Saint Bruno of Querfurt

Bruno came from the noble family of Querfurt in Saxony. ¹³ The encyclopedia gives his birth as about 970; Benedict XVI, writing in 2009, and Antonio Borrelli on santiebeati.it give 974. ¹³⁴ He was commonly said to be a relative of the Emperor Otto III, the encyclopedia adds, though the historian Hefele "emphatically denies this." ¹ He was also called Brun. ¹

He was hardly six years old when he was sent to Archbishop Adalbert of Magdeburg to be educated, and he studied in the cathedral school under a teacher named Geddo. ¹ The encyclopedia describes him as "a well-behaved, industrious scholar," and he was made a canon of the cathedral while still a boy. ¹ The young Otto III, then fifteen, took a liking to him, brought him into his court, and took him to Rome in 996 for his coronation. ¹ Benedict XVI says Bruno served as the emperor's chaplain. ⁴

In Rome Bruno came to know Saint Adalbert, Archbishop of Prague, who a year later was murdered by the pagan Prussians to whom he had gone as a missionary. ¹ After Adalbert's death, the encyclopedia says, Bruno was seized by an intense desire for martyrdom. ¹ He spent much time in the monastery on the Aventine where Adalbert had been a monk. ¹

The sources differ on where he took the habit. The encyclopedia says he did not enter the monastic life on the Aventine but at Pereum, an island in the marshes near Ravenna. ¹ Borrelli thinks he probably became a Benedictine in the Aventine monastery of Saints Boniface and Alexius, and then followed Romuald to the hermitage at Pereum, taking the name Boniface. ³ Benedict XVI says he entered the Order of Saint Benedict at Rome, took the name Boniface, and lived for a time in Saint Romuald's hermitage near Ravenna. ⁴ The Martyrology says he was drawn to monastic life by Romuald's example. ²

Under Romuald he went through a hard training. ¹ The encyclopedia lists manual work, fasting every day of the week but Sunday and Thursday, night vigils and scourging, and adds that he suffered badly from fever. ¹ He shared a cell with a brother of his own age, Benedict of Benevento, who was, in the encyclopedia's words, "one with him in mind and spirit." ¹

Otto III hoped to bring Christianity to the Slavs between the Elbe and the Oder through a monastery of Romuald's most zealous disciples. ¹ In 1001 Benedict and another brother, John, went to Poland, where the Christian Duke Boleslaus received them well. ¹ Bruno stayed in Italy to await the pope's commission. ¹

The sources do not agree on which pope gave it. The encyclopedia says Sylvester II made him archbishop over the pagans and gave him the pallium, leaving the consecration to the Archbishop of Magdeburg; Benedict XVI likewise says Sylvester sent him to Prussia to preach the Gospel. ¹⁴ Borrelli says that Pope John XVIII named him archbishop "ad gentium," for the nations, in 1004, and the Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, says he was made bishop by "Pope John X." ²³ The encyclopedia says he was consecrated in February 1004 by Archbishop Tagino of Magdeburg, and gave his property to found a monastery. ¹

The Martyrology calls him "bishop of Querfurt." ² Borrelli says that is a mistake: Querfurt was never a see, only his family's castle, and Bruno was a missionary archbishop with no fixed see at all. ³

War between the Emperor Henry II and Boleslaus kept him out of Poland, so he went down the Danube from Regensburg into Hungary, where Adalbert had also worked. ¹ There he finished his life of Adalbert, which the encyclopedia calls "a literary memorial of much worth." ¹ He tried to convert a Hungarian ruler, Achtum, but met so much opposition, including that of Greek monks, that, the encyclopedia says, success was impossible. ¹

In December 1007 he went to Russia. ¹ The Grand Duke Vladimir kept him for a month and then let him go to the Pechenegs, who lived by the Black Sea between the Danube and the Don and were thought the fiercest of the pagan peoples. ¹ Bruno spent five months among them, baptized some thirty adults, helped to make a peace between them and Russia, and left behind one of his companions whom he had consecrated their bishop. ¹

