St. Romuald,
Abbot, Monastic Founder and Reformer
(Venerated June 19th)
Somewhat adapted from the
Life by Fr. Alban Butler.
[Source: http://www.orthodox.co.uk/romuald.htm]
St. Romuald, of the family of the dukes of
Ravenna, called Honesti [Onesti], was born in that
city about the year 956. Being brought up in softness and the love of pleasures,
he grew every day more and more enslaved to his passions; yet he often made a
resolution of undertaking something remarkable for the honour of God. When he
went a hunting, if he found an agreeable solitary place in the woods, he would
stop in it to pray, and would cry out, " How happy were the ancient hermits, who
had such habitations ! With what tranquillity could they serve God, free from
the tumult of the world ! "
|
St. Romuald shown
in white Benedictine
(Camaldolese) robe. 1640-41 by Guercino
(1591, Cento - 1666, Bologna). Oil on canvas, 292 x 184 cm,
Pinacoteca Comunale, Ravenna |
His father, whose name was Sergius, a worldly
man, agreed to decide a dispute he had with a relation about an estate by a
duel. Romuald was shocked at this criminal design; but by threats of being
disinherited if he refused, was engaged by his father to be present as a
spectator: Sergius slew his adversary. Romuald, then twenty years of age, struck
with horror at the crime that had been perpetrated, though he had concurred in
it no further than by his presence, thought himself nonetheless obliged to
expiate it by a severe course of penance for forty days in the neighbouring
Benedietine monastery of Classis, within four miles of Ravenna.
He performed great austerities, and prayed and
wept almost without intermission. His compunction and fervour made all these
exercises seem easy anti sweet to him; and the young nobleman became every day
more and more penetrated with the fear and love of God The good example which he
saw, and the discourses of a pious lay-brother, who waited on him, concerning
eternity and the contempt of the world, wrought so powerfully upon him, that he
petitioned in full chapter to be admitted as a penitent to the religious habit.
After some demurs, through their apprehensions of his father's resentment, whose
next heir the saint was, his request was granted.
He passed seven years in this house in so great
fervour and austerity that his example became odious to certain tepid monks, who
could not bear such a continual reproach of their sloth. They were more
exasperated when his fervour prompted him to reprove their conduct, insomuch
that some of the most abandoned formed a design upon his life, the execution of
which he prevented by leaving that monastery with the abbot's consent, and
retiring into the neighbourhood of Venice, where he put himself under the
direction of Marinus, a holy hermit, who there led an austere ascetic life.
Under this master, Romuald made great progress in every virtue belonging to a
religious state of life.
Peter Urseoli was then doge of Venice. He had
been unjustly raised to that dignity two years before by a faction which had
assassinated his predecessor Peter Candiano; in which conspiracy he is said by
some to have been an accomplice: though this is denied by the best Venetian
historians. This murder, however, paved the way for his advancement to the
sovereignty, which the stings of his conscience would not suffer him quietly to
enjoy. This persuaded him to consult St. Guarinus, a holy abbot of Catalonia,
then at Venice, about what he was to do to be saved. He also sought the advice
of St. Marinus and St. Romuald. These three unanimously agreed in proposing a
monastic state, as affording the best opportunities for expiating his crimes.
Urseoli acquiesced, and, under pretence of joining with his family at their
villa, where he had ordered a great entertainment, set out privately with
Guarinus, Romuald, and John Gradenigo, a Venetian nobleman of singular piety,
and his son-in-law John Moresini, for St. Guarinus's monastery of St. Michael of
Cusan, in that part of Catalonia which was then subject to France. Here Urseoli
and Gradenigo made their monastic profession: Marinus and Romuald, leaving them
under the guidance of Guarinus, retired into a desert near Cusan, and there led
an eremitical life.
