Saint Bruno

Educated in Paris and Reims, France. Ordained in 1055. Taught theology; one of his students later became Blessed Pope Urban II. Presided Over the Cathedral school at Reims from 1057 to 1075. Criticized the worldliness he saw in his fellow clergy. He opposed Manasses, Archbishop of Reims, because of his laxity and mismanagement. Chancellor of the archdiocese of Reims. Following a vision he received of a secluded hermitage in Dauphiny in 1084, he founded what became the first house of the Carthusian Order; he and his brothers supported themselves as manuscript copyists. Assistant to pope Urban II in 1090 and supported efforts at reform. Retiring from public life, he and his companions built a hermitage at Torre, where, in 1095, the monastery of saint Stephen was built. Bruno combined in the religious life hermetical and the cenobitic; his learning is apparent from his scriptural commentaries.