Post #6415

There he met the abbot Guarinus, who convinced the young hermit, still not thirty years old, to follow him in the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Michel-De-Cuxa (in Catalan Saint Miquel de Cuixà), in Catalonia (actually in Languedoc-Roussillon, France), where Romuald stayed there for ten years and completed his training. Returned in Italy, he dedicated his hermit life in the hermitage of Pereo, on the so-called Rose Island, near Ravenna. He renounced then to the dignity of Abbot and, moving into the territory of Mount Fumaiolo (in the current municipality of Verghereto, in the in the Tuscan-Romagna Apennines), he founded a monastery in honour of St. Michael the Archangel. Due to his constant disciplinary and moral appeals to the monks, he was hunted with fury with rod blows along with his disciples. Around the year 1001 the young emperor Otto III convinced the hermit Romuald to become the Abbot of St. Apollinaris in Classe; but called by God to solituted and to the renewal of the hermit life, after just a year, renounced the nomination, and he went at Montecassino. Assaulted by Satan, who tended him many deceptions, he always knew how to inspire terror in him (Epistola); and fought by the envy of men, he practiced all the more humbly and assiduously in fasting and prayer, and devoted himself to meditating on heavenly things, shedding copious tears: and yet he was always so jovial, as to make those who looked at him happy. He was in great honor to princes and kings (Epistola). Illustrious for miracles in life and after death, he also had the spirit of prophecy. Like the Patriarch Jacob, he saw in vision a stairway that rose from earth to heaven and by which white-cladded men ascended and descended; in which marvelous vision he recognized the monks of the Camaldolese Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict designated, known as Camaldolese Monks, of which he was the institutor (Communio). In 1012, in fact, he bought from the landowner named Maldoli the place where the vision took place, situated in the Casentino Apennines (Arezzo, in Tuscany), and build there the monastery, of which gave the name of Camaldoli (Camp of Maldoli) with which name his Order is still designated today. Finally after having lived 120 years and having served God for a century with a very austere life, he passed to eternal glory in the Abbey of San Salvatore in Valdicastro (Fabriano, Marche), on June 19 in the year of our salvation 1027. His body found intact five years after his burial, was placed with honor in the Camaldolese church of San Biagio in Fabriano; however, it was stolen in 1480 by two monks from Sant'Apollinare in Classe who took it to Jesi and, after a year, on 7 February 1481, it was definitively moved to the church of Fabriano, where it had initially been deposed. Romualdo was canonized by Pope Clement VIII in 1595.