclesiastical career, he had everything: learning, reputation, authority, powerful friends. It was precisely at that moment that his life would turn — not through disgrace, but through disgust with the world and fidelity to the reform of the Church.
The break with the world
The conflict with Archbishop Manasses of Gournai
The see of Reims was then held by an unworthy prelate: Manasses of Gournai (Manasses I), a worldly, violent and simoniacal archbishop, the very type of the lord-bishop that the Gregorian reform meant to bring down.[17][18] As chancellor, Bruno could not keep silent. With the reforming clergy of Reims, he carried the complaints against Manasses before the pope's legate, Hugh of Die.
The conflict was bitter. Manasses took revenge: he had the houses of his opponents pillaged and their goods sold. Bruno had to flee Reims (about 1076) and take refuge far from the diocese while the case was judged.[19][20]
The Council of Autun (1077) and the fall of Manasses
The affair rose to the Church's tribunal. At the Council of Autun (1077), under the authority of Legate Hugh of Die, Archbishop Manasses was suspended.[21][22] He would resist a few years longer, but was deposed in 1080 and ended excommunicated. A retort that has remained famous is lent to him — "Reims would be a good place, if one did not have to sing Mass there" — a saying reported without established source, which well sums up the man against whom Bruno had staked his honour.[23]
That victory of the reform was also, for Bruno, a liberation: the clergy of Reims, in gratitude, thought of raising Bruno himself to the archiepiscopal see.
Refusal of the archbishopric of Reims
At the fall of Manasses (1080), Bruno was indeed put forward for the archbishopric of Reims by the ecclesiastical authorities.[24][25] He refused. The master who had fought the unworthy bishop would not take his place: he had already resolved, inwardly, to leave the world. That refusal of a great dignity — the first in a series — is the sign that his vocation no longer lay in the militant Church of honours, but in the desert.
The legend of Raymond Diocrès
Carthusian tradition, fixed at a later date, attaches Bruno's conversion to a famous episode: that of Raymond Diocrès, a renowned doctor of Paris. At his funeral, the dead man is said to have sat up on his bier to cry out, three days running: "By the just judgment of God, I am accused… judged… condemned." Overwhelmed, Bruno is said to have then decided to flee the world.
"By the just judgment of God, I am condemned." — Words lent to the corpse of Raymond Diocrès, according to the Carthusian legend[26]
That tale, magnificently illustrated in the 17th century by Eustache Le Sueur in his series The Life of Saint Bruno, appears in none of the oldest sources: historical criticism — notably the Catholic Encyclopedia (Ambrose Mougel's notice "St. Bruno", 1908) — opposes to it the silence of contemporaries and of the saint's first biographers, the silence of Bruno himself in his letter to Raoul le Verd, and the impossibility of proving that he ever went to Paris.[27] It must be received for what it is: not a chronicle, but a parable dramatizing a conversion whose real causes — disgust at the intrigues of Reims, the call of solitude — are, for their part, perfectly historical. To dismiss it as a pious invention would be excessive; to present it as an established fact would be equally so.
The vow to leave the world
Reliable sources place Bruno's decision about 1077: with two companions from Reims, Raoul and Foulques (Fulcius), he made the vow to abandon the world to embrace the religious life.[28] The plan matured over several years. Bruno first sought counsel and experience from the masters of the eremitical life of his time, before at last finding the place of his desert.
The foundation of the Chartreuse (1084)
Robert of Molesme and the first stage
About 1083, Bruno first put himself to school with Robert of Molesme, the future founder of Cîteaux, who directed a community of hermits at Sèche-Fontaine, near Molesme.[29] The trial was brief: the Molesme formula did not match the radical solitude Bruno sought. A more remote place was needed, a harsher desert. Bruno then turned to a man whose holiness was already famous in the Alps: the bishop of Grenoble, Hugh.
The dream of the seven stars
Carthusian tradition relates that Saint Hugh of Grenoble saw in a dream seven stars leading him to a desert place in his diocese, where God was preparing a dwelling for Himself; the next morning, seven travellers — Bruno and his six companions — presented themselves to him.[30][31] The bishop recognized a sign in it and welcomed the hermits as a gift from Heaven.
