Bruno the Great, Saint

BRUNO THE GREAT, Saint. - Archbishop of Cologne, b. in the spring of 925, d. at Reims on 11 Oct. 965. The youngest son of Henry I of Germany and brother of Otto I, educated in the cathedral school of Utrecht by Bishop Balderic, B. was not long in being called to his brother's court and, while still a youth, in being raised to the dignity of chancellor there, in 940. But soon afterward, having been ordained deacon, he introduced the Benedictine Rule into the monastery of Lorsch and into others. Imperial archchaplain in 951, he was, in 953, appointed archbishop of Cologne and regent for Lorraine. He held the two offices with energy and severity: he re-established in the region entrusted to him the royal authority, which had been greatly shaken, represented the king in numerous diplomatic missions, above all in that of arbiter for France; he caused Cologne to flourish again, for from his government it dated its new life. When Otto I descended into Italy, he was entrusted, together with the archbishop of Mainz William, with the regency and the guardianship of the child Otto II. When the emperor returned, he went to France for the resolution of a dynastic dispute, and died on the way back. Buried in the monastery of St. Pantaleon which he had founded at Cologne, he soon had a cult on the same day, 11 Oct.

In B. the political character predominates. If he was a zealous supporter of asceticism and a resolute propagator in Lorraine of the ecclesiastical reform, he did not see the danger of an episcopate enfeoffed to the empire and wholly caught up in administrative and political machinations. But he knew how to make of the imperial chancery the school for an ever better instruction of the episcopate.

Pier Fausto Palumbo