St. Bruno

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Hi, I'm James Prothrow, Associate Professor at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology. We hope you've enjoyed listening to and learning from our professors on this and all our podcasts. The Augustine Institute Graduate School exists to make Christ and His Church better known and loved through the exercise of academic study. With Saint Augustine as our guide, we focus on the narrative of scripture and the evangelization of the culture. Faculty and students alike immerse themselves in the rich sources of the Catholic faith, drawing upon sacred scripture, the catechism of the Catholic Church, and the writings of the fathers and doctors of the Church.

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Scott Hefelfinger (1:13)

Hello, and welcome to Catholic Saints, the podcast about the lives of the saints and their legacy for the Church. And for us, I am Dr. Scott Hefelfinger. I'm a professor on the faculty here at the Augustine Institute and the Director of Content Development. And today I'm joined by my friend and colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Klein.

Thank you, Dr. Klein, for joining us today.

Elizabeth Klein (1:32)

Thanks for having me on the show.

Scott Hefelfinger (1:34)

Great to have you. Today we're going to be talking about St. Bruno. And Dr. Klein, you were telling me that you actually became a little more familiar with St. Bruno because of your work with an apostolate of North.

Elizabeth Klein (1:45)

Yeah, that's right. So I'm serving right now on the board of a Canadian apostolate called St. Therese Institute of Faith and Mission that does gap year formation for students between high school and college, or even maybe in college, but not quite sure what the next step will be. And they're located in Bruno, Saskatchewan, which I visited. And so I became interested in how it got that name. I knew a little bit about St. Bruno. It turned out the area had been sort of settled by German Benedictines and Bruno is a German saint. And so I thought, well, after I did some reading on St. Bruno, might as well share him with the audience of the Catholic Saints podcast.

Scott Hefelfinger (2:18)

That's great. I love that personal connection. As you know, for me, St. Bruno is very special because his feast day, which we're celebrating, is October 6th, my birthday. So that's really special.

Elizabeth Klein (2:30)

Happy birthday.

Scott Hefelfinger (2:31)

Thank you.

And before we dive into St. Bruno, I also just wanted to say if this podcast has been a blessing to you, you enjoy listening to it, please do take the time to subscribe or like the podcast, rate it, review it, leave us a comment. These things help us to extend our mission to those who might not yet have discovered the Catholic Saints podcast. So I really encourage you to do that. It's a great help for us and for others. So St. Bruno, where should we start the story of St. Bruno?

Elizabeth Klein (3:01)

So St. Bruno has a really interesting life. He's one of the most important men of the 11th century. So he lived from 1030 to 1101 So for those of you who might be familiar with Bernard of Clairvaux, he's kind of in the generation preceding Bernard of Clairvaux.

He almost lived sort of two lives, which I think is interesting, one kind of subsequent on the other. So he's born in Germany, what is today Germany, to a family of nobility. We're not really sure exactly his family details. But he studied and lived in Reims, which is modern day France, for 20 years. So for 20 years, he was in charge of the Cathedral School in Reims.

He was the Chancellor of the Archdiocese. So just kind of had a stable job, stable church job. He did a very good job there. He was beloved as a teacher. And so you often find in the sources that he's referred to as Master Bruno, because of the number of people that he was sort of a mentor to throughout his 20 years.

Scott Hefelfinger (3:56)

And I feel like this story is going to take a turn.

Elizabeth Klein (3:59)

You're setting it up.

Scott Hefelfinger (4:00)

It's stable. He's good, just pretty normal. And then, oh my goodness.