"Seven stars, in a dream, showed Bishop Hugh the place where God wished to be served; in the morning, seven pilgrims knocked at his door." — Tradition reported by Carthusian sources[32]
Thus it was that Hugh of Grenoble — who would remain the great protector and friend of the order — settled Bruno and his companions in a wild Alpine site named Chartreuse, four leagues from Grenoble.[33]
The Chartreuse desert and the six companions
In 1084, Bruno and six companions settled in that icy valley, ringed with forests and rocks. Their names have come down to us: the clerks Landuin, Stephen of Bourg, Stephen of Die, Hugh the Chaplain, and the two lay conversi Andrew and Guérin.[34] They built a small oratory and scattered wooden huts — the embryo of what would become the Grande Chartreuse, motherhouse of the order.
A new way of life: hermits in community
Bruno's originality was not to have written a rule — he wrote none — but to have invented a balance. His monks live as hermits, each in his cell, given to silence, solitary prayer, manual labour and the copying of manuscripts; yet they meet for certain offices and form a true community.[35][36] It is the synthesis of the Eastern desert and Western cenobitism: solitude without isolation, community without dispersal.
Bruno had no thought of founding an order: he only wished to live alone with God. It is posterity — above all Prior Guigo I, who would put the Customs into writing about 1127 — that made of this experiment a lasting institute. For that institutional history, see the Order of Carthusians and the foundation of the Carthusians; here, what matters is the soul Bruno breathed into it: the absolute primacy of contemplation. In that lineage he joins the great masters of the desert, from the Desert Fathers to the founders of the 11th-century religious orders.
The call of Rome (1090)
Urban II recalls his former master
Bruno's rest would be brief: six years only. In 1088, his former pupil Odo of Châtillon was elected pope under the name of Urban II. In the full struggle against the antipope Clement III (Guibert of Ravenna) and Emperor Henry IV, the pope needed trustworthy men. About 1090, in the name of holy obedience, he recalled Bruno ad Sedis Apostolicae servitium — "to the service of the Apostolic See".[37][38]
Bruno obeyed, reluctantly. He left his beloved Chartreuse — which nearly dispersed then, so much was the founder the soul of the house — and went down into Italy to join the pontifical court, which followed the pope in his wanderings through the south of the peninsula.
Refusal of the archbishopric of Reggio
At Rome, the story of Reims repeated itself. The clergy of Reggio in Calabria, its see vacant, elected Bruno archbishop (1090).[39][40] Once again, the hermit refused the mitre. What is more, he had his former pupil Rangier elected in his place. Bruno wanted no dignity: neither at Reims, nor at Reggio, nor anywhere. His only ambition was to disappear in God.
Staying in Italy: Rome's permission
Bruno begged the pope to let him return to solitude. Urban II consented — but on one condition: that he remain in Italy, within reach of the Holy See, and not set out again for France.[41][42] Master and pupil, old hermit and young pope, thus sealed a compromise: Bruno would keep his desert, but it would be an Italian desert.
The Calabrian desert (1091-1101)
Santa Maria della Torre and Santo Stefano
In 1091, Bruno plunged into the high forests of the Sila, in Calabria, in the diocese of Squillace. There he built, as at Chartreuse, a humble chapel of planks and mud-covered huts: the hermitage of Santa Maria della Torre (Saint Mary of the Tower).[43] A few years later the neighbouring monastery of Santo Stefano (Saint Stephen of the Wood) would be added to it. The Calabrian desert thus became Bruno's second Chartreuse.
Count Roger and a saint's friendship
The great benefactor of that foundation was Roger of Hauteville, Count of Sicily and Calabria, who gave the land in 1091, often visited the hermit, and had the monastery of Saint Stephen built at his own expense (1095).[44] The friendship was real: Bruno baptized the count's son, the future King Roger II of Sicily (1097), and attended Roger in his illnesses (1098, 1101).
The liturgical legend of Saint Bruno's feast — quoted by Dom Guéranger in L'Année liturgique (6 October) — even reports a striking episode: while Count Roger was besieging Capua, an officer of his guard named Sergius was preparing to betray him; Bruno, remaining in his desert, appeared to him in a dream, revealed to him the whole treason and saved him from peril.[45] Received as a hagiographic tradition and not as a documented fact, the anecdote tells of the old monk's spiritual authority over the mighty of his time — an authority he never sought.
