Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno

The Story

Deep in the wooded highlands of Calabria in southern Italy stands the Charterhouse of Serra San Bruno, founded by St. Bruno of Cologne, father of the Carthusian Order, and the place where he died and is buried. Bruno, born in Cologne around 1030, was a renowned teacher at the cathedral school of Reims before abandoning worldly honors for a life of solitude. In 1084 he founded the hermitage in the French Alps that became the Grande Chartreuse, motherhouse of the Carthusians. Called to Rome around 1090 by his former student Pope Urban II, Bruno declined a bishopric and obtained leave to return to the wilderness, this time in Calabria, where in 1091 he founded the hermitage of Santa Maria del Bosco and the nearby monastery of Santo Stefano on land given by Count Roger of Sicily. Bruno spent his final decade there in prayer and silence, dying on October 6, 1101. The monastery he began has endured wars, suppressions, and the catastrophic earthquake of 1783, and was rebuilt at the end of the nineteenth century. It remains a living charterhouse, where Carthusian monks keep the rhythm of solitude, liturgy, and manual work essentially unchanged for more than nine centuries; Pope Benedict XVI visited the community in 2011. The relics of St. Bruno are venerated in the monastery church. Because the monks live in strict enclosure, the charterhouse itself is not open to visits, but a museum beside the gatehouse presents Carthusian life, and pilgrims pray at the nearby church and hermitage of Santa Maria del Bosco, with its statue of the kneeling saint and the small lake associated with his penance, especially around his October 6 feast.

Church Recognition

St. Bruno's cult, first granted to the Carthusian Order in the sixteenth century, was extended to the universal Church in 1623, and his feast is kept on the General Roman Calendar on October 6; the charterhouse remains an active monastery of the Carthusian Order.

Catholic Teaching

The charterhouse witnesses to the eremitic and contemplative vocation the Church holds in honor, in which silence and solitude become praise of God and intercession for the world (CCC 915–921, 2687).

Plan Your Visit

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Practical

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The monastery is cloistered and not open to visitors, but pilgrims can visit the adjacent museum on Carthusian life and pray at the church and hermitage of Santa Maria del Bosco nearby, where St. Bruno lived and did penance; devotion peaks around his feast on October 6.

Go Deeper

The Carthusian Order's official website (https://www.certosini.info) presents the charterhouse and Carthusian spirituality; the film Into Great Silence offers a celebrated portrait of Carthusian life, and the Catechism treats the eremitic vocation in CCC 920–921.