He came back to Poland about the middle of 1008 and consecrated a bishop for Sweden. ¹ There he learned that his friend Benedict and four companions had been killed by robbers on May 11, 1003, and from the accounts of eyewitnesses he wrote what the encyclopedia calls "the touching history of the lives and death of the so-called Polish brothers." ¹³ Toward the end of 1008 he wrote to Henry II, urging him to show mercy and make peace with Boleslaus; the encyclopedia calls the letter "memorable, but ineffectual." ¹

Near the end of 1008 he set out with eighteen companions to found a mission among the Prussians. ¹ The encyclopedia says the ground was not fruitful, and the company went on toward the borders of Russia, preaching as they went. ¹ There pagans fell on them and killed them all, Bruno "with great composure meeting death by decapitation." ¹ Duke Boleslaus bought back the bodies and had them brought to Poland. ¹

The date and place are given differently. The encyclopedia gives February 14, 1009, and the borders of Russia; Borrelli gives March 9, 1009, and the Martyrology and Borrelli both place the martyrdom in eastern Moravia. ¹²³ Benedict XVI says he shed his blood for Christ in 1009 among the peoples who lived in what is now northeastern Poland. ⁴ The encyclopedia's article on Ermland names Adalbert and Bruno as the two who converted the first inhabitants of that region of East Prussia. ⁶

He and his companions were honored as martyrs soon after their deaths. ¹ The encyclopedia says that "little value is to be attached" to a legendary account of the martyrdom by a certain Wipert, and that Bruno's fellow pupil Thietmar, Bishop of Merseburg, gives a short account of him in his Chronicle. ¹ It adds that the town of Braunsberg is said to be named after him, and that he is usually shown with a hand cut off. ¹

For the millennium of his death, Benedict XVI sent Cardinal Józef Glemp, once Bishop of Warmia, the region where Bruno had worked, as his envoy to celebrations at Łomża and Giżycko in June 2009. ⁴ In the letter naming him, the pope called Bruno a tireless supporter of monastic discipline, a famous missionary and a preacher of saving truth, and wrote, in words translated here from the Latin, that "the witness of his faith still carries great weight in our own time." ⁴ He also remembered Bruno as a friend of King Boleslaus the Brave, whose writings spread the fame of the first martyrs of Poland. ⁴

On June 21, 2009, after the Angelus, Benedict greeted the Poles who were that day in Giżycko "thanking God for the gift of faith brought by this great missionary," and added: "May his effort to promote good relations among the nations be fruitful in their harmony and in zeal for the proclamation of the Gospel." ⁵

No source used here names him patron of a group of people. Benedict XVI wrote in 2009 that this "illustrious son of Germany" and friend of the Polish king can "rightly and deservedly be considered the patron of a still deeper friendship between Germany and Poland," in words translated here from the Latin. ⁴

Saint Bruno of Querfurt's feast is March 9, the day the Roman Martyrology enters him. ²³ Borrelli says he formerly had two feasts, June 19 under the name Boniface and October 15 under the name Bruno, and that the latest edition of the Martyrology keeps him only on March 9. ³ The 1908 encyclopedia gives October 15. ¹

He had a place at court and a canon's stall while still a boy, and he left both for a cell in the marshes and a rule of fasting and vigils. ¹ The death of a man he had met in Rome turned him toward the mission, and he wrote that man's life. ¹

His work went mostly unrewarded. Hungary was closed to him, the Pechenegs gave him some thirty converts, his letter to the emperor changed nothing, and the Prussians killed him. ¹ He went on regardless, and the encyclopedia remembers him preaching courageously on the road. ¹

Much of what he wrote was about other people: Adalbert, and his friend Benedict and the brothers who died with him. ¹³ It was that work Benedict XVI singled out a thousand years later: his writings spread the fame of the first martyrs of Poland. ⁴

A German who died for the Gospel near the eastern edge of Poland, he was remembered by a German pope as someone who could stand for friendship between the two peoples. ⁴⁵