Bruno's writings: Psalms, Saint Paul, two letters
From Bruno remain a few writings, small in number but precious:[46][47]
| Work | Nature | Probable dating |
|---|---|---|
| Commentary on the Psalms (Expositio in Psalmos) | exegesis | Reims period (probable)[48] |
| Commentary on the epistles of Saint Paul | exegesis | Grande Chartreuse (according to a manuscript seen by Mabillon)[49] |
| Letter to Raoul le Verd | spiritual letter | Calabria |
| Letter to the Carthusians (to the community) | spiritual letter | Calabria |
| Profession of faith | doctrinal testament | deathbed (1101) |
The manuscript of his commentary on Saint Paul bears this colophon, revealing of his humility: "Here ends the glossary of Bruno the hermit on the epistles of blessed Paul" — not magister, not cancellarius, but heremita, "the hermit".[50] The two letters, above all, are the jewel of his legacy: there Bruno sings, in a few pages of limpid beauty, the love of the desert and the joy of solitude.
Death and the profession of faith (6 October 1101)
Feeling his end approaching, Bruno gathered his community and dictated to it a profession of faith, in which he solemnly confessed the mystery of the Holy Trinity and the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist — a precise answer to the errors of his century (tritheism, impanation).[51] Then he died, surrounded by his sons, on 6 October 1101, at Santa Maria della Torre.
According to the preserved text, whose sense is given here in paraphrase: Bruno confesses his faith in the sacraments which the Church believes and venerates, and in particular that the bread and wine consecrated on the altar are truly the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.[52]
According to medieval custom, a mortuary roll (rotulus) carried by a messenger travelled through Italy, France, Germany and England to announce his death: 178 communities inscribed their tribute on it, a testimony of the universal esteem that already surrounded the master turned hermit.[53]
The spirituality of Saint Bruno
In praise of the desert and solitude
The heart of Bruno's spirituality is the love of the desert. In his Letter to Raoul le Verd — a friend left in the world, whom he urges to come and join him — he describes solitude not as a privation but as a joy and a divine exaltation.[54]
"What benefit, what divine joy the solitude and silence of the desert hold in store for those who love them! There is the place where the eye, by the limpidity of its gaze, wounds the Bridegroom with love." — Saint Bruno, Letter to Raoul le Verd[55]
For Bruno, the desert is no flight from life: it is the harbour where the soul at last finds safety, far from the shipwrecks of the world. His Letter to the Carthusians says it to his sons with fatherly tenderness.
"Rejoice to have escaped the turbulent waves of this world, where perils and shipwrecks multiply; rejoice to have gained the quiet rest and security of a hidden harbour." — Saint Bruno, Letter to the Carthusians[56]
Silence and the cell
With Bruno, the cell is the place of encounter with God, and silence the condition of that encounter. The monk is never alone there: he is there with Christ. That intuition — that interior silence opens the soul to God — runs through the whole Catholic spiritual tradition; it is found in the masters of prayer and in what the saints say of interior silence. Bruno is one of its first great witnesses in the West: he does not theorize silence, he lives it, and he invites his sons to enter it as into a promised land.
"O Bonitas": contemplation of Goodness
Tradition lends Bruno an exclamation that became his motto: "O Bonitas!" — "O Goodness!".[57] Contemplating God, the old master found but one word left: His goodness. Carthusian iconography fixed it: Bruno is often shown holding a scroll bearing those two words, sometimes crowned with the seven stars recalling Hugh of Grenoble's dream. All his theology holds in that cry of wonder: God is Goodness, and solitude has no other end than to let the soul lose itself in Him.
An order never reformed because never deformed
Bruno's spiritual legacy is such that the order he unwittingly engendered crossed nine centuries knowing neither decadence nor reform. Hence the famous saying tradition applies to the Carthusians: Cartusia numquam reformata quia numquam deformata — "the Charterhouse never reformed because never deformed".[58] That miracle of constancy is, in the history of religious orders, unique of its kind; it is the most visible fruit of the soul Bruno deposited in his desert. But that story belongs to the Order of Carthusians: here, let us retain only that it goes back entirely to the founder's contemplative radicality.
