Vallombrosians
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The Vallombrosians are a Roman Catholic order of monks under the Benedictine rule, founded by St. John Gualbert in 1038.
He was son of a Florentine nobleman, and became first a Benedictine and then a Camaldolese. Finally, about 1030, he withdrew to Vallombrosa, a shady dale on the side of a mountain in the Apennines, 10 miles from Florence, and for some years led a completely solitary life. Disciples, however, gathered around him, and he formed them into an order in which the cenobitical and the eremitical lives should be combined.
The monks lived in a monastery, not in separate huts like the Camaldolese, and the Benedictine rule was the basis of the life; but the contemplative side was strongly emphasized, and every element of Benedictine life was eliminated that could be supposed to interrupt the attention of the mind to God, even manual labour.
The Vallombrosians spread in Italy and France, but they never had more than sixty houses. In 1911 they had three, with some sixty monks in all. The habit was originally grey, but it became black; and the life also has been assimilated to that of the Benedictines. There were some convents of Vallombrosian nuns.
The Vallombrosians form a congregation of the Benedictine Confederation
[edit] References
- Helyot, 1718. Histoire des Ordres religieux, v. cc. 28, 29
- Heimbucher, Max, 1907. Orden und Kongregationen, I.44.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