Many flocked to them, and Romuald being made
superior, first practiced himself what he taught others, joining rigorous fasts,
solitude, and continual prayer, with hard manual labour. He had an extraordinary
ardour for prayer, which he exceedingly recommended to his disciples, in whom he
could not bear to see the least sloth or tepidity with regard to the discharge
of this duty; saying, they had better recite one psalm with fervour, than a
hundred with less devotion. His own fasts and mortifications were extremely
rigorous, but he was more indulgent to others, and in particular to Urseoli, who
had exchanged his monastery for St. Romuald's desert, where he lived under his
direction, and persevering in his penitential state, made a most holy end, and
is honoured in Venice as a saint, with an office, on the 14th of January.
Romuald, in the beginning of his conversion and
retreat from the world, was molested with various temptations. The devil
sometimes directly solicited him to vice; at other times he represented to him
what he had forsaken, and that he had left it to ungrateful relations. He would
sometimes suggest that what he did could not be agreeable to God; at other
times, that his labours and difficulties were too heavy for man to bear. These
and the like attempts of the devil he defeated by watching and prayer, in which
he passed the whole night. and the devil strove in vain to divert him from this
holy exercise by shaking his whole cell, and threatening to bury him in the
ruins. Five years of grievous interior conflicts and buffetings of the enemy
wrought in him a great purity of heart, and prepared him for most extraordinary
heavenly communieations.
The conversion of Count Oliver, or Oliban, lord
of that territory, added to his spiritual joy. That count, from a voluptuous
worldling, and profligate liver, became a sincere penitent, and embraced the
order of St. Benedict. He carried great treasures with him to Mount Cassino,
though he left his estate to his son.
The example of Romuald had also such au influence
on Sergius, his father, that to make atonement for his past sins and enormities,
he had entered the monastery of St. Severus, near Ravenna; but after some time
spent there, he yielded so far to the devil's temptations, as to meditate a
return into the world. This was a sore affliction to our saint, and determined
him to return to Italy, to dissuade his father from leaving his monastery. But
the inhabitants of the country where he lived had such an opinion of his
sanctity, that they were resolved not to let him go. They therefore formed a
brutish extravagant design to kill him, that they might keep at least his body
among them, imagining it would be their protection and safeguard on perilous
occasions. The saint being informed of their design, had recourse to David’s
stratagem, and feigned himself mad, whereupon the people, losing their high
opinion of him, guarded him no longer. Being thus at liberty to execute his
design, he set out on his journey to Ravenna, through the south of France. He
arrived there in 994, and made use of all the authority his superiority in
religion gave him over his father; and by his exhortations, tears, and prayers,
brought him to such an extraordinary degree of compunction and sorrow, as to
prevail with him to lay aside all thoughts of leaving his monastery, where he
spent the remainder of his days in great fervour, and died with the reputation
of sanctity.
Romuald, having acquitted himself of his duty
towards his father, retired into the marsh of Classis, and lived in a cell,
remote from all mankind. The devil pursued him here with his former malice; he
sometimes overwhelmed his imagination with melancholy, and once scourged him
cruelly in his cell. Romuald at length cried out, " Sweetest Jesus, dearest
Jesus, why have you forsaken me? have you entirely delivered me over to my
enemies ? " At that sweet name the wicked spirits betook themselves to flight,
and such an excess of divine sweetness and compunction filled the breast of
Romuald, that he melted into tears, and his heart seemed quite dissolved.
He sometimes insulted his spiritual enemies, and
cried out, " Are all your forces spent ? have you no more engines against a poor
despicable servant of God?"
Not long after, the monks of Classis chose
Romuald for their abbot. The emperor Otto III, who was then at Ravenna, made use
of his authority to engage the saint to accept the charge, and went in person to
visit him in his cell, where he passed the night lying on the saint's poor bed.
But nothing could make Romuald consent, till a synod of bishops then assembled
at Ravenna, compelled him to it by threats of excommunication.
The saint's inflexible zeal for the exact
observance of monastic discipline, soon made the monks repent of their choice,
which they manifested by irregular and mutinous behaviour. The saint being of a
mild disposition, bore with it for some time, in hopes of bringing them to at
right sense of their duty. At length, finding all his endeavours to reform them
ineffectual, he resolved to leave them, and went to the emperor, then besieging
Tivoli, to acquaint him of it; whom, when he could not prevail upon to accept
his resignation, the saint, in the presence of the Archbishop of Ravenna, threw
down his pastoral staff at his feet.
