Saint Bruno of Cologne

Honors still awaited him on the threshold of his priestly career. The student laden with the laurels of two illustrious universities, the noble scion of an ancient house, let the hopes of the century fall at his feet, unworthy of touching his great soul. Everything faded before his gaze, accustomed to contemplating the heights of heaven. He was a priest! What honor was worth such an honor? What glory could he aspire to after this supreme glory? A single, ardent, irresistible desire devoured his heart: to win for Christ, his master, the rebellious or ignorant souls. He was then seen leaving alone, without money, without any title other than that of priest of the Lord, without any mission other than that of zeal, and traveling through the countryside where his reputation had not yet reached.

This difficult and admirable work was filled with blessings. Bruno, whose eloquence delighted the learned, made himself simple and forgot his rhetoric to spread the divine law into the almost savage minds of the people; solitude, privations, and the contempt of all dangers intoxicated this soul that the applause of two countries had left indifferent and cold. Happy with this obscure work that he knew was great in the eyes of God, he asked for nothing more; but Providence, which wanted to make this young man an accomplished model in all situations, recalled him to the glory he was fleeing.

Bruno had erased from his memory the triumphs of the school; Reims remembered them. Gervais, his archbishop, a learned and holy prelate, had not lost sight of the brilliant student, crowned so many times by him. He recalled him in the name of the public good. Bruno, full of humble terror, hesitated for a long time. It was only after many days of tears and prayers that he decided to leave his beloved countryside. His return to Reims was greeted with universal enthusiasm. Gervais named him chancellor of the diocesan schools and theological canon. These high positions were worthy of him; he filled them with that perfection of zeal, that simplicity, and that sweetness which are the mark of true merit. He was called the Master, and he deserved this title by the brilliance of his knowledge; one could also call him Father, so much did his kindness and grace delight all hearts. The learned school of Reims was justly proud of its conquest; the holy archbishop blessed heaven for having returned to him a son and an auxiliary; Bruno's rare aptitudes extended to everything. Soon, to his great scholastic works, to his office of chancellor, to the exercises of piety that his fervor multiplied, was added the care of the ecclesiastical affairs of the province. So many labors absorbed his days and often his nights, and yet he was sufficient for everything. The life of the Saints is full of these wonders; the most astonishing is this multiplication of time that they seem to operate at will. Bruno, surrounded by glory and affection, always nourished in his heart the insatiable desire for perfection.

The world weighed upon him. To hide, to flee forever from this brilliant renown that he had not sought, was the constant object of his secret thoughts; but God, who had shown him to men so great in prosperity, wanted, before taking him for Himself alone, to present him to them as a model of constancy in adversity. Gervais di ed, and the intru l'intrus Manassès Bishop of Troyes in the 10th century, reformer and founder. der Manasses managed, through intrigue, to succeed him. The severe episcopal court of Reims soon became a hotbed of scandal. Bruno, who seemed to have forgotten for so long the rank that his virtue and his light gave him in this vast diocese, appeared this time first on the breach and used the authority of his name to form a rampart between the threatened Church and the unworthy prelate who was tearing it apart. A violent persecution, unheard-of vexations, and even acts of violence were the result of this noble courage. He endured this state of affairs, so new to him, with the unshakable meekness that accompanies a man fixed forever above the storms of time. Just as he had been seen smiling and calm in the midst of the frantic applause of the crowd, so he remained in the face of its fury. He called a papal legate from Rome. A council assembled at Autun, of which Bruno was the soul, although at that time he was not yet forty years old. Manasses, condemned, disappeared from the scene and, after having made such a scandalous noise, died in such obscurity that history has not been able to discover the place of his passing.

This turmoil had lasted a long time. Once calm was restored, the star of Reims seemed to shine with a new brilliance. The papal legate had presented him in Rome as the firmest champion of the rights of the Church; the episcopal see was vacant, and Bruno was designated by all to occupy it; but he, who had braved persecutions with such holy constancy, could not contemplate with a cool head this glorious burden so justly deserved. He fled from Reims after a night of prayers and tears.

