Romuald
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| Saint Romuald | |
|---|---|
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| Abbot | |
| Born | c. 951, Ravenna |
| Died | 19 June 1027, Val di Castro |
| Venerated in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Feast | 19 June 7 February (General Roman Calendar of 1962) |
 Saints Portal |
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Saint Romuald (c. 951– traditionally 19 June, c. 1025/27)[1] was the founder of the Camaldolese order and a major figure in the eleventh-century "renaissance of eremitical aesceticism".[2]
According to the vita by Peter Damian,[3] written about fifteen years after Romuald's death,[4] Romuald was born in Ravenna to the aristocratic Onesti family. As a youth, according to early accounts, Romuald indulged in the pleasures and sins of the world common to a tenth-century nobleman. After watching his father, Sergius, kill an opponent in a duel, however, the 20-year old Romuald was devastated, and fled to the Abbey of Sant'Apollinare in Classe. After some indecision, Romuald became a monk there. Led by a desire for a stricter way of life than he found in that community, three years later he withdrew to become a hermit on a remote island in the region, accompanied solely by an older monk, Marinus.
Apparently having gained a reputation for holiness, the Doge Pietro Orseolo of Venice accepted his advice to become a monk, abdicating his office, and fleeing in the night to Catalonia to take the monastic habit. Romuald and his companion, Marinus, accompanied him there, establishing a hermitage near the Abbey of Sant Miguel de Cuxa which Orseolo entered.
In his youth Romuald became acquainted with the three major schools of western monastic tradition. Sant' Apollinare in Classe was a traditional Benedictine monastery under the influence of the Cluniac reforms. Marinus followed a much harsher, ascetic hermit lifestyle that was originally of Irish eremitic origins. The abbot of Sant Miguel de Cuxa, Guarinus, also began reforms but mainly built upon the Christian tradition of Hispania. Romuald was able to integrate these different traditions and establish his own monastic order. The admonition in his rule Empty yourself completely and sit waiting places him in relation to the long Christian history of intellectual stillness and interior passivity in meditation or quietism.
A friend of the Emperor Otto III, Romuald was persuaded by him to take the office of abbot of an ancient monastery to help bring about a more dedicated way of life there. The monks, however, resisted his reforms, eventually causing Romuald to resign his office, hurling his abbot's staff at Otto's feet in total frustation. He then again withdrew to the hermitic life. He was drawn, though, throughout his life to help in the establishment of monasteries and hermitages throughout Italy. The most prominent of these are the hermitages of Fonte Avellana (around 1012) and Camaldoli (around 1023), both located in Tuscany, where Romuald's daunting charisma awed Rainerius, marquis of Tuscany, who was neither able to face Romuald nor to send him away.[5] Romauld founded several other monasteries, including the monastery of Val di Castro, where he died in 1027.
Romuald's feast day is on 19 June, the date of his death, his birth to heaven (see Roman Catholic calendar of saints). It was not included in the Tridentine Calendar. When added later, it was celebrated on 7 February, the anniversary of the transfer of his relics by Pope Clement VIII in 1595. Traditional Catholics continue to celebrate it on that date, as in the General Roman Calendar of 1962.
[edit] St. Romuald's Brief Rule For Camaldolese Monks
Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it.
If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind.
And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.
Realize above all that you are in God's presence, and stand there with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.
Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.
[edit] Notes
- ^ The traditional year of his death, given as 1027, rests entirely on testimony by Guido Grandi (died 1742), a hagiographical forger, that he had seen the date in documents: see Tabacco 1942, preface:liv.
- ^ John Howe, "The Awesome Hermit: The Symbolic Significance of the Hermit as a Possible Research Perspective", Numen 30.1 (July 1983:106-119) p 106, noting Ernst Werner, Pauperi Christi: Studien zu socialreligiosen Bewegungen in Zeitalter des ersten Kreuzzuges (Leipzig) 1956; Howe also notes the contemporary examples of Peter the Hermit, leader of a crusade; Norbert of Xanten, founder of the Praemostratensians, and Henry of Lausanne, declared a heretic; and Eilbert of Crespin, besieged by the faithful in his hermitage.
- ^ Peter's Vita Beati Romualdi was edited by Giovanni Tabacco in the series Fonti per la storia d'Italia (Rome) 1957.
- ^ Howe 1983:106.
- ^ Peter's Vita, quoted in Howe 1983:106.