This interview proved very happy for Tivoli; for
the emperor, though he had condemned that city to plunder, since the inhabitants
had rebelled and killed Duke Matholin, their governor, spared it at the
intercession of St. Romuald. Otho having also, contrary to his solemn promise
upon oath, put one Crescentius, a Roman senator to death, who had been the
leader in the rebellion of Tivoli, and made his widow his concubine, he not only
performed a severe public penance enjoined him by the saint, as his confessor,
but promised, by St. Romuald's advice, to abdicate his crown and retire into a
convent during life; but this he did not live to perform.
The saint's remonstrances had a like salutary
effect on Thamn, the emperor's favourite, prime-minister, and accomplice in the
treachery before mentioned, who, with several other courtiers, received the
monastic habit at the hands of St. Romuald, and spent the remainder of his days
in retirement and penance.
It was a very edifying sight to behold several
young princes and noblemen, who a little before had been remarkable for their
splendid appearance and sumptuous living, now leading an obscure, solitary,
penitential life in humility, penance, fasting, cold, and labour. They prayed,
sung psalms, and worked. They all had their several employments: some spun,
others wove, others tilled the ground, gaining their poor livelihood by the
sweat of their brow.
St. Boniface surpassed all the rest in fervour
and mortification.. He was the emperor's near relation, and so dear to him that
he never called him by any other name than, My soul! He excelled in music, and
in all the liberal arts and sciences, and after having spent many years under
the discipline of St. Romuald, was ordained bishop, and commissioned by the pope
to preach to the pagans in Russia, where he converted a king by his miracles,
but was beheaded by the king's brothers, who were themselves afterwards
converted on seeing the miracles wrought on occasion of the martyr's death.
Several other monks of St. Romuald's monastery met with the same cruel treatment
in Sclavonia, whither they were sent by the pope to preach the gospel.
St. Romuald built many other monasteries, and
continued three years at one he founded near Parenzo, one year in the community
to settle it, and two in a neighbouring cell. Here he laboured some time under a
spiritual dryness, not being able to shed one tear; but he continued his
devotions with greater fervour.
At last being in his cell, at those words of the
psalmist, "I will give you understanding, and will instruct you," he was
suddenly visited by God with an extraordinary light and spirit of compunction,
which from that time never left him. By a supernatural light, the fruit of
prayer, he understood the holy scriptures, and wrote an exposition of the psalms
full of admirable unction. He often foretold things to come, and gave directions
full of heavenly wisdom to all who came to consult him, especially to his monks
who frequently came to ask his advice how to advance in virtue, and how to
resist temptations; he always sent them back to their cells full of an
extraordinary cheerfulness.
Through his continual weeping he thought others
had a like gift, and often said to his monks, "Do not weep too much; for it
endangers the sight and the head." It was his desire, whenever he could
conveniently avoid it, not to say mass before a number of people, because he
could not refrain from tears in offering that august sacrifice.
The contemplation of the Divinity often
transported him out of himself; melting in tears, and burning with love, he
would cry out: "Dear Jesus! My dear Jesus! my unspeakable desire! my joy! joy of
the angels! sweetness of the saints ! " and the like, which he was heard to
speak with a jubilation which cannot be expressed.
To propagate the honour of God, he resolved, on
the advice of the Bishop of Pola and others,
to exchange his remote desert, for one where he could better advance his holy
institute. The Bishop of Parenzo forbade any
boat to carry him off, desiring earnestly to detain him, but the bishop of Pola
sent one to fetch him. He miraculously calmed a storm at sea, and landed safe at
Capreola. Coming to Bifurcum, he found the monks' cells too magnificent, and
would lodge in none but that of one Peter, a man of extraordinary austerity, who
never would live in a cell larger than four cubits. This Peter admired the
saint's spirit of compunction, and said, that when he recited the psalms
alternately with him, the holy man used to go out thirty times in a night as if
for some necessity, but he saw it was to abandon himself a few moments to
spiritual consolation, with which he overflowed at prayer, or to sighs and tears
which he was not able to contain.