It is said that he came to Paris and that there, while attending the funeral of a canon at Notre-Dame whom public opinion had already canonized, it was revealed to him that the unfortunate man, on the contrary, was damned. This legendary fact, which Lesueur immortalized in one of the famous paintings known as the *Cloister of Saint Bruno*, has not found credence among the serious writers who have written the life of the Saint; moreover, Bruno did not need a miracle to dedicate himself to the religious life; this thought had long been germinating in his mind. At Reims, during his great works and brilliant successes, he loved to shut himself in the narrow enclosure of a silent garden, and there, between his two privileged friends, Raoul le Vert and the canon Fulcius, he used his admirable eloquence to trace in flaming strokes the charms and benefits of the monastic existence. These two men, confidants of his secret desires, seemed destined to be the companions of his retreat, and his loving heart invited them to it. Won over, indeed, by the compelling words of the Master, they vowed to leave the world in his wake; but Fulcius wished first to go to Rome; he left and forgot his promise during this long journey; Raoul also allowed himself to be diverted by other cares; the glory of the world no doubt touched their hearts, less great and less detached than that of Bruno. They thus lost the immortal honor of sharing, at his side, before future ages, the brilliance of his halo.

At this period of Bruno's life, biographers seem undecided. Some claim that after a short retreat spent waiting for his companions, he took the road back to Reims and returned to his chair of theology. The same enthusiasm welcomed him. The crowd pressed once again, ardent and passionate, around their favorite orator, hands ready for applause and minds for admiration; but the illustrious professor seemed to have forgotten the subtleties of scholasticism and repudiated the flowers of poetry. His brow, enlarged by austerities, was crowned with a divine ray, his eyes shining with the sacred fire having glimpsed in the depths of the heavens the only subject henceforth capable of inflaming his genius. His listeners, surprised for a moment, yielded to this eloquence, new to them. Bruno preached only the sublime renunciations and the splendors of the heavenly homeland, and he still held the quivering multitude under his spell. "One thought one was hearing God Himself," a naive old writer says. The two timid companions who had not dared to follow the Saint in the accomplishment of his new life were quickly replaced; several elite souls, inflamed in their turn by the supernatural desire for perfection, resolved to attach themselves to his footsteps.

Bruno did not leave Champagne at first. This man, so learned and so pious, had the humility to believe that everything remained for him to learn. He went to find Robert, abbot of Molesme, who later became the founder of the great Order of Cîteaux, and placed himself under his guidance with the docility of a child.

Bruno was one of those heroic souls who do not stop as long as they believe they see on the horizon of their destiny a height to climb. The friendship of Robert and the stay at Molesme seemed to him sweetnesses incompatible with his dreams of absolute perfection. He dreamed of the desert. The great solitaries of Egypt living in the midst of wild and unexplored sites seemed to him the only models worthy of his ardent love for silence and contemplation. Robert, who, for his part, felt himself enamored of the same thoughts, took great care not to hold back his friend. Together they searched for which corner of the world nature could be harsh enough to offer an inaccessible retreat. Their eyes turned toward the Dauphiné Alps, of which they had only heard. It was an inspiration.

Bruno had come to Molesme with six companions who, inflamed by his preaching, had resolved to follow him everywhere. History has preserved these names, which shone like stars around the great name of their leader. They were Lauduin, Etienne du Bourg, Etienne de Die, and Hugh the chaplain, all four priests and born in the two climates of Tuscany and Spain; then two laymen, André and Guérin. Bruno gathered them and spoke to them with energy of the austere life that awaited them. The harsh picture he painted did not shake them at all, and they declared themselves resolved never to abandon him. The departure was decided. This solemn conversation had taken place in the evening. Bruno retired to the church of Molesme and spent the whole night in prayer. Toward morning, overcome by fatigue, he fell asleep, his knees bent on the flagstones and his head resting against a pillar. This short sleep of the body left his soul awake; three angels appeared to him and strengthened him marvelously by announcing that God would walk at his side and that his work would be blessed.

Is it not permissible to believe that these heavenly messengers were the same ones who, that night, also visited the sleep of Saint Hugh, Bishop of Grenoble, and announced to him t saint Hugues, évêque de Grenoble Bishop of Grenoble and close friend of Guigues. he coming arrival of the friends of the Lord? Pious and poetic tradition indeed represents the holy prelate transported in a dream to the desert of the Chartreuse, in the midst of thick f désert de la Chartreuse Place of retreat for Geoffroy in 1114. orests and impetuous torrents that made this wild part of his diocese inaccessible. There, at the bottom of the gorges threatened by avalanches, a superb temple suddenly rose, and seven stars with sparkling fires crowned its summit. Hugh awoke moved by this prophetic dream and waited, while praying to God, for the fulfillment of what his faith envisioned as a revelation. He did not have to wait long, for a few days later Bruno arrived and threw himself at the feet of the bishop. The latter had once followed, at Reims, the course of the eloquent professor; he recognized him with inexpressible joy, and, all filled with admiration and affectionate fear, he gave the future solitaries a formidable picture of the place he had glimpsed in his vision. As he spoke, Bruno and his companions testified to their joy, for the description realized in its sublime horror the site they had been pleased to dream of; the Thebaid was surpassed by this new desert, at least by the harshness of the climate. After a few days of rest at the episcopal palace of Grenoble, the bishop himself wished to lead his heroic guests to the place of their retreat, situated, in his mind, at the precise spot where he had seen the seven stars stop.

