Carthusian Order Takes Shape in the French Alps

1084

In the harsh mountain valley of Chartreuse, Bruno of Cologne and six companions had retreated to lives of extraordinary austerity - silence, solitude, and manual labor in individual cells. The community they founded would become the Carthusian order, the most austere in Western monasticism. Their motto, 'Never reformed because never deformed,' would hold true across centuries: alone among medieval orders, the Carthusians never required reform because they never relaxed their original severity.