St. Romuald

Their story

Romuald was born around 951 into a noble family in Ravenna, Italy, and spent his youth enjoying the pleasures of wealth. When he was about twenty, he watched his father kill a relative in a duel over property. Horrified, Romuald went to the monastery of Sant'Apollinare in Classe to do forty days of penance for his father's sin. While there he felt God calling him, and he stayed and became a monk. Romuald found the monastery too lax, and his strictness made him unpopular with the other monks. He left to live as a hermit under the guidance of a holy old man, learning a life of silence, prayer and hard work. For the next thirty years he traveled through Italy, reforming monasteries and founding hermitages where men could seek God in solitude. The most famous of these was at Camaldoli, in the mountains of Tuscany, where he brought together the life of the hermit and the life of the monastic community. His followers became known as the Camaldolese Benedictines. Romuald left a short rule for his monks. It begins: "Sit in your cell as in paradise." He taught them to watch their thoughts the way a good fisherman watches for fish, to pray the psalms with attention and to wait on God in humility. He died alone in his cell on June 19, 1027, as he had always hoped.