It was necessary to cross dangerous precipices, to open a difficult path with axe blows through woods of powerful vegetation, interspersed with thick brambles and immense ferns. They advanced slowly, and more than once the wild beasts, until then peaceful inhabitants of these places, began to howl around the travelers, as if to teach them that they would have other enemies than nature to fight. They finally arrived, after a thousand dangers, at the goal of this bold pilgrimage. It was there, at the most tormented point of the desert, among enormous fragments of rocks collapsed following volcanic upheavals, that the new temple to the glory of God was to rise.

Hugh took the road back to Grenoble, but his heart remained near his friends. While Bruno, at the height of his wishes, was sketching his monastery by building a chapel in honor of the Mother of God, called *Sancta Maria de Casalibus*, and huts of branches, the bishop, through touching prayers, obtained from those who had property rights over these rugged mountains a full and entire cession in favor of the new solitaries. He made himself the procurator of these men who disdained all material care, and so that nothing in this world would come to disturb the silence of their heavenly conversations, he wished to take it upon himself later to raise at his own expense some wooden cells and a suitable church. It is there that he loved to come to seek a rest for which his soul was also avid. Stripping off his episcopal insignia and happily forgetting the rank where God and his virtues had placed him, he became again the schoolboy of Reims to listen once more to the admirable lessons of his former master.

Work, prayer, and a profound silence on the part of men—such was the occupation of the first years of Bruno's retirement. Entirely devoted to the arduous labors of clearing the land and to the care of his spiritual family, and happy above all to believe himself forgotten, he made the desert his homeland and loved it like a mother whose predilection is for the child she had the most trouble obtaining and keeping. The more a man stirs to attract the gaze of his fellows, the more he exposes himself to a disdainful indifference; but, on the contrary, the world rushes—curious at first, then respectful and suppliant—toward those noble natures that do not seek it. God does not wish for there to be caves dark enough to hide His solitaries forever, nor a convent impenetrable enough to conceal His Saints from our sight. The fame that attaches itself to such men crosses the seas and traverses the mountains on a given day, with the rapidity of a hurricane. Those who are its object alone have the privilege of not hearing it; they believe themselves buried and suddenly learn that, from the Orient to the Occident, there is no talk but of their name. Bruno knew this bitter surprise. His brothers, who had the sweet habit of contemplating him in their midst as a living image of peace and happiness, saw him one day dejected and troubled. His eloquent lips could no longer find a word, and his eyes shed abundant tears. The greatest honor a Christian soul could receive here below threatened him. The Roman Church was calling him to its defense. One of Bruno's students, later Canon of Reims, Eudes, born at Châtillon-sur-Marne, had been raised to the pontifical throne under the name of Urban I I. This e Urbain II Pope who preached the First Crusade. lection found a violent adversary in Emperor Henry IV and sparked a schism. The antipope Guibert, supported by Henry, usurped the keys and dared to sit beside his legitimate sovereign. Urban, persecuted and prey to all the sadness that the sight of the Church's ills caused his heart, wrote to Bruno a pressing and strong letter to call him to Rome, where his counsel and his knowledge were becoming indispensable. He begged as a friend, he commanded as a sovereign; hesitation was not permitted.

Bruno designated Lauduin to replace him and departed, his heart broken. The immense sorrow of his children, who wept around him and did not seem able to be consoled, added to his heartbreak the well-founded anxiety of seeing his work undermined at its base. Despite his humility, he could not in fact hide from himself that his presence animated all their courage. With him gone, what would become of this family, so soon orphaned and barely formed in almost superhuman austerities? The joy of the Sovereign Pontiff, who received his former master like a savior, the honors of the Roman court, and the labors of an ardent polemic could not overcome the apprehensions of the solitary. Saints have at the bottom of their hearts a radiant lamp that illuminates for them the secret of the future. What Bruno feared came to pass. Shortly after his installation at Urban's palace, he learned that his companions, tempted to the point of vertigo, had abandoned the Chartreuse. The desert without Bruno had appeared to them in its insurmountable horror. The work had languished under hands that had suddenly become feeble. The psalmody that, not long before, rose toward heaven with such ardor was either abandoned or interrupted by continuous sobs. It reached the point where the prior Lauduin, discouraged himself, felt devoid of strength and authority. To see Bruno again or to die—such was the cry of these men whom frightening privations had not been able to defeat, and who suddenly, losing their reason and almost their faith, succumbed for a moment to a surprise of the heart. Lauduin understood that he had to yield, and he led them himself to Rome.

