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St. Romuald of Campus Mulduli


X/XI Centuries
St. Romuald, the founder of the Camoldolese hermits, was born into the ducal family of Ravenna, the Onesti, c. 956. His early life is said to have been dissolute. A second in a duel, he saw his father kill a relative in a property dispute, after which Romuald withdrew to monastery of St. Apollinaire at Classis. He later became a monk there. In 999, he left the monastery where he had been abbot for three years to pursue a more solitary and ascetical life. He travelled in Italy and France, where he established a number of hermitages and monasteries as he preached about the virtues of eremitic life. His most famous foundation was at the Campus Mulduli, which became the center of the Camoldolese order. Two years after he left St. Apollinaire, his friend Otto III offered the abbacy of a monastery which he had recently established to Romuald, who refused it. Romuald died in 1027 alone in his cell at the Campus Mulduli. His rule sought to combine the communal life of the Benedictines with the solitary life of the hermits and influenced the rules of other orders, including the Carthusians and the Cistercians.

Karen Rae Keck

Under construction --- far from complete! Read with caution.

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