Bruno, St.

Bruno, St. the founder of the Carthusian order, was born at Cologne about 1040, and received his earliest education there. Subsequently he became rector of the cathedral school at Rheims. But the wickedness of his time soon began to weigh upon his soul, and in 1086, with six friends, he betook himself to the wild mountain of Chartreuse, near Grenoble. Here he founded the order of the Carthusians (q.v.), one of the most austere of all the monkish orders. Bruno and his companions had each a separate cell in which they practised the severities of the rule of St Benedict, keeping silence during six days of the week, and only on Sundays seeing one another. Pope Urban II., who was one of Bruno's most eminent scholars, in 1089 summoned the saint to Rome. He obeyed the call reluctantly, and steadily refused all offers of preferment. In 1094 he established a second Carthusian monastery at Della Torre, in a solitary district of Calabria, where he died in 1101. He was canonised in 1628; his festival is the 6th October. Bruno left no written regulations for his followers. These first appeared in a complete form in 1581, and were enjoined on all Carthusians by Innocent IX.