Bruno received the fugitives with a grave and gentle sadness, in which his soul was entirely revealed; no bitter reproach escaped him: the superior felt the fault, the father foresaw the reparation, and his refuge was in prayer. He asked God to enlighten these elite spirits himself, so suddenly blinded. Such meekness soon bore fruit. The pious wanderers quickly understood that nature had yielded in them to the illusions of the demon and were filled with unease and anxiety at the sight of the easy and aimless existence they were leading in Rome. The example of Bruno, who sighed ardently for his return to solitude, his conversations, and the evident disapproval of the Sovereign Pontiff finished pouring a salutary light into their hearts. They implored a pardon that was granted to them with tenderness, and they all took the road back to the Chartreuse. Made more fervent by the trial, these colonists of the desert appeared there even more numerous. God added new workers to them on the way. This arid soil, already watered by their sweat, saw them again, weeping with joy and repentance. The love of a man had led them away from it, the love of God brought them back, and henceforth, throughout the long course of the centuries, only the brutal force of revolutions would be capable of driving them away again.

The Saint did thereafter, by letters, what he could not do by word of mouth. He instructed them in all the practices of the solitary life, animated them to a firm and vigorous perseverance, consoled them in their sorrows, enlightened them in their doubts, and raised them by entirely heavenly discourses to the contemplation of eternal truths. Finally, he made that fire of divine love, with which his own was entirely penetrated, flow into their hearts. These holy instructions, nevertheless, did not prevent a violent temptation to which they were on the point of succumbing. Some people, undoubtedly stirred up by the demon, to whom this nascent Order gave terrible alarms, suggested to them that they were in no way on the path of God, because they were undertaking a life which, being far above their strength, harmed their health, shortened their days, and thus put them in the impossibility of serving the Church. They represented to them, thereupon, the horror of their solitude, the length of their fasts, the distance from all human aid, and many other things that increased at every moment the perplexity into which these bad counsels had thrown them. They could not, moreover, resolve to leave again a place where they knew that the divine Goodness had called them. But God, who does not permit his servants to be tempted beyond their strength, assisted them powerfully in this doubt, which came only from the fear they had of displeasing Him; for, one day when they were conferring together on this subject, a venerable old man appeared to them and dissipated all this cloud by the assurance he gave them that the Blessed Virgin, Mother of God, would be their advocate and protector if they were exact in reciting every day in her honor the seven hours of her office. Then, light succeeding darkness and joy succeeding sadness, they resolved firmly to remain until death in their desert and in their way of life, under the protection of this powerful Mediatrix and of Saint John the Baptist, and they easily persuaded themselves that this venerable old man who had appeared to them was the Apostle Saint Peter, when, shortly after, Urban II, his successor, had the hours of Our Lady deposited at the Council of Clermont to be recited generally by all the clergy.

While these things were happening in France, Bruno was soliciting with all his strength, in Rome, the permission to leave the court and retire. The Pope resisted his prayers and his entreaties for a long time; but, fearing finally to oppose the will of God and the attraction of his vocation, he gave him the power to return to his Chartreuse or to choose any other solitude that he pleased. One cannot conceive the joy that this grace caused him. He said with the Prophet: "Lord, you have broken my bonds; I will sacrifice to you a host of praise and I will invoke your name. My soul has escaped like the sparrow from the hunter's net: the net is broken, and I have been delivered." But, when he was preparing to leave, a new accident, which he did not expect, stopped his journey again. The inhabitants of Reggio, in Calabria, having lost their archbishop, cast their eyes upon him and chose him to fill this vacant place. The Pope had given his consent to this election and had even testified that it would be agreeable to him; thus, he wished for it to have its effect. But Bruno, who sighed only for solitude, did so much with His Holiness, through the holy importunity of his prayers, that he finally obtained his discharge. There was then nothing left to stop him at the court of Rome and to oppose his freedom. His desire was to come and find his dear children, who still regarded themselves as orphans, being separated from the company of a father of such great merit; but, as the Pope was preparing to come to France, and quite near the Chartreuse, fearing that he might engage him again in his retinue, or that he might charge him with some bishopric that he would find vacant, he deprived himself of this consolation and retired with a few other disciples, to whom he inspired the love of the solitary life, to the desert of La Torre, in the diocese of Squillac e, in Calabria. Like a torrent that has broken désert de la Tour, dans le diocèse de Squillace Site of the second foundation and the death of Bruno in Calabria. its dike and set itself free, running with more impetuosity into the countryside than it did before, so Bruno, seeing himself delivered from the embarrassment of affairs, gave himself with more fervor than ever to the exercises of the interior and spiritual life. What were his austerity, his mortification, his detachment from all things here below, and his union of spirit with God? He was on earth as if he no longer had any commerce with the earth. His senses served him only for the indispensable necessities of the body and for the offices of piety. His conversation was continually in heaven, and he enjoyed a peace and a tranquility of soul so perfect that he already tasted in advance the rest and the sweetness of eternity. This is what made him give to the solitary life those great praises that we read in his letter to Raoul, provost and later Archbishop of Reims, and which filled him with those entirely divine sentiments with which his other letters and his rich Commentaries on Scripture are filled.