Cult, relics and canonization
A canonization refused out of humility, then granted
Faithful to their founder's spirit, the Carthusians long refused to seek Bruno's canonization: promoting the glory of one of their own would have contradicted their very humility.[59] Only in 1514, at a general chapter, did the order request and obtain from Pope Leo X permission to celebrate his feast. Then, on 17 February 1623, Pope Gregory XV extended Saint Bruno's feast to the whole Church — an equipollent canonization, pronounced by the pope's sole authority, without trial.[60][61] Clement X would raise it to the rank of a double feast in 1674.
| Stage | Pope | Date | Scope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authorization of the cult for the order | Leo X | 1514 | Carthusians |
| Extension to the universal Church | Gregory XV | 17 February 1623 | Whole Church |
| Elevation to the rank of double feast | Clement X | 1674 | Whole Church |
The contrast is eloquent: that master who refused two archbishoprics was never canonized by an ordinary process; his sanctity was recognized as one recognizes a self-evidence, by a direct act of the Sovereign Pontiff. The man who had fled all honours received the greatest of all in spite of himself.
Relics and patronage
Bruno's relics were found in 1513 at Santa Maria della Torre, with the epitaph "Haec sunt ossa magistri Brunonis" — "These are the bones of Master Bruno".[62] They rest at Serra San Bruno, in Calabria, where they are carried in procession on the Monday and Tuesday of Pentecost, to the hermitage of Saint Mary where he lived. Saint Bruno is the popular saint of Calabria; he is invoked for the deliverance of the possessed. His feast is celebrated on 6 October.[63][64]
Saint Bruno in art
Iconography has kept of Bruno the image of the silent contemplative: the saint in a white cowl, a finger on his lips, a skull or a book in hand, sometimes surrounded by the seven stars or holding the motto O Bonitas. The masterpiece of the genre is the series of twenty-two paintings by Eustache Le Sueur, The Life of Saint Bruno (about 1645-1648), painted for the cloister of the Paris charterhouse and kept at the Louvre — in which the legend of Raymond Diocrès holds a central place. A statue of Saint Bruno also stands among the founders of orders on the colonnade of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Further reading
- Primary sources: Saint Bruno's two Letters — the Letter to Raoul le Verd (Raoul, provost of Reims) and the Letter to his Carthusian sons — edited and translated in the Sources Chrétiennes collection (no. 88, Lettres des premiers Chartreux, Éd. du Cerf); his Profession of faith; his commentaries Expositio in Psalmos and Expositio in epistolas Pauli (Migne's Patrologia Latina, vols. 152-153).
- Reference notices: Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "St. Bruno" (New Advent, newadvent.org/cathen/03014b.htm); Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Saint Bruno the Carthusian"; the official Carthusian website (chartreux.org), "Saint Bruno" pages.
- Related articles on Ignispedia: the Order of Carthusians (the rule, Guigo's Customs, the spread) and the foundation of the Carthusians; Saint Hugh of Grenoble, who gave the Chartreuse desert; Pope Urban II, Bruno's former pupil; Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, another great contemplative of the century; the Desert Fathers and the history of religious orders; what the saints say of interior silence.
Notes and References
Catholic Encyclopedia (Ambrose Mougel, notice "St. Bruno", 1908), New Advent (newadvent.org/cathen/03014b.htm): the Catholic reference notice. Birth at Cologne about 1030, Hartenfaust family; studies at Saint Cunibert then at Reims under Master Hérimann; canonry at Cologne (~1055); scholaster of Reims from 1057 for about twenty years; pupils including Odo of Châtillon (Urban II); chancellor of Reims (1075); conflict with Archbishop Manasses of Gournai, complaints to Legate Hugh of Die, suspension at the Council of Autun (1077), deposition in 1080; vow to leave the world with Raoul and Foulques (~1077); stay with Robert of Molesme; foundation of the Chartreuse (1084) with six companions (Landuin, Stephen of Bourg, Stephen of Die, Hugh the Chaplain, Andrew and Guérin) settled by Hugh of Grenoble; call to Rome by Urban II (~1090); refusal of the archbishopric of Reggio (election of Rangier); Calabrian foundation (Santa Maria della Torre, Santo Stefano) with Count Roger; commentaries on the Psalms and on Saint Paul, two letters and profession of faith; death on 6 October 1101; mortuary roll (178 tributes); cult authorized by Leo X (1514), extended by Gregory XV (17 February 1623), raised by Clement X (1674). Datings of the commentaries according to the same notice: that on the Psalms "probably during his professorship at Reims" ("the former written probably during his professorship at Reims"); that on the epistles of Saint Paul "during his stay at the Grande Chartreuse, if we may believe an old manuscript seen by Mabillon" ("the latter during his stay at the Grande Chartreuse if we may believe an old manuscript seen by Mabillon").
