The Carthusians

Saint Hugo persuades Bruno of Cologne
to found the Carthusian Order
(cathedral window in Grenoble, France)

The Carthusians have been mentioned here before, when Geert Groote gave away all his possessions to that order. A few days ago was the anniversary of the death (6 October 1101) of the founder of the Carthusians, Bruno of Cologne.

Born in Cologne about 1030, he may have studied at the college of St. Cunibert (where Pepin the Short interred the remains of the Two Ewalds). We do know that he went to Reims for his later education—he was probably there when Anne of Kiev got married in the Cathedral—studying Holy Scripture and the Church Fathers. By 1055 he had returned to Cologne and been made a canon at St. Cunibert, but was called back to Reims by its bishop and put in charge of the local schools, a position he maintained until 1075. (One of his students later became Pope Urban II.)

Bruno eventually gave up the administrative duties, refusing the rille of a bishop for something more contemplative. He first spent time with Robert of Molesme, who later founded the Cistercian Order.

When he founded his own order, in 1084, Bruno decided it would be for both men and women. No abbots, because there would be no abbeys; a hermitage would be overseen by a prior. Priests and nuns (or lay brothers and sisters) would be hermits, shutting themselves off from the outside world in small cells. The day would be spent in prayer and labor...and silence.

The first hermitage was built in the Chartreuse Mountains in the French Alps. It is from these mountains that the word "Carthusian" comes. (Also, the monks started producing a cordial in the 1740s called "Chartreuse." From the color of the cordial comes the color chartreuse.)

As penance for the death of St. Thomas Becket, King Henry II built a Carthusian charter house in 1182 in Somerset.

Geert Groote

A 19th century depiction of Geert Groote's Brethren of the Common Life

In Latin he was called Gerardus Magnus, but when he was born (in October 1340) in the Dutch city of Deventer, he was called Geert Groote. He was sent away to study, first at Aachen, then at the University of Paris where he studied theology, nominalism, canon law, medicine, astronomy, and even a little magic.

In 1362 he became a teacher in Deventer, where his success and reputation encouraged him to adopt a lavish lifestyle, until a fellow student, Henry de Calcar, made him see the inappropriateness of this. Groote started to change in the early 1370s, inclining toward mysticism and a more humble life. In fact, he gave his worldly goods to the monastic Carthusians and started preaching a life of repentance.

He gathered a small band of followers who called themselves Broeders des gemeenen levens [Dutch: "Brethren of the Common Life"]. The Brethren did not take vows, but merely gave up their possessions to live in a community where they devoted their waking hours to mass, religious reading and preaching, and manual labor. Meals were eaten as a group, with Scripture read aloud. It had all the hallmarks of a monastic life without the need to be clergy. They founded schools; Nicholas of Cusa attended one.

Before he died (20 August 1384), he organized some of the Brethren who wanted a more "regular" life into Augustinians; he died before this plan was complete, but his disciple Florens Radewyns established a monastery at Windesheim that became the center of up to 100 monastic houses called the Windesheim Congregation.

Groote promoted a style of piety now referred to as Devotio Moderna ["Modern Devotion"]. It was a search for inner peace based on self-deprivation and silent meditation on Christ's Passion. One of the students in his school, Thomas à Kempis, was inspired to write The Imitation of Christ, a work that (I believe) has never been out of circulation since the 15th century.