But whatever effort he made to remain unknown to the world and to be unknown by it, God nevertheless permitted him to be finally discovered in the secret of his solitude: one day, Roge r, Prince of Sicily and Count of Calabria, Roger, prince de Sicile et comte de Calabre Count of Sicily who expelled the Saracens. was amusing himself with hunting in the vicinity of this holy place; his dogs, having arrived at the spot of the cells, stopped short and no longer bothered to pursue their prey. Their barking made it clear enough that they had found something extraordinary. The Count approached, and he immediately caught sight of this heavenly man with the troop of his children who, with their eyes and hands raised toward heaven, were soliciting divine goodness through their prayers. He dismounted from his horse at once to show them his respects, and, having embraced them, he asked who they were and what they were doing in this place. Saint Bruno satisfied him entirely on all his requests; and he so won his affection that this prince, so as not to lose such a great treasure that God had sent him in his lands, gave him and his entire company a church called Saint Mary and Saint Stephen, where, thereafter, he often visited him to seek his advice on the most important affairs of his State.

His benevolence and liberality toward the Saint were not without reward; for, shortly after, while he was besieging the city of Capua, one of his captains, named Sergius, a Greek by nation, having promised for a large sum of money to deliver him and his army into the hands of the besieged, this blessed Solitary, on the night the treason was to be carried out, appeared to Roger with a face full of respect, his clothes torn and his eyes bathed in tears, and warned him to rise promptly, to take up arms, and to forestall his enemies. He obeyed this voice, and his diligence had all the success he could have hoped for: for Sergius, seeing himself discovered, took flight with the conspirators, many of the besieged were killed or wounded, the city was taken, and, at the end of five months, he returned to his castle of Squillace. After his return, he fell into a great illness that kept him in bed for fifteen days. The Saint came to see him with four of his disciples, and consoled him with entirely heavenly discourses. Roger told him what had happened to him, and how, by his advice, he had avoided death and taken the place he was besieging. "Do not attribute this favor to me," Bruno told him, "but attribute it to the angel who watches over the preservation of princes; it is to him, after God, that Your Highness is indebted for it." This answer, full of humility, did not prevent the Count from offering him great thanks and offering him in recognition all the goods that belonged to him in the territory of Squillace; but Bruno refused these advantages: he barely consented to accept the monastery of Saint James, with its castle and its dependencies, for the subsistence of his religious.

Bruno, who had been the first to answer the call of God, remained the last standing of his dearest companions. Lauduin and most of the Carthusians who had come from Rome died far from their beloved master. He mourned them with that effusion of the heart that defies the frosts of age. Pope Urban II followed them to the grave; Roger finally expired in the arms of the religious whom he called his father. Left alone of so many great souls who owed an immortal memory to the contact of his own, the illustrious founder understood that his mission on this earth was also going to end. The approach of his final hour found him simple, confident, and forgetful of himself as he had always been. His purified body did not have to undergo long sufferings; he weakened gradually while leaving his spirit full of vigor and freedom. On a Sunday in the month of October 1101, the monks of the two monasteries of Calabria, gathered for their farewells, knelt, moved and recollected, around the bed of planks covered with ashes where their father was finishing his life. Bruno, so close to God, spoke of His love and the greatness of the monastic vocation with that same eloquent voice that had captivated his century. For a moment, his strength seemed to abandon him, but soon reviving, he began his general confession in a penetrating and distinct tone. When he had finished, his soul, avid for humiliation, did not seem satisfied yet; he asked his brothers if, after the account of such a miserable life, they did not judge him unworthy of the Holy Eucharist. The religious answered only with sobs. They lifted him in their arms, and after having received the supreme viaticum with ardent faith, he fell asleep without agony in the midst of his desolate family. Thus the just man leans toward eternity, crowning his past with acts of sublime simplicity, and long after him, men recognize by the light he leaves on the horizon of the Church that a star has just disappeared. Our age still contemplated its gentle light. The works of his powerful spirit, his writings, his labors on the Councils have not aged; the work of his heart, the order he founded, remains alive in the eyes of all and would take it upon itself to ensure immortality for his name, if our ungrateful selfishness were tempted to forget him.

