St Romuald of Ravenna: (950-1027) founder of the Camaldolese monks
Early life
Romuald was born into a noble family
and seems to have lived a rather dissolute life until he saw his own
father kill a relative in a dispute over property.
He then entered the
Benedictine monastery of the Cluniac reform at Sant'Apollinare-in-Classe
near Ravenna and after studying the Desert Fathers he proposed a more
austere way of life for the monks.
Although not all were in agreement
with him he was elected abbot, and his correction of less zealous monks
was not always welcomed. So he himself soon left the monastery. He put
himself under the direction of a hermit near Venice.
From there he moved
on to set up hermitages in different places in northern Italy and
southern France.
Some of his foundations
In 1005 Romuald went to
Val-di-Castro, tried to go to Hungary, was unable to do so because of
illness. He also made a made a foundation at Vallombrosa.
The most
famous of his foundations were at Fonte Avellana in the Apennines and
Camaldoli in Tuscany which after his death developed into a separate
congregation.
A combination of monastery and hermitage
At
Camaldoli the monastery was arranged like the foundations in the
Egyptian desert: at first it was a collection of hermits' huts in which
the monks lived alone except when they came together for the liturgy and
for some meals.
The huts were built of stone and each had a chapel and a
garden for growing subsistence food.
Later a few miles away he erected
another building so that the monks could choose to live either a
communal or a solitary way of life.
The hermit life
Romuald's contribution to
monasticism was to provide for living the hermit life. This had been
esteemed but rejected by Benedict, the framework of whose rule was
strongly communitarian.
Romuald's ideas afterwards influenced Bruno who
in 1084 founded his own Carthusian Order in the woods of La Chartreuse
near Grenoble in France.
Death and influence
After much wandering, Romuald died alone in his cell at Val-di Castro.
The Camaldolese monks still exist as a small independent order of
Benedictines and continue the way of life Romuald began.
There are
Camaldolese monasteries and hermitages in Italy, Poland, France, India,
Brazil and the USA.