Romuald sent to the counts of the province of
Marino, to beg a little ground whereon to build a monastery. They hearing
Romuald's name, offered him with joy whatever mountains. woods, or fields he
would choose among them. He found the valley of Castro most proper. Exceeding
great was the fruit of the blessed man's endeavours, and many put themselves
with great fervour under his direction. Sinners, who did not forsake the world
entirely were by him in great multitudes moved to penance and to distribute
great part of their possessions liberally among the poor. The holy man seemed in
the midst of them as a seraph incarnate, burning with the heavenly ardours of
divine love, and inflaming those who heard him speak.
If he travelled, he rode or walked at a distance
behind his brethren, reciting psalms, and watering his cheeks almost without
ceasing with tears that flowed in great abundance.
The saint had always burnt with an ardent desire
of martyrdom, which was much increased by the glorious crowns of some of his
disciples, especially of St. Boniface. At last, not able to contain the ardour
of his love and desire to give his life for his Redeemer, he obtained the pope's
license, and set out to preach the gospel in Hungary, in which mission some of
his disciples accompanied him. He had procured two of them to be consecrated
archbishops by the pope, declining himself the episcopal dignity; but a violent
illness which seized him on his entering Hungary and returned as often as he
attempted to proceed on his intended design was a plain indication of the will
of God in this matter; so he returned home with seven of his associates. The
rest, with the two archbishops, went forward, and preached the faith under the
holy king, St. Stephen, suffering much for Christ, but none obtained the crown
of martyrdom.
Romuald on his return built some monasteries in
Germany, and laboured to reform others; but this drew on him many persecutions.
Yet all, even the great ones of the world, trembled in his presence. He refused
to accept either water or wood, without paying for it, from Rayner, marquis of
Tuscia, because that prince had married the wife of a relation whom he had
killed. Rayner, though a sovereign, used to say, that neither the emperor nor
any mortal on earth could strike him with so much awe as Romuald's presence did:
so powerful was the impression which the Holy Ghost, dwelling in his breast,
made on the most haughty sinners. Hearing that a certain Venetian had by simony
obtained the abbey of Classis, he hastened thither. The unworthy abbot strove to
kill him, to preserve his unjust dignity. He often met with the like plots and
assaults from several of his own disciples, which procured him the repeated
merit, though not the crown, of martyrdom.
The pope having called him to Rome, he wrought
there several miracles, built some monasteries in its neighbourhood, and
converted innumerable souls to God.
Returning from Rome, he made a long stay at Mount
Sitria. A young nobleman addicted to impurity, being exasperated at the saint's
severe remonstrances, had the impudence to accuse him of a scandalous crime. The
monks, by a surprising levity, believed the calumny, enjoined him a most severe
penance, forbid him to say mass, and excommunieated him. He bore all with
patience and in silence, as if really he had been guilty, and refrained from
going to the altar for six months. In the seventh month he was admonished by God
to obey no longer so unjust and irregular a sentence, pronounced without any
authority and without grounds. He accordingly said mass again, and with such
raptures of devotion, as obliged him to continue long absorbed in ecstasy.
He passed seven years in Sitria, in his cell in
strict silence, but his example did the office of his tongue and moved many to
penance. In his old age, instead of relaxing, he increased his austerities and
fasts. He had three hairshirts which he now and then changed. He never would
admit of the least thing to give a savour to the herbs or meal-gruel on which he
supported himself. If any thing was brought him better dressed, he, for the
greater self-denial applied it to his nostrils, and said, "Oh, gluttony,
gluttony, you shall never taste this: perpetual war is declared against you."
His disciples also were remarkable for their austere lives, went always
barefoot, and looked excessive pale with continual fasting. No other drink was
known among them but water, except in sickness.
St. Romuald wrought in this place many miraculous
cures of the sick. At last, having settled his disciples here in a monastery
which he had built for them, he departed for Bifurcum.
