ROMUALD, Saint. - Founder of the Camaldolese Benedictines (v.), b. at Ravenna ca. 952, d. 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 common life he asked and obtained permission to become a hermit with a certain Marino, among the hills of the Veneto.
Then, in the company of his own abbot, of the doge of Venice Pietro Orseolo and of numerous other companions, R. fled shortly afterwards to the distant cenobium of Cuxà in Spain. Having returned to his homeland ca. 10 years later to confirm in the religious vocation his aged parent, who had become a monk at S. Severo after having ruled at Ravenna as duke, R., upon the latter's death, through the good offices of the emperor Otto III, was elected (998) abbot of S. Apollinare in Classe. Having abandoned that dignity the following year, R. journeyed to Montecassino and then, resuming with greater ardour the monastic reform and the founding of new Italian monasteries and hermitages. In Romagna he erected the cenobium 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 territory. Very famous among those of the Umbrian, Tuscan and Marche lands were the hermitage of Vallombrosa, and above all that of Camaldoli (v.), founded in 1012 under the Congregation of the same name, distinctive for the white habit worn.
Not long after, having been recognized as innocent of a wicked accusation, for which he also suffered imprisonment in his monastery of Sitria, he was summoned by Henry II to direct the Sienese convent of S. Salvatore. R. erected next to it the hermitage of Vivo; farther off that of Vallebona. In 1015 R. began the monastery of Fonte Buona. Feast 7 February, the day of the translation of his body to Fabriano (1481).
Bibliography7 works
Carlo Callovini