The history of Christian monasticism is marked by periodic renewals, moments when the Holy Spirit stirs a soul to reach back to the radical simplicity of the Desert Fathers and draw the monastic tradition forward into new expression. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, that soul was Romuald — a Ravennese nobleman who spent his long life wandering Italy, founding hermitages and monasteries, and fashioning a unique form of religious life that married the solitude of the hermit with the community of the monk. His feast on June 19 celebrates the founder of the Camaldolese order and one of the great monastic reformers of the medieval Church.
Romuald was born around 951 into the Onesti family, a noble house of Ravenna. His early years gave little indication of holiness. He lived the typical life of an Italian nobleman: comfortable, worldly, and largely indifferent to spiritual matters. The turning point came with a shock: Romuald witnessed his father, Sergius, kill a relative in a duel over a property dispute.
Horrified by the violence and overwhelmed with grief, the young Romuald fled to the nearby Benedictine monastery of Sant'Apollinare in Classe. There, in forty days of prayer and penance, he experienced a profound conversion. He resolved to give his life entirely to God and entered the monastery as a novice.
"Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it." — Saint Romuald, from the "Brief Rule"
Romuald quickly found that conventional Benedictine monasticism, as practiced in his day, was insufficiently rigorous for his restless desire for God. The monks of Classe had grown lax, and when Romuald tried to reform them, they resisted fiercely. He left the monastery and spent years traveling across Italy and into the Pyrenees, seeking out hermits, studying their ways of life, and founding small communities of monks and hermits wherever he went.
He became a disciple of Marinus, a hermit of extraordinary austerity in the lagoons near Venice, and drew other followers to their way of life. His reputation for holiness grew rapidly. The Emperor Otto III sought his counsel, and Romuald briefly served as abbot of Sant'Apollinare before departing once more, unable to remain in a place that resisted reform.
Around 1023, Romuald established a small hermitage at Camaldoli, in the forested mountains of the Tuscan Apennines. This foundation would give its name to the entire Camaldolese congregation and would endure for a millennium. At Camaldoli, Romuald created a distinctive form of monastic life that combined two ancient streams:
This dual structure allowed monks to grow in communal charity before advancing, if called, to the deeper solitude of the hermitage. It was a brilliantly flexible arrangement that honored both the need for human fellowship and the soul's hunger for solitary communion with God.
Romuald left no elaborate constitution. His spiritual teaching is distilled in his famous "Brief Rule," a short text of astonishing directness:
"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."
These few lines capture the essence of Camaldolese spirituality: radical simplicity, attentiveness to the movements of the heart, and constant immersion in the Word of God.
Romuald died on June 19, 1027, at the monastery of Val di Castro, alone in his cell — fitting for a man who had spent his life seeking solitude with God. He was approximately seventy-six years old. He was canonized by Pope Clement VIII.
The Camaldolese order he founded survives to this day, with monasteries and hermitages in Italy, the United States, India, Brazil, and Tanzania. His legacy is a reminder that the monastic life, far from being a relic of the past, continues to offer the Church a living witness to the primacy of prayer and the transforming power of silence.