and state in the German realm. An ally of the king (as were almost all the bishops),
he was also Otto I’s brother. Right after he was invested as archbishop in 953, he
was appointed by Otto to be duke of Lotharingia. (On Map 4.6, this is the region that
encompassed both Lower and Upper Lotharingia.) His job was to put down a local
rebellion. Later Bruno’s biographer, Ruotger, strove mightily to justify Bruno’s role as
a warrior-bishop:
Some people ignorant of divine will may object: why did a bishop
assume public office and the dangers of war when he had undertaken
only the care of souls? If they understand any sane matter, the result
itself will easily satisfy them, when they see a great and very
unaccustomed (especially in their homelands) gift of peace spread far
and wide through this guardian and teacher of a faithful people.... Nor
was governing this world new or unusual for rectors of the holy Church,
previous examples of which, if someone needs them, are at hand.^13
Ruotger was right: there were other examples near at hand, for the German kings
found their most loyal administrators among their bishops. Consider, for example, the
bishop of Liège; he held the rights and exercised the duties of several counts, had his
own mints, and hunted and fished in a grand private forest granted to him in 1006.
Bruno was not only duke of Lotharingia, pastor of his flock at Cologne, and head
(as archbishop of Cologne) of the bishops of his duchy. He was also a serious
scholar. “There was nearly no type of liberal study in Greek or Latin,” wrote the
admiring Ruotger, “that escaped the vitality of his genius.”^14 Bruno’s interest in
learning was part of a larger movement. With wealth coming in from their eastern
tributaries, Italy, and the silver mines of Saxony (discovered in the time of Otto I),
the Ottonians presided over a brilliant intellectual and artistic efflorescence. As in the
Islamic world, much of this was dispersed; in Germany the centers of culture
included the royal court, the great cathedral schools, and women’s convents.
The most talented young men crowded the schools at episcopal courts at Trier,
Cologne, Magdeburg, Worms, and Hildesheim. Honing their Latin, they studied
classical authors such as Cicero and Horace as well as Scripture, while their episcopal
teachers wrote histories, saints’ lives, and works on canon law. One such was the
Decretum (1008/1012) by Burchard, bishop of Worms. This widely influential
collection—much like the compilations of hadith produced about a century before in
