Editing Romuald

{{Short description|Founder of the Camaldolese order}}
{{other uses}}
{{Redirect|Saint Romuald|the community|Saint-Romuald, Quebec}}
{{Infobox saint
|honorific_prefix = [[Saint]]
|name= Romuald
|birth_date=c. 951
|death_date=19 June 1027
|feast_day=  <br> '''Eastern Orthodox Church:''' 7 February<ref> https://www.orthodoxwest.com/kalendar </ref>   <br> [[General Roman Calendar of 1960|General Roman Calendar of 1960]]: 7 February<ref> https://1962ordo.today/day/st-romuald-2-3-2-2/ </ref> <br >'''Catholic Church:''' 19 June<ref> https://www.vaticannews.va/en/saints/06/19.html </ref>
|venerated_in=[[Catholic Church]]<br />[[Eastern Orthodox Church]]
|image=Saint Romuald.JPG
|imagesize= 266px
|caption= 
|birth_place=[[Ravenna]]
|death_place=[[Val di Castro]]
|titles=Abbot 
|beatified_date=  
|beatified_place=
|beatified_by=
|canonized_date=
|canonized_place=
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|attributes=
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|major_shrine= 
|suppressed_date=
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}}
'''Romuald''' ({{langx|la|Romualdus}}; {{circa|lk=no}} 951 &ndash; traditionally 19 June, c. 1025/27 AD)<ref>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.</ref> was the founder of the [[Camaldolese]] order and a major figure in the eleventh-century "Renaissance of [[hermit|eremitical]] [[asceticism]]".<ref name=Howe>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.</ref> Romuald spent about 30 years traversing Italy, founding and reforming monasteries and hermitages.

==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).]]

==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 [[Order of Saint Benedict|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.''<ref name=cna>[https://web.archive.org/web/20090620073329/http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/saint.php?n=510 "St. Romuald", Catholic News Agency]</ref>
                                 
''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.''<ref name=cna/>

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."<ref>[http://www.ewtn.com/library/MARY/romuald.HTM Ruppi, Cosmo Francesco. "A 'Burning Bush' and 'Father' of Spiritual Wisdom", ''L'Osservatore Romano'', Weekly Edition in English, 25 January 2006, p. 4]</ref>

Romuald's reforms provided a structural context to accommodate both the eremitic and cenobitic aspects of monastic life.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=wwSQBAAAQBAJ&dq=saint+romuald&pg=PA25 McNary-Zak, Bernadette. ''Seeking in Solitude'', Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014] {{ISBN|9781606089699}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Catholic Church in Italy]]
*[[List of Catholic saints]]
*[[Portal:Catholic Church/Patron Archive/June 19|Saint Romuald, patron saint archive]]
* [[List of Eastern Orthodox saints|List of Eastern Orthodox saints]]

==Notes==
{{reflist|2}}

==External links==
* [http://www.bartleby.com/210/2/071.html Butler, Alban. "St. Romuald, Abbot and Confessor", ''Lives of the Saints'', Vol. II, 1866]
* [http://www.stpetersbasilica.info/Exterior/Colonnades/Saints/St%20Romuald-132/StRomuald.htm Colonnade Statue in St Peter's Square]

{{commons category|Saint Romuald}}

{{Portalbar|Saints}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Romuald}}
[[Category:950s births]]
[[Category:1027 deaths]]
[[Category:10th-century Christian mystics]]
[[Category:11th-century Christian mystics]]
[[Category:People from Ravenna]]
[[Category:Italian saints]]
[[Category:Italian Benedictines]]
[[Category:Benedictine abbots]]
[[Category:Benedictine mystics]]
[[Category:Benedictine saints]]
[[Category:Camaldolese saints]]
[[Category:10th-century Christian saints]]
[[Category:11th-century Christian saints]]
[[Category:Incorrupt saints]]
[[Category:11th-century Christian abbots]]