CAMALDOLI. — A celebrated hermitage situated almost at the summit of the Tuscan-Romagnol Apennines, at 1,111 m above sea level. Its name derives from Campus amabilis and Campus Malduli. Maldolo owned the Casentino mountain ridge, which he donated to s. Romualdo in 1012 after a vision of a ladder by which white-clad monks ascended, resting precisely at the place where the sacred Camaldolese hermitage stands, as the ancient rules written ca. 1085 relate.
The construction is distinctive for the dwellings of the individual religious, separated from one another by a small garden; these later served as models for the future charterhouse of S. Bruno and for the other Camaldolese hermitages. The church was consecrated in 1027 in the Romanesque style, rebuilt almost ex-novo in 1220, and transformed into the Baroque style, as it appears today, in 1658. It contains a marble bas-relief by Mino da Poppi, two tabernacles by Guido da Settignano, a terracotta by Andrea Della Robbia, a carved walnut papal throne, and a canvas by Augusto Mussini. The library and archive, once exceedingly rich, were destroyed by the Napoleonic and Italian suppressions.
The life led there has always been very austere. Almost continuous prayer, silence, fasting, and penance have for more than nine centuries continually drawn up there chosen souls who have borne living witness to Jesus Christ by reliving his mysteries, with no other desire in this world.
The hermitage, long traditionally called by the epithet «sacred», is the mother house of the Camaldolese Congregation. Popes and emperors enriched it with privileges and donations. Among the former, Alexander II, Paschal II, Gregory IX, Eugene IV, and Leo X distinguished themselves; among the latter, Otto IV, Lothair III, Frederick I, Henry VI, Frederick II, Charles IV, and Sigismund. The Republic of Florence took it under its protection in 1382 and exempted it from taxes in 1446.
About three km lower down, in a hollow between the Muschioso (1,157 m) and the Coiozzo (1,301 m), lies the cenobium of Ponte Buono (816 m), so called for its very fresh and health-giving waters, before it appropriated the name of C., because of the supposed existence there of a «house of Maldolo». It was built, like the sacred hermitage, by the same s. Romualdo ca. 1015 as a hospice and guesthouse, in order to leave the hermits wholly devoted to the contemplative life; it was later organized as a genuine cenobium and called the archicenobium of C.
The large building comprises: at the center, the church, a sixteenth-century construction remodeled in the eighteenth century and decorated inside with works by G. Vasari; on the south side extends the building currently used for spiritual retreats for the clergy and the Catholic laity; on the north side are the residence of the religious, the refectory with the large canvas by il Pomarancio, and the cloister.
From 1520 the cenobium had its own printing press, and from 1543 a pharmacy with an adjoining laboratory, rich in carved furniture, which even today boasts excellent products of liqueurs distilled from the herbs and resins of the centuries-old forest: elixir, laurus, lacrima d'abete, as well as medicinal products.
Since 1946, a well-equipped laboratory for the restoration of books has operated there: parchments, incunabula, manuscripts, and printed works.
It rendered distinguished service to letters through its academy (fifteenth century) and to social economy through the cultivation of the great forest, rightly called the queen of the Apennine forests; it never neglected works of charity, building and maintaining hospitals and assisting the common indigent in various ways. In the ancient Camaldolese rules — that is, those of all the monasteries dependent on C. — it was obligatory for every monastery to have a hospital with at least 30 free beds for the poor. But first the Napoleonic suppression, and then the Italian one, almost extinguished the vitality of that institution, which is now slowly recovering.
Since 1866 the buildings of the hermitage and the cenobium, together with the forest, have belonged to the state. — Vedi Tav. XXVII.