Editing Romuald (section)

==Life==
According to the ''[[Biography|vita]]'' by [[Peter Damian]],<ref>Peter's ''Vita Beati Romualdi'' was edited by Giovanni Tabacco in the series ''Fonti per la storia d'Italia'' (Rome) 1957.</ref> written about fifteen years after Romuald's death,<ref name=Howe/> Romuald was born in [[Ravenna]], in northeastern Italy, to the aristocratic Onesti family. His father was Sergius degli Onesti and his mother was Traversara [[Traversari]]. As a youth, according to early accounts, Romuald indulged in the pleasures and sins of the world common to a tenth-century nobleman. At the age of twenty he served as second to his father, who killed a relative in a duel over property. Romuald was devastated, and went to the [[Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe]] to do 40 days of penance.<ref name=foley>[http://www.americancatholic.org/Features/Saints/saint.aspx?id=1419 Foley O.F.M., Leonard. "St. Romuald", ''Saint of the Day, Lives, Lessons and Feast'', (revised by Pat McCloskey O.F.M.), Franciscan Media]</ref> After some indecision, Romuald became a monk there. San Apollinare had recently been reformed by [[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.<ref name=toke>[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13179b.htm Toke, Leslie. "St. Romuald." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. 11 October 2014]</ref>

[[File:Angelico, san romulado dalla pala di san marco, Minneapolis.jpg|thumb|upright|left|''San Romualdo'', from the [[San Marco, Florence|San Marco]] altarpiece by [[Fra Angelico]] ([[Minneapolis Institute of Arts]])]]
About 978, [[Pietro I Orseolo]], [[Doge of Venice]], who had obtained his office by acquiescence in the murder of his predecessor, began to suffer remorse for his crime. On the advice of Guarinus, Abbot of [[Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa]], in [[Catalonia]], and of Marinus and Romuald, he abandoned his office and relations, and fled to Cuxa, where he took the habit of [[Order of Saint Benedict|St. Benedict]], while Romuald and Marinus erected a hermitage close to the monastery.<ref name=toke/> Romuald lived there for about ten years, taking advantage of the library of Cuxa to refine his ideas regarding monasticism.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=BhyOAQAAQBAJ&dq=Romuald&pg=PA578 Turley, Thomas. "Romuald of Ravenna, Saint", ''Key Figures in Medieval Europe'', (Richard K. Emmerson, ed.), Routledge, 2013] {{ISBN|9781136775192}}</ref>

After that he spent the next 30 years going about Italy, founding and reforming monasteries and hermitages.<ref name=foley/> His reputation being known to advisors of the [[Holy Roman Emperor]] [[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 [[Roman Catholic Diocese of Arezzo-Cortona-Sansepolcro|Diocese of Arezzo]]. Here, according to the legend, a certain Maldolus, who had seen a vision of monks in white garments ascending into Heaven, gave him some land, afterwards known as the Campus Maldoli, or [[Camaldoli]]. St. Romuald built on this land five cells for hermits, which, with the monastery at Fontebuono, built two years later, became the famous mother-house of the Camaldolese Order.<ref name=toke/> Romuald's daunting charisma awed [[Rainier of Tuscany]], who was neither able to face Romuald nor to send him away.<ref>Peter Damian's ''Vita'', quoted in Howe 1983:106.</ref> 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 [[Mysterii Paschalis|1969]] it was moved back to the day of his death.<ref>''Calendarium Romanum'' (Libreria Editrice Vaticana) 1969, p. 95</ref>
[[Image:Guercino san Romualdo.jpg|thumb|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).]]