BRUNO of QUERFURT, Saint. — Born in 974, died on 9 March 1009. Of noble birth, he was the last of the Saxon-German apostles in Germany and among the Slavic peoples, following in the footsteps of the great Boniface (q.v.). Having entered the court of Otto III as chaplain, he accompanied his lord to Rome, where, at the beginning of the following year, he became a monk in the monastery of SS. Alessio and Bonifacio on the Aventine. From there he joined the hermits of St Romuald near Ravenna. Pope Sylvester II gave him permission to accept the mission to the Slavs, requested by Bolesław I, King of Poland, and in 1004 at Magdeburg he was consecrated archbishop and apostle to the Slavs to resume the work of Adalbert, who had suffered martyrdom in 997. Finding himself at odds with the conflicting wills of the German court—desirous of annexing the territory to be evangelised to the German Church—and that of Bolesław, who sought to establish a Polish Church, he was compelled to abandon his mission in Poland. After remaining between 1004 and 1007 in Hungary at the court of St Stephen, he arranged with Vladimir, Tsar of Kiev, to travel and convert the Pechenegs of Ukraine. While resuming his evangelising designs in Poland, on the border between Prussia and Russia, he was martyred with eighteen companions.
Two hagiographical writings of Bruno survive: a life of St Adalbert and one of the Quinquefratres Poloniae, that is, of five Camaldolese monks killed in 1003 (q.V. BENEDICT, JOHN, etc.), published by R. Kade in MGH, Scriptores, XV, pp. 716–385.
The Roman Martyrology commemorates him under the name of Boniface on 19 June and under that of Bruno on 15 October; Thietmar, Bishop of Merseburg (Chronicon, VI, 58, 95, ed. R. Holtzmann, in MGH, Scriptores, new series, IX, pp. 386, 389), his companion, informs us that 15 October marked the anniversary of the burial of Bruno’s father, who bore the same name.