The Order of Carthusians recruited slowly, and it was only the fifth prior of the Grande Chartreuse, Guigues, who drafted the customs of the convent and communicated them to the other houses of the Order. These customs (Constitutiones Carthusae), augmented by Bernard de Latour (1256), were confirmed a year later by the general chapter, reviewed and extended in 1368, 1509, and 1681; only then, and in this latter form, were they ratified by Pope Innocent XI, and since then they have remained the rule of the Order which, itself, had been solemnly confirmed by Alexander III in 1170.

Charterhouses are composed of Fathers and lay brothers. These two classes of monks observe the same rule, with some differences depending on the diversity of their functions and their instruction. The monks always live in isolation, each in a cell. Their time there is divided between meditation, oral prayer, and work. It is from these silent and occupied cells that numerous and remarkable copies of ancient classics, marvelous documents, and inimitable manuscripts emerged. The monks eat together only on days of major feasts, and on the day of the death of one of their brothers, in order to offer mutual consolation; otherwise, they prepare their meals themselves in their cells, where the common cook brings them what is necessary. They use neither lard, nor oil, nor fat; wine is only forbidden on fast days. They may, with the permission of the prior, in order that the exercise of obedience be joined to that of mortification, fast three times a week on bread and water, a strict fast imposed on the vigils of the eight principal feasts of the Order. The ordinary fast is observed from the Exaltation of the Cross until Easter, and during this time they eat only once a day; but all other austerity is forbidden. On chapter days, the monks may speak among themselves. They also formerly had permission to converse with their guests, but this favor was not left to them. It is permitted from time to time to work in common, and to walk within the limits of the monastery grounds. The monks rise at midnight to attend Mass; in the morning they attend community Mass, and in the evening Vespers and Compline. Each priest may say Mass daily in the convent church.

Their costume consists of a shirt of coarse wool on the body and a habit of bure, a leather belt, a scapular, and a hood, all white in color. They are not permitted to beg. The priors of each monastery are elected by the monks; a monk and a brother are charged with temporal affairs which, in the beginning, were so few that the Order was freed from all ecclesiastical burdens, for example, contributions for the Crusades, etc. Later their possessions increased with the authorization of the Popes, and their revenues were conscientiously employed for religious works.

The Order of Carthusians did not resist ambition as well as it did softness; as early as 1134 there was a Carthusian cardinal, and in 1237 it was a Carthusian, Bishop of Modena, who, in the capacity of papal legate, ended a dispute between the Teutonic Order and the King of Denmark. Naturally, to fulfill such functions, a papal dispensation from certain obligations of the Order was required.

In 1141, the Carthusians held their first general chapter in Grenoble. All the superiors appeared there, headed by the prior of the principal Charterhouse of Grenoble. These general chapters were authorized to enact mandatory provisions for the entire Order and held to strict supervision of all convents. In case of emergency, the prior of the principal Charterhouse could decide after consulting those closest; sometimes he even had this right without having taken anyone's advice.

As early as 1164, almost all bishops recognized the exemption of the Carthusians and their submission to the general chapter. Violation of the rules of the Order was punished by exclusion. If a superior did not heed the advice of the general chapter, the prior of the principal Charterhouse could, with the assent of the assembly, depose him; the prior of the principal Charterhouse was subject to the same law. No new monastery could be founded without the approval of the general chapter. The general prior was elected from among the monks and superiors of the entire Order. In 1254, the monks of the principal Charterhouse were stripped of the privilege of voting in general chapters with the priors of the other Charterhouses; a year later, their right was returned to them in the following form: The prior of the Charterhouse of Grenoble appoints, with five other superiors, six electors, either from among the monks of the mother house or from among the superiors of all the houses, and these designate eight definitors from among themselves or from among the other monks. This commission, presided over by the prior of the principal Charterhouse, has legislative power, but not against the fundamental statutes of the Order. Decisions are made by a majority of votes. If the prior is in contradiction with it, the definitors, the other superiors of the Charterhouses, and he each choose an arbitrator, and the decision of these three arbitrators is mandatory and final. Softenings of the Rule of the Order are valid only after having been confirmed by three successive assemblies. Novices undergo a one-year probation. Those who, during this time, were found unsuitable, formerly had to enter a less severe Order; later they were authorized to return to the world. The lay brothers live in common; they attend to the needs of the convent, practice trades, cultivate the land, and raise and guard the herds.

