He was of the illustrious family of the lords of Asti in Piemont
and born near that city. From his cradle he considered, that man’s
happiness is only to be found in loving God; and to please him in
all his actions was his only and his most ardent desire. He made his
studies in the monastery of St. Perpetuus in the diocess of Asti.
Bosch proves that he never was canon of Asti, but enjoyed some years
a canonry at Sienna, as he himself informs us. In the Roman council
in 1079, he defended the doctrine of the Catholic Church concerning
the blessed eucharist against Berengarius; and pope Gregory VII.
nominated him bishop of Segni in the ecclesiastical state in 1081.
Bruno, who had been compelled to submit, after a long and strenuous
resistance, served his flock, and on many important occasions the
universal Church, with unwearied zeal. Gregory VII. who died in 1085,
Victor III. formerly abbot of mount Cassino, who died in 1087, and
Urban II. who had been scholar to St. Bruno (afterward institutor
of the Carthusians) at Rheims, then a monk at Cluni, and afterward
bishop of Ostia, had the greatest esteem for our saint. He attended
Urban II. into France in 1095, and assisted at the council of Tours
in 1096. After his return into Italy he continued to labor for the
sanctification of his soul and that of his flock, till not being able
any longer to resist his inclination for solitude and retirement,
he withdrew to mount Cassino, and put on the monastic habit. The
people of Segni demanded him back; but Oderisus, abbot of mount
Cassino, and several Cardinals, whose mediation the saint employed,
prevailed upon the pope to allow his retreat. The abbot Oderisus
was succeeded by Otho in 1105, and this latter dying in 1107, the
monks chose bishop Bruno abbot. He was often employed by the pope
in important commissions, and by his writings labored to support
ecclesiastical discipline[214] and to extirpate simony. This vice
he looked upon as the source of all the disorders which excited the
tears of all zealous pastors in the Church, by filling the sanctuary
with hirelings, whose worldly spirit raises an insuperable opposition
to that of the gospel. What would this saint have said had he
seen the collation of benefices, and the frequent translations of
bishops in some parts, which serve to feed and inflame avarice and
ambition in those in whom, above all others, a perfect disengagement
from earthly things and crucifixion of the passions ought to lay a
foundation of the gospel temper and spirit? Paschal II. formerly a
monk of Cluni, succeeded Urban II. in the pontificate in 1099. By his
order St. Bruno having been abbot of mount Cassino about four years,
returned to his bishopric, having resigned his abbacy, and left his
abbatial crosier on the altar. He continued faithfully to discharge
the episcopal functions to his death, which happened at Segni on the
31st of August in 1125. He was canonized by Lucius III. in 1183, and
his feast is kept in Italy on the 18th of July. See his anonymous
authentic life, and Leo of Ostia and Peter the deacon in their
chronicle of mount Cassino, with the notes of Solier the Bollandist,
t. 4, Julij, p. 471. Also Dom. Maur Marchesi, dean of mount Cassino,
in his apparatus (prefixed to the works of this saint) printed at
Venice in 1651; Mabillon, Annal. Bened. l. 70, Ceillier, t. 21, p.
101.