Saint Bruno of Würzburg

Bruno was born about 1005, the diocese of Würzburg says, the son of Duke Conrad I of Carinthia and his wife Matilda of Swabia. ³ That put him in the high nobility of Europe: the Emperor Otto I and Pope Gregory V came from his family, and the Salian Emperor Conrad II was his cousin. ²³ The 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia, in its article on the diocese, calls him "the Saxon Bruno," a cousin of Conrad II. ⁴

Nothing is known of his childhood or youth. ³ The diocese thinks he was probably trained for the priesthood at Salzburg, and then called to the court of Conrad II as a member of the royal chapel, which kept the relics of the empire, saw to the liturgy and handled the king's correspondence. ³

In 1026 he went with Conrad to Italy, where Conrad received the imperial crown, and in 1027 Conrad made him chancellor for Italy. ³ Celestino Testore, on santiebeati.it, says he headed the Italian chancery from 1027 until 1034. ² The diocese, quoting the historians Klaus Wittstadt and Wolfgang Weiß, credits him with "the wise and careful handling of the difficult Italian situation," translated here from the German. ³

On April 14, 1034, he was consecrated nineteenth bishop of Würzburg, succeeding Meinhard. ³ Testore says Conrad II designated him for the see after Meinhard's death on March 22 of that year. ² He stayed close to Conrad and then to Conrad's son Henry III, and the diocese calls him a counselor and peacemaker. ³ He went to win Agnes of Poitou as Henry's bride, and Testore says he took great care in 1042 to bring the marriage about. ²³

The diocese tells a story from his first year, in the words of Bishop Paul-Werner Scheele, translated here. The imperial army was besieging Milan; Bruno said Mass before the threatened city at Pentecost, and a terrible storm broke. "He stood calmly at the altar. After Mass he turned to the emperor and implored him to make peace. He told him that Saint Ambrose had appeared to him and had pleaded for his episcopal city." Conrad, in Scheele's telling, raised the siege. ³

At home, Testore says, he saw to the instruction of his clergy and founded and endowed many churches in the diocese. ² The diocese says he cared for the learning and the morals of the clergy, encouraged the schools and the cathedral school, and had copies made for the clergy of Alcuin's explanations of the Our Father and the Creed. ³ He consecrated the Benedict chapel at Münsterschwarzach, the abbey church of St. Burkard in Würzburg and the church at Oberschwarzach, and enlarged the parish church at Meiningen. ³ The encyclopedia says he restored the abbey of St. Burchard. ⁴

In 1040 he began a new cathedral, the Kiliansdom, which still keeps its basic form. ³⁵ The cathedral's own history says the plans were inspired by the work at Speyer: a choir between two towers, a rebuilt transept, and a larger nave with a pair of towers at the west front. ⁵ Testore says he rebuilt the cathedral largely at his own expense, and the encyclopedia says he laid its cornerstone. ²⁴ He lived to see only the beginning: the crypt was nearly finished and the new choir walls were rising when he died, and his successor Adalbero completed the building in 1075. ³⁵

His chief written work is a commentary on the Psalms, the Expositio in psalmos, which the diocese says was highly regarded in the Middle Ages and was printed as early as 1485. ²³ Testore describes it as a commentary verse by verse drawn from the Fathers and church writers, above all Augustine and Cassiodorus, with each psalm followed, in the ancient way, by a prayer that sums it up. ² Scheele, quoted by the diocese, says it was written less for learned specialists than to offer "as many people as possible a practical help for faith and life," translated here. ³ Testore also lists commentaries on the canticles of the Office and on the Our Father and the creeds, the last in a simple form like a catechism. ²

In 1045 he went with Henry III on campaign against Hungary. ²³ At Persenbeug, near Ybbs on the Danube, the court stopped with a countess, Richlinde of Ebersberg in the diocese's account and Reichilde in Testore's. ²³ During the meal the floor gave way. ²³ The diocese, following the chronicle of Lorenz Fries, says the party had crowded onto a small wooden terrace on the first floor, which broke and dropped them into the bathhouse below, where the emperor fell into a washtub and was unhurt. ³ Some guests were killed, Testore says, and Bruno was so badly injured that he died after a week of suffering, on May 27, 1045. ²³

His body was brought back to Würzburg. ² On June 16, the cathedral's history says, he was buried in the crypt of the church he had begun, and Archbishop Bardo of Mainz consecrated the crypt the same day. ³⁵

He was soon venerated as a saint, the diocese says, and from about 1200 reports of healings at his grave grew more frequent. ³ Bishop Hermann of Lobdeburg tried in 1237 and 1238 to have him recognized by the whole Church, without success. ³ Testore says Gregory IX answered with a brief in 1238 ordering an examination of the miracles, and that Innocent IV then asked for information on Bruno's life and virtues, because, in words translated here from the Italian, "neither merits without miracles, nor miracles without merits, suffice to establish a reputation for holiness." ² Whether that second order was carried out, Testore says, is not known. ²

In 1257 Bishop Iring moved his bones into a raised tomb, which the diocese says was then the equivalent of a formal canonization. ³ They were raised again in 1699, and in 1762 placed in a rococo shrine of silver and crystal, destroyed on March 16, 1945; the bones, the diocese says, are said to have survived. ³ Since 1967 his grave has again been in the crypt. ³

Churches in the diocese were named for him only in the twentieth century, at Niederwerrn in 1952 and in the Steinbach valley at Würzburg in 1959. ³ In 1949 Bishop Julius Döpfner founded a housing company and named it the St. Bruno-Werk, under the motto, translated here, "building homes is building the cathedral." ³ Since 1984 the diocese has awarded a St. Bruno Medal. ³

No source used here names him patron of anyone or anything. ¹²³ He is one of the saints of the Diocese of Würzburg, whose churches at Niederwerrn and in the Steinbach valley bear his name. ³

Saint Bruno of Würzburg's feast is May 27, the day of his death, on which the Roman Martyrology enters him. ¹² The two other sources explain a second date in opposite ways. Testore says Baronius entered him in the Martyrology on May 27 and that Würzburg keeps his feast on the 17th. ² The diocese gives his day as May 17 and sometimes May 27, and says the double date goes back to a sixteenth-century error that entered him in the Martyrology on May 17. ³

He spent his life among emperors and in their business, as chaplain, chancellor, envoy and counselor, and the diocese still remembers him as a peacemaker. ³ Scheele called him a "friend of God and of the world." ³

The commentary he left on the Psalms was meant for ordinary use: verse by verse from the Fathers, with a prayer at the end of each psalm. ²³ He cared that his clergy were taught, and had the Our Father and the Creed explained to them. ³

He began a cathedral he would not see finished, and was buried in the first part of it to be completed. ³⁵ His death came by accident, on an errand of state, after a week of pain. ²