The number of Carthusians in each house was fixed by Guigues at fourteen, plus sixteen lay brothers. Later this number was increased in proportion to the properties of each Charterhouse. Besides the lay brothers, oblates (oblati, redditi) were taken from outside the Carthusian possessions to cultivate the land and serve. Pope Gregory IX confirmed this custom in 1232. These oblates were subject to a year of probation, made profession like the lay brothers, but observed milder Rules, so that those whom poor health did not allow to be received into the Order were added to them.

As for the history of this Order, as early as 1193, a sort of fragmentation formed, which however never came to a formal separation. The severity of the Rule had caused a religious named Guido to flee the convent of Lavigny, who obtained from the lord of Montcorne a place fertile in vegetables, where he settled with several brothers and from where they received the name Fratres Cauldor, in Ecosse de valle ulerum. These brothers obligated themselves to the exact observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict, with some of the Rules and the costume of the Carthusians. Innocent III granted them his protection. Subsequently, they spread to Scotland, where they founded three houses. Later, thirty of their priors were said to depend on the mother house. However, the Order of Carthusians acquired influence in the Church, and the authority of Pope Alexander IV earned the Carthusians admission to most countries, even Rome. By 1360, there were more than two hundred convents of Carthusian monks and nuns. They were praised everywhere; judges, very severe otherwise, joined in these praises, and Carthusians were often chosen as visitors of other Orders. The papal schism of the 14th century also divided the Carthusians: the Italian convents recognized Urban VI. The French and Spanish convents submitted to Clement VII and his successors, and both parties each had their general and their assemblies. After the election of Gregory XII, they reunited again under a single head.

At the time of its greatest prosperity, the Order counted sixteen provinces, each of which had two visitors elected by the General Chapter. Several Charterhouses attained great wealth and acquired precious treasures of art and science. The Order of Carthusians has given the Church a whole series of Saints, four cardinals, seventy bishops, and many distinguished writers. During the French Revolution, the Grande Chartreuse of Grenoble was overturned, the monuments of the cardinals and Popes disappeared, the books were dispersed, and the paintings and pictures were lost.

Here is the list of Carthusian houses that were suppressed in the course of and especially at the end of the last century: 1st Antwerp; 2nd Bois-Saint-Martin, near Grammont; 3rd Bruges; 4th Brussels; 5th Capelle, near Enghien; 6th Ghent; 7th Liers, near Antwerp; 8th Nieuport; 9th Louvain; 10th Tournai; 11th Milan; 12th the noble and splendid Charterhouse of Pavia; 13th Mantua; 14th Freiburg, in Breisgau; 15th La Valsainte, in the diocese of Lausanne (it is in this house that Dom Augustin de l'Estrange established the Trappists and his edifying Reform); 16th Padua; 17th Parma; 18th Maggiano, in Tuscany; 19th Vedana, in the diocese of Belluno; 20th Mainz; 21st Pontignano, near Siena; 22nd Aggsbach, in Austria; 23rd Brno, in Moravia; 24th Freudenthal, in Carniola; 25th Gaming, in the diocese of Passau; 26th Hildesheim, in Lower Saxony;

27th Mauerbach, in Austria; 28th Olomouc, in Moravia; 29th Žiče, in the diocese of Aquileia; 30th Schnals, in the Tyrol; 31st Valdice.

