Bruno

Bruno of Segni, known also as Bruno of Asti, was a bishop, Benedictine monk, and theologian of the Gregorian Reform in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. He was born at Solero, near Asti in Piedmont, in the mid-eleventh century; no contemporary source records an exact year of birth. He came from a family of notable local standing. His early education took place at the Benedictine monastery of Santa Perpetua near Asti. He later became a canon of the cathedral chapter of Siena, where he was known for learning and an austere manner of life. Those qualities brought him into the circle of Pope Gregory VII, who appointed him bishop of Segni in Latium about 1079 or 1080.

As bishop he took part in the Roman synod of 1079, at which Berengar of Tours was required to make a profession of faith on the Eucharist. Bruno remained a consistent supporter of papal reform, opposing simony and lay investiture. He served as an adviser to Gregory VII and to the popes who followed him, including Victor III, Urban II, and Paschal II, and he was present at important gatherings of the reform papacy. Alongside this public activity he composed a large body of biblical commentary, treating the Pentateuch, the Psalms, Isaiah, the Gospels, and other books of Scripture, as well as treatises on the sacraments, the liturgy, and ecclesiastical discipline. His exegesis and polemical writings made him one of the principal theological voices of the reform movement.

In the opening years of the twelfth century, while still bishop of Segni, Bruno took the Benedictine habit at Monte Cassino. In 1107 the monks elected him abbot, and for a time he governed both the abbey and his diocese. Those years coincided with the height of the investiture conflict between the papacy and the Emperor Henry V. In 1111 Paschal II, then a prisoner of the emperor, issued the Privilegium granting the emperor the right of investiture. Bruno was among those who condemned the grant as incompatible with Gregorian principles. The resulting tension led to his being obliged to resign the abbacy later that year. He returned to Segni, resumed the government of his see, and continued his scholarly work until the end of his life.

Bruno died at Segni on 18 July 1123 and was buried in that city. A local cult developed in the decades after his death. Pope Lucius III canonized him in the early 1180s; the date is given in the sources as 1181 or 1183. The Catholic Church keeps his feast on 18 July. He is venerated as patron of Segni. His commentaries and treatises continued to circulate in monastic libraries and among later medieval theologians, and he remains a representative figure of the intellectual and reforming currents of the eleventh-century Church.