The holy Emperor St. Henry II who had succeeded
Otto III coming into Italy, and being desirous to see the saint, sent an
honourable embassy to him to induce him to come to court. At the earnest request
of his disciples he compliedJ but not without great reluctance on his side. The
emperor received him with the greatest marks of honour and esteem, and rising
out of his chair, said to him, " I wish my soul was like yours." The saint
observed a strict silence the whole time the interview lasted, to the great
astonishment of the court. The emperor being convinced that this did not proceed
from pride or disdain, but from humility and a desire of being despised, was so
far from being offended at it, that it occasioned his conceiving a higher esteem
and veneration for him. The next day he received from him wholesome advice in
his private quarters. The German noblemen showed him the greatest respect as he
passed through the court, and plucked the very hairs out of his garments for
relics, at which he was so much grieved, that he would have immediately gone
back if he had not been stopped. The emperor gave him a monastery on Mount
Amiatus.
The most famous of all his monasteries is that of
Camaldoli, near Arezzo, in Tuscany, on the frontiers of the ecclesiastical
state, thirty miles east from Florence, founded by him about the year 1009. It
lies beyond a mountain, very difficult to pass over, the descent from which on
the opposite side is almost a direct precipice looking down upon a pleasant
large valley, which then belonged to a lord called Maldoli, who gave it the
saint, and from him it retained the name Camaldoli. In this place St. Romuald
built a monastery, and by the several observances he added to St. Benedict's
rule, gave birth to that new order called Camaldoli, in which he united the
cenobitic and eremitical life. After seeing in a vision his monks mounting up a
ladder to heaven all in white he changed their habit from black to white.
The hermitage is two short miles distant from the
monastery. It is a mountain quite overshaded by a dark wood of fir trees. In it
are seven clear springs of water. The very sight of this solitude in the midst
of the forest helps to fill the mind with compunction and a love of heavenly
contemplation. For a severer solitude, St. Romuald added a third kind of life;
that of a recluse. After a holy life in the hermitage, the superior grants leave
to any that ask it, and seem called by God, to live for ever shut up in their
cells, never speaking to any one but to the superior when he visits them, and to
the brother who brings them necessities. Their prayers and austerities are
doubled, and their fasts more severe and more frequent. St. Romuald condemned
himself to this kind of life for several years; and fervent imitators have never
since failed in this solitude.
St. Romuald died in 1027 in his monastery in the
valley of Castro in the marquisate of Ancona. As he was born about the year 966,
he must have died seventy years and some months old, not a hundred and twenty,
as the present copies of his life have it. The day of his death was the l9th of
June. God honoured his relics with many miracles.
His body was found entire and incorrupt five
years after his death, and again in 1466. But his tomb being sacrilegiously
opened, and his body stolen in 1480, it fell to dust in which state it was
translated to Fabriano, and there deposited in the great church, all but the
remains of one arm, sent to Camaldoli.
Alban Butler gives the following description
of the Hermitage of Camaldoli as it was in his day:
On entering it, we meet with a chapel of St.
Antony for travellers to pray in before they advance any further. Near are the
cells and lodgings for the porters. Somewhat further is the church, which is
large, well built, and richly adorned. Over the door is a clock, which strikes
so loud that it may be heard all over the desert. On the left side of the church
is the cell in which St. Romuald lived, when he first established these hermits.
Their cells, built of stone, have each a little garden walled round. A constant
fire is allowed to be kept in every cell on account of the coldness of the air
throughout the year: each cell has also a chapel in which they may say mass:
they call their superior, ‘Major’. The whole hermitage is now enclosed with a
wall: none are allowed to go out of it; but they may walk in the woods and
alleys within the enclosure at discretion. Everything is sent them from the
monastery in the valley: their food is every day brought to each cell; and all
are supplied with wood and necessaries that they may have no dissipation or
hindrance in their contemplation. Many hours of the day are allotted to
particular exercises; and no rain or snow stops any one from meeting in the
church to assist at the divine office. They are obliged to strict silence in all
public common places; and every where during their lents, also on Sundays,
Holydays, Fridays, and other days of abstinence, and always from Compline till
Prime the next day.
|