The suppression of so many monasteries meant that, in the last years before the Revolution, the Chapter was composed, so to speak, only of French priors. Of all the suppressed Charterhouses, that of Pavia perhaps caused the most vivid regrets, and one saw with unspeakable pain this admirable monument of more than royal generosity, whose plan alone was and still is an object of curiosity in the corridors of the Grande Chartreuse, removed from its destination. It has just been returned to it; French Carthusians returned there in the year 1843. At the time of the Revolution, almost all the Carthusians remained faithful to the laws of the Church. The cloisters of Saint Bruno were evacuated like all the others, and, in October 1792, the Grande Chartreuse remained deserted. In vain did they try to sell this establishment of a very special kind and position. No buyer was found for a house situated in the empire of snow or clouds. Some religious had, even during the time of the empire, reunited and lived in community at Romans, others were in exile. At the Restoration, religion breathed a little, but then everything was limited for it to hopes. It was thought necessary to return to the Carthusians a house that was perishing for lack of inhabitants, since the spirit and resignation of the monks were needed to make use of it. Louis XVIII, by an ordinance of April 27, 1816, restored the children of Saint Bruno to possession of the Grande Chartreuse. Religious returned from abroad, from the monastery of La Part-Dieu, in Switzerland, with their general, re-entered it on July 8, 1816. The house, despite its poverty, has been maintained to this day. It has repurchased one of the houses enclosed in the Carrières mountain, which it once possessed; the other house, Chalais, was acquired by the Dominicans. Today the number of cloistered religious is higher at the Grande Chartreuse than it was at the time of the Revolution, and the superior general has already formed several establishments. These are those of Besserville, diocese of Nancy, Mont-Bloux, diocese of Fréjus, and Valbonne, diocese of Nîmes. A new Charterhouse has been formed at Mougères, diocese of Montpellier. In Savoy, the Charterhouse of Le Reposoir is the only one that has emerged from its ruins. In Piedmont, only that of Turin is counted. In the rest of Italy, there are still eight, among which is that of Pavia, which is regarded as one of the wonders of Italy. Two are in Switzerland, but they are threatened with destruction by the impiety of the radicals.

Since the Reverend Carthusian Fathers had returned to their ancient solitude, the Carthusian nuns envied their happiness and sighed after that of returning also themselves, if not to their former monasteries, at least to their former state. They began first, in 1820, to reunite at Saint-Ozier, parish of Vinay, in the department of Isère; but they soon noticed that this location could not suit them and that they did not even find there that precious solitude which makes the charm and delight of a soul entirely consecrated to God. They therefore turned their views in another direction, and the Château de Beauregard, situated half a league from Voiron, three and a half leagues from Grenoble and the Grande Chartreuse, far from any habitation, seemed to offer them the best they could find, in the absence of a regular convent, to form a stable establishment analogous to their way of life, little different from that of the Carthusians.

The inconvenience of this location and other reasons of health and regularity determined the Order to make the acquisition of a new monastery, which has since been called the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary, situated at La Bastide Saint-Pierre, near Grisolles, in the diocese of Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne). The Carthusian nuns, animated by an excellent spirit, understood that God asked of them, in this time of calamities, a life especially of reparation, a life of generous victims. Thus, they require in this monastery only those girls who have contrition and suitable dispositions for this life of annihilation: their spiritual exercises are longer than those of the most rigorous monasteries; their life is a life of continuous prayer; they humbly regard themselves as the special deputies of the holy Church to wipe away the tears of this good mother, and to ask for pardon and mercy for all the sinners of the universe. They fast all their lives, even in the most serious illnesses. Their food, although frugal, is nevertheless adapted to the weakness of their sex.

Postulants who ask to enter a convent of Carthusian nuns must have a very marked vocation for the interior and annihilated life; one requires of them a good voice, a fairly robust constitution, the age of eighteen to twenty-five years, except in rare cases; that they be of sound mind and not subject to melancholy. The duration of the postulancy in secular habit is one year; the novitiate, in Carthusian habit, is also one year, which makes two years of probation.

The prioresses and the nuns promise obedience to the General Chapter of the Order and send a new promise of submission every year. The prioresses are also required to obey the Father Vicar, who directs their house. The simple nuns and the lay sisters are subject to the prioress and the vicar. The monasteries of the Carthusian nuns have their enclosures and limits like those of the religious men. It is forbidden for prioresses and vicars to send the nuns outside these enclosures without permission from the General Chapter.

The habit of the Carthusian nuns is a robe of white cloth, a belt, a scapular attached on both sides by bands, a white cloak like those of the Carthusians; their wimple and veil are similar to those of other nuns; they never speak to seculars, even to their close relatives, except with the veil lowered, accompanied by the prioress or some other nun. The rigidity of silence and the solitude of the cells have, however, been moderated for them.

Sources: Dom Cöllter; Dom Rivet, Histoire littéraire de la France; Revue du monde catholique; Godeau; Dictionnaire des Ordres religieux, Migne edition, and Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la théologie catholique, by Goschler. — Cf. L'Ordre des Chartreux et la Chartreuse de Bosterville, by Abbé Defvéaux.