A THOUSAND YEARS AT THE CUTTING EDGE

Girolamo Marchesi, St Bruno

Today is the Feast of St Bruno (ca. 1030 - 1101), the founder of the Carthusian Order, the most complete of the contemplative communities. The Carthusians are hermits living in community; the order has never been reformed because it has never needed reformation. Books they publish are signed not with an author's name or even a monastic pseudonym but "A Carthusian". Bruno may be the only saint never officially canonised because a Carthusian would never accept such an individualising honour. The original monastery, which in an expanded form still exists, is in one of the world's more beautiful places, the valley of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps:

The Grande Chartreuse, the mother house of the Order

When a German film director Peter Gröning, asked if he could make a documentary of their life, he was told, "No, we're not quite ready. Come back in 15 years." Fifteen years later, he asked again, and was given permission as long as he came by himself with only a handheld camera. The result was the stunning Into Great Silence, of which the New York Times film critic said, "I would not call it the best film of the year: rather, the antidote to all the others." It is a film of surpassing beauty, in both the aesthetic and the spiritual sense. 

Carthusians live completely apart from the world and do not admit visitors, which is sometimes frustrating for those in the world who are attracted by them. But one can read their writings, some of which are published by Gracewing, including the superb The Wound of Love; and there are international virtual communities of Carthusian-inspired lay people, such as the International Fellowship of St Bruno (IFSB) and, more recently and most interestingly, Quies.

There are male and female Carthusian communities; they are divided into full religious (in the male communities Fathers, usually priests), who spend their entire life in contemplation, prayer and study, and Brothers (or Sisters), who perform the community's practical maintenance but share in the liturgical and prayer life. And one of the few activities which touch the world is the making of Chartreuse liqueur, flavoured with herbs, a drink of extraordinary depth and subtlety. 

The Carthusians are those who have gone all the way. They have given up everything to live close to God. One Carthusian wrote, "How does a Carthusian die? Very simply. You go to sleep, as on any night; you wake up somewhere else." It is, as T.S. Eliot wrote, "A condition of complete simplicity / Costing not less than everything." They are well worth getting to know.

A Carthusian praying in cell - from Into Great Silence

UNSENTIMENTAL AND ABSOLUTE

The feast of St Bruno is particularly interesting. This ecclesiastical administrator from Cologne who went from Rheims to the Alps and founded the Grande Chartreuse was one of those admirable people, so unlike most of us, who went all the way, but also created a structure (and what a structure!) in which later people inspired by his example could go all the way too. The idea of combining the hermitage – which had worked for the Desert Fathers but may not have left much in the way of locusts and wild honey for their successors – with the monastery, where essential tasks could be shared and in part performed by Brothers, was a brilliant one, and still works today. The Charterhouses and their inhabitants, the Carthusians, are a magnificent example of pure spirituality. They have never been reformed (unlike the Cistercians, the Franciscans, and other orders) because they have never needed reform.

‘But what do they do?’ They pray. They also read, and study, and chop firewood, but essentially they pray. Their job, their function, is to pray for the world. To most of us today this probably seems either a cop-out or arcane beyond belief; but if you take prayer seriously, then they are the cutting edge. What’s more, there is a secondary benefit to what they are and do: to be visible, if only just, to the rest of us as an inspiration. I remember, when I first read one of their books, The Wound of Love, thinking ‘I’ve been part of this faith, off and on, most of my life, but these guys make me feel the way Reinhold Messner makes a weekend limestone-climber feel. Or Roger Federer a member of the local country club.’ Even having read some medieval and Renaissance mystics, I simply wasn’t prepared for the sheer – what would one call it? the French word envergure comes to mind: wing-span, range, sweep – of these minds and souls, writing in our own time.

A Carthusian, when he takes his final vows, dies to the world. All religious do this to some extant, but the Carthusian goes further. If one of them publishes a book -- and some do, to the great joy of many of us – it is not signed ‘Joseph Winnicott’ or even ‘Brother James’, but ‘a Carthusian’. I do not know if they still maintain the tradition of having the bottom plank of their bed become the base of their coffin when they die, but there is no reason why it shouldn’t be so, and it fits perfectly into the Carthusian life.

At the same time, they seem a remarkably cheerful lot. Within the monastery, each has a little house, with a main floor where he eats, sleeps, and prays; and a basement where he stocks and prepares wood for his wood-stove and stocks other needments. Often it also has a postage-stamp garden. The monks meet for services and certain meals, and once a week go for a walk of several hours in the countryside.

In 1984, German director Philipp Gröning proposed to the Carthusians of the Grande Chartreuse that he make a film about them. They thought about it, then answered that they weren’t ready for that. ‘Come back in 15 years,’ they said. So, fifteen years later, he came back, and this time they said Yes. But no crew, no intrusive equipment: just Gröning with a handheld camera. So he lived there for six months in 2002 and 2003, filming quietly with no artificial lighting, then spent two years editing the film. The result, Into Great Silence, is stupendous and wholly surprising. No music, no tricks, just a record of the daily lives of these quiet, good-humoured absolutists.

In celebrating St Bruno, let us celebrate also the ones who follow his lead a thousand years later, and who still go all the way, into great silence, to inspire us and pray for us.