Serra San Bruno is a small Calabrian village about 800 meters above sea level. Cared for and well maintained, in summer it offers coolness, also enjoying the greenery and excellent local cuisine. In addition to this it is home to one of the three Charterhouses active and present on the Italian territory. One of the twenty-three present all over the world (divided between 18 male and 5 female). The real peculiarity of the hermitage, located in the locality of Santa Maria del Bosco is that of being the second ever founded by what is universally recognized as the father of the order.
Bruno from Cologne
Bruno was born in Cologne, at that time one of the most famous cities in Europe, in 1030. He moved to Reims in 1045. The French city is small, but famous for its cathedral , school who settled there. The Church and the University immediately fascinate Bruno.
His wit and intelligence are immediately noticed by the rector who wants him as his successor. Bruno becomes one who is not yet 30 years old. In addition to his studies, he also has a deep love for church which makes him strict and demanding. The struggle to separate the secular interference in ecclesiastical appointments becomes a battle that lasts over four years and that causes him and his companions to lose goods, offices and offices. They are forced to take refuge at the Roucy castle.
Despite being offered the prestigious position of Bishop of Reims, Bruno understands that life as an exile has given him the will to live his vocation in a solitary way.
At the head of six men he goes to the bishop of Grenoble. He asks him to help him make his dream come true. To create, in an isolated place that can best represent Bruno's wishes, a monastery.
Having found the much coveted place, days of feverish work begin (together, among others, with the faithful disciple Lanuino) to build the small wooden cells (where the monks will live), the refectory, the chapter house and the Church. Begun in 1084, this first Charterhouse (Chartreuse), named after "Santa Maria de Casalibus ", will last until 1132 when it will be buried by an avalanche.
The call of Pope Urban II
In 1088 he was appointed Pope Urban II. It is none other than Eudes de Chatillon who was Bruno's pupil in Reims and who immediately wants him next to her. The latter has lived happily in the hermitage of Chartreuse for the past six years but cannot oppose the will of the Holy Father. In the meantime, however, Henry IV, a centuries-old enemy of the Pope, arrives at the gates of Rome. Urban II is forced to flee with Bruno. After wandering around southern Italy found shelter, in 1090 in Calabria, hosted by the Normans, who had recently conquered those areas.
Although the land that hosts them is torn apart by wars, it is already the site of a flourishing monastic life of Byzantine extraction. Urban II offers Bruno the Bishopric of Reggio Calabria but the latter refuses, asking the Pontiff to be able to return to the contemplative life. The Pope accepts as long as the place chosen for this purpose is in Calabria. The valley called Santa Maria della Torre, 850 meters high, proves to be wooded and deserted without being inhospitable, just like Chartreuse. He accepts the offer of Count Roger who makes him a gift of those lands and begins to build the new Certosa, which will take the name of Santa Maria della Torre and will be consecrated by the bishop of Reggio Calabria in 1094. Ruggero I of Calabria and Sicily is also present at the solemn moment and for the occasion expands his donations to Bruno including plots in Stilo and farmhouses in Bivongi and Arunco (today's Montepaone).
The first houses of Serra
Workers were assigned to Bruno for the construction of the Hermitage. He made sure that those who were not married could live in the vicinity of the building, effectively separating them from the others who, therefore, built their homes at a greater distance. Thus was born the first nucleus of the inhabited center of Serra. In the meantime, the credit line Lanuino joins Bruno in the newborn Serra and helps him in the management and management of the community. The bond between the two was so strong that many letters (even at the pontifical level) addressed "to Bruno and Lauino".
Bruno, founder of the Carthusian order, died on 6 October 1101 and was buried in the small cemetery of Santa Maria della Torre. His place is taken as it was natural that it was, by Lanuino who continues to lead the monastic community strictly adhering to what were the dictates indicated by his teacher. On the death of the latter, which occurred in 1116, the monastery slowly took the path of decline, so much so that from 1192 to 1411 there was a transition with passage from the Carthusian order to the Cistercian order. However, there is no documented information about this period, since historians believe it is probable that once the monastic church was inherited other construction works were carried out (for example the dormitory and the dispensary). Between 1411 and the beginning of 1500 the news received are those relating to the neglect to which the monastery is abandoned despite the succession of 11 abbots in its management.
