Saint Romuald, Abbot

Romuald was born about 951 into a noble family of Ravenna. When he was twenty, his father killed a relative in a duel over property, and Romuald, who had been present, went to do penance for forty days in the abbey of Sant’Apollinare in Classe, and stayed there as a monk. Finding the community too lax, he left to live as a hermit under a stern teacher.

For decades he travelled through Italy and beyond, founding and reforming hermitages and monasteries, among them Camaldoli in the Apennines, from which the Camaldolese order takes its name; his monks combined solitude with community life. His Life was written by Peter Damian. He died alone in his cell at Val di Castro on 19 June 1027.