Romuald

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For other uses, see Romuald (disambiguation).
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Roman Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church
Feast19 June
Orthodox Church 7 February

Romuald (

Latin: Romualdus; c. 951 – traditionally 19 June, c. 1025/27 AD)[1] was the founder of the Camaldolese order and a major figure in the eleventh-century "Renaissance of eremitical asceticism".[2]
Romuald spent about 30 years traversing Italy, founding and reforming monasteries and hermitages.

Life

According to the

St. Mayeul of Cluny Abbey, but still was not strict enough in its observance to satisfy Romuald. His injudicious correction of the less zealous aroused such enmity against him that he applied for, and was readily granted, permission to retire to Venice, where he placed himself under the direction of a hermit named Marinus and lived a life of extraordinary severity.[5]

Minneapolis Institute of Arts
)

About 978,

St. Benedict, while Romuald and Marinus erected a hermitage close to the monastery.[5] Romuald lived there for about ten years, taking advantage of the library of Cuxa to refine his ideas regarding monasticism.[6]

After that he spent the next 30 years going about Italy, founding and reforming monasteries and hermitages.

Otto III
, Romuald was persuaded by him to take the vacant office of abbot at Sant'Apollinare to help bring about a more dedicated way of life there. The monks, however, resisted his reforms, and after a year, Romuald resigned, hurling his abbot's staff at Otto's feet in total frustration. He then again withdrew to the eremitical life.

In 1012, he arrived at the

Rainier of Tuscany, who was neither able to face Romuald nor to send him away.[7]
Romuald founded several other monasteries, including the monastery of Val di Castro, where he died in 1027.

Romuald's feast day was not included in the Tridentine calendar. It was added in 1594 for celebration on 19 June, the date of his death, but in the following year it was transferred by Pope Clement VIII to 7 February, the anniversary of the transfer of his relics to Fabriano in 1481, and in 1969 it was moved back to the day of his death.[8]

In San Romualdo, painted for the Church of San Romualdo, Ravenna, by Guercino, 1641, an angel uses the abbot's baton to chastise an errant figure (Pinatoceca Comunale, Ravenna).

St. Romuald's Rule

In his youth Romuald became acquainted with 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 and solitary lifestyle, which was originally of Irish eremitic origins. The abbot of Sant Miguel de Cuxa, Guarinus, had also begun reforms but mainly built upon a third Christian tradition, that of the Iberian Peninsula. 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 also reflected in the nearly contemporary Byzantine ascetic practice known as Hesychasm
.

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.[9]

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.[9]

Archbishop Cosmo Francesco Ruppi noted that, "Interiorization of the spiritual dimension, the primacy of solitude and contemplation, slow penetration of the Word of God and calm meditation on the Psalms are the pillars of Camaldolese spirituality, which St. Romuald gives as the essential core of his Rule."[10]

Romuald's reforms provided a structural context to accommodate both the eremitic and cenobitic aspects of monastic life.[11]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ The traditional year of his death, given as 1027, rests entirely on testimony by Guido Grandi (died 1742), a hagiographical forger, who stated that he had seen the date in documents: see Tabacco 1942, preface:liv.
  2. ^ a b 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.
  3. ^ Peter's Vita Beati Romualdi was edited by Giovanni Tabacco in the series Fonti per la storia d'Italia (Rome) 1957.
  4. ^ a b Foley O.F.M., Leonard. "St. Romuald", Saint of the Day, Lives, Lessons and Feast, (revised by Pat McCloskey O.F.M.), Franciscan Media
  5. ^ a b c Toke, Leslie. "St. Romuald." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 11 October 2014
  6. ISBN 9781136775192
  7. ^ Peter Damian's Vita, quoted in Howe 1983:106.
  8. ^ Calendarium Romanum (Libreria Editrice Vaticana) 1969, p. 95
  9. ^ a b "St. Romuald", Catholic News Agency
  10. ^ Ruppi, Cosmo Francesco. "A 'Burning Bush' and 'Father' of Spiritual Wisdom", L'Osservatore Romano, Weekly Edition in English, 25 January 2006, p. 4
  11. ISBN 9781606089699

External links
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