1 6 8 9 10 11 12 15 17 19 21 24 28 29 31 33 34 35 37 39 41 43 44 46 48 49 51 53 60 64Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Saint Bruno the Carthusian": summary — birth at Cologne about 1030, death on 6 October 1101 at La Torre (Calabria); called to Reims by Gervase in 1057 as head of the cathedral school; pupil Odo of Châtillon (Urban II); chancellor of Reims (1075); protest against Manasses of Gournai, flight (1076), suspension of the archbishop at the Council of Autun (1077), deposition (1080); refusal of the archbishopric of Reims; foundation of the Chartreuse (1084) with Hugh of Grenoble; call to Rome by Urban II; refusal of Reggio; Calabrian foundation; cult extended by the Church; feast on 6 October.
2 7 13 16 18 20 22 25 38 40 42 59 61Official Carthusian website, chartreux.org, "Saint Bruno" pages (monks' and nuns' versions): dates (birth about 1030, foundation of the Chartreuse in June 1084, Calabrian hermitage about 1090, death on 6 October 1101); spirituality of the desert, solitude, silence, manual labour and the copying of manuscripts; translated excerpts from Saint Bruno's two letters (to Raoul le Verd and to his Carthusian sons).
3 30 36 47Saint Bruno's two letters and his profession of faith make up the bulk of his surviving spiritual writings; they are edited with French translation in Lettres des premiers Chartreux, Sources Chrétiennes no. 88 (Éd. du Cerf). With the biblical commentaries, they are the only direct sources of his thought.
4Saint Bruno, Letter to Raoul le Verd (Raoul, provost of the church of Reims), § 6: praise of the solitude and silence of the desert. English translation in the body, from the text edited and translated in Lettres des premiers Chartreux, Sources Chrétiennes no. 88 (Éd. du Cerf; French translation by Dom Maurice Laporte). The English translation published by the order (Transfiguration Charterhouse, Two Letters and the Profession of Faith by Saint Bruno, Carthusian Booklets no. 1) reads: "what benefits and divine exultation the silence and solitude of the desert hold in store for those who love it", and "the eye that wounds the Bridegroom with love by the clearness of its gaze".
5 54 55Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Saint Bruno the Carthusian": "Among his pupils was Odo of Châtillon, later Pope Urban II". A capital detail, for it is that pope, Bruno's former pupil, who would tear him from his solitude about 1090 to bring him to Rome.
14Saying lent to Manasses of Gournai: "Reims would be a good place, if one did not have to sing Mass there". We have found no primary source for it; it is notably absent from the Catholic Encyclopedia (notice "St. Bruno", New Advent). Presented here as a reported saying, not as an attested quotation.
23Legend of Raymond Diocrès: the tale according to which, at the funeral of a renowned doctor of Paris, the corpse sat up to proclaim three days running its damnation, deciding Bruno to flee the world. The Catholic Encyclopedia (Ambrose Mougel, notice "St. Bruno", 1908, newadvent.org/cathen/03014b.htm) presents it as "a tradition preserved in the Carthusian Order" ("According to a tradition preserved in the Carthusian Order") and opposes to it the silence of contemporaries and of the saint's first biographers, the silence of Bruno himself in his letter to Raoul le Verd, and the impossibility of proving that he ever went to Paris. Popularized by the series of paintings by Eustache Le Sueur, The Life of Saint Bruno (about 1645-1648, Louvre museum), it is reported here as an iconographic tradition, not as an established historical fact.
26 27Dream of the seven stars: Carthusian tradition reported by the order's sources (chartreux.org) according to which Saint Hugh of Grenoble saw in a dream seven stars guiding him to the desert place where God wished to be served, on the eve of the arrival of Bruno and his six companions. The seven stars would become an iconographic attribute of Saint Bruno and of the order.
