Bruno the Great

Saint Bruno the Great, hierarch, was archbishop of Cologne from 953 until his death in 965, and duke of Lotharingia from 954. He was the youngest brother of the emperor Otto I. He is commemorated on 11 October.

His life

Bruno was the youngest son of King Henry the Fowler and of Matilda, who is remembered as a saint. While still a child, it was decided that he should follow a church career. He studied at the cathedral school of Utrecht, then, in the early 940s, at Trier, under the scholar Israel the Grammarian. He was his brother’s chancellor, and in 951 Otto named him archchaplain. In 953 the see of Cologne fell vacant just when Duke Conrad the Red of Lotharingia, Otto’s son-⁠in-⁠law, had joined a rebellion against him. By naming Bruno, Otto secured a powerful ally. The next year the revolt collapsed, Otto removed Conrad and gave the duchy of Lotharingia to Bruno, who thus became both archbishop and duke, called by his biographer, Ruotger, archduke. After the death of King Louis IV of France, in 954, and of Hugh the Great, in 956, Bruno, uncle of their heirs, King Lothair and Hugh Capet, in effect ruled as regent of the western kingdom. From 962 he was also Otto’s regent in Germany, while Otto was away in Italy. He died at Reims, in 965, and was buried in the monastery of Saint Pantaleon, near Cologne, which he had founded.

His work

His position in Cologne was almost that of a king: Otto gave him and his successors the right to build fortifications, to strike coins and to collect taxes and tolls on the Rhine. His court at Cologne was the chief center of learning and art in Germany at that time, and many of the church leaders of the next generation were trained there. He built a palace, enlarged the cathedral until it was held to rival Saint Peter’s in Rome, brought within the walls the area between the Roman wall and the Rhine and built churches, among them those of Saint Martin of Tours and of Saint Andrew, and the Benedictine monastery of Saint Pantaleon. He brought from Troyes the relics of Saint Patroclus and set them in 964 at Soest.

Veneration

He was venerated at Saint Pantaleon throughout the Middle Ages. His biographer shows him as an example of life, not as a wonderworker. He was beatified in 1870 and numbered among the saints in 1895.