The cult of San Bruno
In 1514, Leo X, following the discovery, in the church of Santa Maria del Bosco, of the bodies of Bruno and Lanuino, authorized the Carthusian monks to worship their founding father. The Cistercians thus returned the Charterhouse to the Pope who gave it back to the founders. In 1623 the Pope Gregory XV extended the cult of San Bruno to the whole church by establishing that it should be celebrated on 6 October.
During the 600s the great walls and the ancient church were built. Unfortunately, on February 7, 1783 a devastating earthquake of the ninth degree of the Mercalli scale, in addition to sowing panic and causing over 40.000 victims, it destroyed all the ancient buildings, leaving only the facade of the ancient church and two sides of the 600th century cloister standing. Obviously, the devastating earthquake, in addition to destroy the Charterhouse, it caused the loss of precious and very important historical and archival material. The Carthusians fell into misery and, unable to rebuild from the rubble in a short time, they suffered French oppression. In 1808 the Charterhouse was in fact suppressed by a decree of Giuseppe Bonaparte. The Carthusians took possession of it again in 1856, starting the reconstruction works of the whole convent complex. They also built the new church, based on a project by the architect Pichat. They consecrated the new church on November 13, 1900 by the hand of the Bishop of the time Monsignor Giuseppe Barillari.
The Carthusians and Hiroshima
Since then, many works have been carried out to restore the complex to its ancient splendor. Over the years, there are also many legends that have developed around this beautiful hermitage that hosts very few monks, led by a prior, who have decided to dedicate their lives to asceticism and meditation. Impossible to think of anything else considering that the only meal eaten jointly is that of Sunday and that they leave the Charterhouse with the same frequency for a walk that lasts a maximum of three hours and during which it is not allowed to exchange words with strangers. A life that is paradoxically subversive, where time loses its time, as if to seek the boundary between the visible and the invisible.
And it is precisely this intentional isolation that has fueled, over the years, the more suggestive legends. Like the one who wanted one of the pilots of Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, locked inside the convent walls. Voice that comes from a report by Enzo Biagi in 1962 that told of a Carthusian friar from Illinois, Father Anthony, former sergeant major in the US army. He was mistakenly mistaken for the atomic pilot. In reality, his decision to take vows has to do with Hiroshima but only because the soldier, visiting the city, was so deeply shocked that he decided to retire to a convent. This rumor brought so many onlookers to the Certosa that the friars were forced to put a sign on the front door that denied the presence of Enola Gay pilots.
From Maiorana to Milingo
But the aura of mystery and legend certainly does not end here. In 1975 also arrived in Certosa Leonardo Sciascia. The writer from Agrigento imagined that he would even find Ettore Majorana, the Sicilian physicist who died in 1938, inside the monastery.
A Sciascia was fascinated by the idea that the scientist who had contributed to the atomic fission and one of the pilots who had dropped the first bomb were, repentant, in the same place. Another excellent disappearance brought attention back to the monks of Serra San Bruno and is that relating to theeconomist Federico Caffè.
Again only rumors and nothing else. Recently, there was also talk of the arrival in the monastery of Emmanuel Milingo, the controversial African bishop dismissed from the Vatican after his marriage to a Korean woman. In short, the silence (of the cloisters one would say, paraphrasing the title of a Bartlett novel), the peace and the asceticism that can be found in this place always come to the surface when a more or less illustrious character vanishes in the nothing. As a sort of metaphor for the place, so difficult to reach but ready and welcoming, protective. With its high walls and solitary silences it seems to mean to all the troubled souls that inside there, perhaps, it is possible to find oneself.