32Siege of Capua: the liturgical legend of Saint Bruno's feast (6 October), quoted in Latin by Dom Prosper Guéranger, L'Année liturgique: "Cum enim idem Rogerius Capuam obsideret, eumque Sergius quidam excubiarum magister prodere statuisset, Bruno adhuc in dicta eremo vivens, in somnis illi omnia aperiens, ab imminenti periculo comitem liberavit" ("while this same Roger was besieging Capua and a certain Sergius, an officer of his guard, had resolved to betray him, Bruno, still living in the said desert, revealed everything to him in a dream and delivered the count from the imminent peril"). English translation published on sensusfidelium.com ("October 6 – St. Bruno, Confessor"). Hagiographic tradition, not a documented fact.
45Colophon of the manuscript of the commentary on the epistles of Saint Paul: "Explicit glosarius Brunonis heremitae super Epistolas B. Pauli" — "Here ends the glossary of Bruno the hermit on the epistles of blessed Paul". Cf. Catholic Encyclopedia, art. "St. Bruno", New Advent. The self-designation as heremita ("hermit"), and not by his titles of master or chancellor, illustrates his humility.
50Saint Bruno's profession of faith, pronounced on his deathbed (6 October 1101) before his community: there he confesses the mystery of the Holy Trinity and the real presence of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, against the errors of his time (Roscelin's tritheism and Berengar's impanation). The fact and this content are reported by the Catholic Encyclopedia (Ambrose Mougel, notice "St. Bruno", 1908, newadvent.org/cathen/03014b.htm), which does not quote the text verbatim. Latin text: his writings, including the profession of faith, are edited notably in Migne, Patrologia Latina, vols. 152-153; Latin text and English translation in Lettres des premiers Chartreux, Sources Chrétiennes no. 88 (Éd. du Cerf). English translation published by the order (Transfiguration Charterhouse, Two Letters and the Profession of Faith by Saint Bruno, Carthusian Booklets no. 1): "I believe in the sacraments which the Catholic Church believes and venerates, and expressly that what is consecrated on the altar is the true body, true flesh and true blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ". The passage in the body of the article is a paraphrase of it, not a verbatim quotation.
52Saint Bruno, Letter to his Carthusian sons (to the Chartreuse community), § 1-2. English translation in the body, from the text edited and translated in Lettres des premiers Chartreux, Sources Chrétiennes no. 88 (Éd. du Cerf; French translation by Dom Maurice Laporte). The English translation published by the order (Transfiguration Charterhouse, Two Letters and the Profession of Faith by Saint Bruno, Carthusian Booklets no. 1) reads: "Rejoice that you have succeeded in escaping the countless dangers and shipwrecks of this storm-tossed world, and have reached a quiet anchorage in the security of a hidden harbor".
56"O Bonitas" ("O Goodness"): motto borne on the roll with which Saint Bruno is ordinarily depicted — the Catholic Encyclopedia (Ambrose Mougel, notice "St. Bruno", 1908, newadvent.org/cathen/03014b.htm) describes him "with a roll bearing the device O Bonitas" ("or with a roll bearing the device O Bonitas"). An attribute taken up by Carthusian iconography, often associated with the seven stars of Hugh of Grenoble's dream.
57"Cartusia numquam reformata quia numquam deformata" — "the Charterhouse never reformed because never deformed": famous saying expressing the unbroken continuity of the Carthusian order since its foundation. The formula, of later tradition, is quoted in the order's historiography; it is developed in the Order of Carthusians article.
58Relics and Calabrian cult: the Catholic Encyclopedia (Ambrose Mougel, notice "St. Bruno", 1908, newadvent.org/cathen/03014b.htm) presents Bruno as "the popular saint of Calabria" ("St. Bruno is the popular saint of Calabria"): each year, a great crowd makes its way to the charterhouse of Saint Stephen on the Monday and Tuesday of Pentecost, "when his relics are borne in procession to the hermitage of St. Mary, where he lived" ("when his relics are borne in procession to the hermitage of St. Mary, where he lived"); he is "especially invoked, and successfully, for the deliverance of those possessed" ("He is especially invoked, and successfully, for the deliverance of those possessed"). The 1513 discovery and the epitaph "Haec sunt ossa magistri Brunonis" ("These are the bones of Master Bruno") are reported by hagiographic tradition.
62 63