ROMUALD, Saint. — Founder of the Camaldolese Benedictines (see), born in Ravenna c. 952, died in the hermitage built next to the monastery of Val di Castro (Fabriano) on 19 June 1027. At the age of twenty he abandoned the world to become a Benedictine at S. Apollinare in Classe (Ravenna). After three years of community life he asked and obtained to become a hermit with a certain Marino, among the hills of Veneto.
Soon afterwards, in the company of his abbot, the Doge of Venice Peter Orseolo and many other companions, R. fled to the distant monastery of Cuxá in Spain. Returning to his homeland about ten years later to confirm his elderly father in the religious vocation, having become a monk at S. Severo after having ruled Ravenna as duke, upon the latter’s death, through the intervention of Emperor Otto III, he was elected (998) abbot of S. Apollinare in Classe. The following year he abandoned this dignity and wandered to Montecassino and then to Rome, taking up again with greater zeal the monastic reform and the founding of new monasteries and hermitages in Italy. In Romagna he built the monastery of Verghereto, then a second one near Rome; in 1001 at Ravenna the hermitage of Pereo; then those of S. Michele di Lemmo, of Valdicastro and of S. Elena in the Cassinese area. Most famous among those in Umbria, Tuscany and the Marches are the hermitage of Vallombrosa and above all that of Camaldoli (see), founded in 1012 under the eponymous Congregation, notable for the white habit worn.
Not long afterwards, having been cleared of a wicked accusation, for which he had even suffered imprisonment in his monastery of Sitria, he was summoned by Henry II to direct the Sienese convent of S. Salvatore. There he built beside it the hermitage of Il Vivo; further away that of Vallebona. In 1015 R. began the monastery of Fonte Buona. Feast: 7 Feb., the day of the translation of his body to Fabriano (1481).