Romuald

According to the vita by Peter Damian, written about 15 years after Romuald's death, After some indecision, Romuald became a monk there. San Apollinare had recently been reformed by St. Mayeul of Cluny Abbey, but still was not strict enough in its observance to satisfy Romuald. His injudicious correction of the less zealous aroused such enmity against him that he applied for, and was readily granted, permission to retire to Venice, where he placed himself under the direction of a hermit named Marinus and lived a life of extraordinary severity. altarpiece by Fra Angelico (Minneapolis Institute of Arts) About 978, Pietro I Orseolo, Doge of Venice, who had obtained his office by acquiescence in the murder of his predecessor, began to suffer remorse for his crime. On the advice of Guarinus, Abbot of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, in Catalonia, and of Marinus and Romuald, he abandoned his office and relations, and fled to Cuxa, where he took the habit of St. Benedict, while Romuald and Marinus erected a hermitage close to the monastery. He then spent the next 30 years travelling in Italy, founding and reforming monasteries and hermitages. Romuald founded several other monasteries, including the monastery of Val di Castro, where he died in 1027. Romuald's feast day was not included in the Tridentine calendar. It was added in 1594 for celebration on 19 June, the date of his death, but in the following year it was transferred by Pope Clement VIII to 7 February, the anniversary of the transfer of his relics to Fabriano in 1481, and in 1969 it was moved back to the day of his death. , 1641, an angel uses the abbot's baton to chastise an errant figure (Pinacoteca Comunale, Ravenna). ==St. Romuald's Rule==

In his youth, Romuald became acquainted with three major schools of Western monastic tradition. Sant'Apollinare in Classe was a traditional Benedictine monastery under the influence of the Cluniac Reforms. Marinus followed a much harsher, ascetic, and solitary lifestyle, which originated in Irish eremitic traditions. The abbot of Sant Miguel de Cuxa, Guarinus, had also begun reforms but primarily drew on a third Christian tradition, that of the Iberian Peninsula. Romuald integrated these traditions and established his own monastic order. The admonition in his rule, Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, places him in relation to the long Christian history of intellectual stillness and interior passivity in meditation, as reflected in the nearly contemporary Byzantine ascetic practice known as Hesychasm. Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it. If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind. And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more. Romuald's reforms provided a structural context to accommodate both the eremitic and cenobitic aspects of monastic life. ==See also==