Bruno of Querfurt, also known as Brun and Boniface, was a Christian missionary bishop and martyr, who was beheaded near the border of Kievan Rus and Lithuania for trying to spread Christianity. He is also called the second "Apostle of the Prussians".
hoped to establish a monastery between the Elbe and the Oder to help convert the local population to Christianity and colonize the area. In 1001, two monks from his monastery traveled to Poland, while Bruno was with Otto in Italy, studying the language and awaiting the Apostolic appointment by Pope Sylvester II. In 1003 Pope Sylvester II appointed Bruno, at the age of 33, to head a mission amongst the pagan peoples of Eastern Europe. Bruno left Rome in 1004, and having been named an archbishop was consecrated in February of that year by Archbishop Tagino of Magdeburg. Owing to a regional conflict between the Holy Roman Emperor Henry II and Duke Boleslaus I of Poland, Bruno could not go directly to Poland so he set out for Hungary. There he went to the places that Adalbert of Prague had attended. Bruno tried to persuade Ahtum, the Duke of Banat, who was under jurisdiction of Patriarchate of Constantinople to accept the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, but this precipitated a large controversy leading to organized opposition from local monks. Bruno elected to gracefully exit the region after he first finished his book, the famous "Life of Adalbert of Prague," a literary memorial giving a history of the conversion of the Hungarians. After this diplomatic failure, Bruno went to Kiev, where Grand DukeVladimir I authorized him to make Christian converts among the Pechenegs, semi-nomadic Turkic peoples living between the Danube and the Don rivers. Bruno spent five months there and baptized some thirty adults. He helped to bring about a peace treaty between them and the ruler of Kiev. Before leaving for Poland, Bruno consecrated a bishop for the Pechenegs. While in Poland he consecrated the first Bishop of Sweden and is said to have sent emissaries to baptize the king of Sweden, whose mother had come from Poland. Bruno found out that his friend Benedict and four companions had been killed by robbers in 1003. Bruno took eyewitness accounts and wrote down a touching history of the so-called Five Martyred Brothers.
In the autumn or at the end of 1008 Bruno and eighteen companions set out to found a mission among the Old Prussians; they succeeded in converting Netimer and then traveled to the east, heading very likely towards Yotvingia. Yotvingia was a Prussian region, then subordinate to Kievan Rus, that intersected the borders of what was then Prussia, Kievan Rus and the Duchy of Lithuania. Bruno met opposition in his efforts to evangelize the borderland and that when he persisted in disregarding their warnings he was beheaded in 9 March 1009, and most of his eighteen companions were hanged by Zebeden, brother of Netimer. Duke Boleslaus the Brave bought the bodies and brought them to Poland. The Annals of Magdeburg, Thietmar of Merseburg's Chronicle, the Annals of Quedlinburg, various works of Magdeburg Bishops, and many other written sources of 11th–15th centuries record this story. Soon after his death, Bruno and his companions were venerated as martyrs and Bruno was soon after canonized. It was said that Braunsberg was named after Bruno.
