Conversion and Formation
Romuald was born around 951 in Ravenna to the aristocratic Onesti family; his father was Sergius degli Onesti. According to his life, a decisive turn came in his early twenties when his father killed a relative in a duel over property. Shaken by the violence, Romuald undertook forty days of penance at the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe and afterward became a monk there.
Finding the community insufficiently strict, he left for Venice, placing himself under a hermit named Marinus, who followed Irish eremitic practices. Around 978 he counselled Pietro I Orseolo, the Doge of Venice, who abandoned his office out of remorse; both men withdrew to the abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa in Catalonia, where Iberian Christian traditions were emphasized. There Romuald spent roughly ten years refining his monastic philosophy, using the monastery's library.
In this way his formation drew on the three major Western monastic currents of his day: the Benedictine discipline (influenced by Cluniac reform) of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, the Irish eremitic austerity of Marinus, and the Iberian practices encountered near Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa.
The Camaldolese Foundation
Returning to Italy, Romuald spent about thirty years founding and reforming monasteries across the peninsula. In 1012 he arrived in the Diocese of Arezzo, where he established five hermit cells on land known as Campus Maldoli, later called Camaldoli, high in the mountains of Tuscany. Two years later he built the Fontebuono monastery, which became the motherhouse of the order.
The community adopted a distinctive white habit and a way of life that combined the eremitical and cenobitic modes: monks lived in individual cells while sharing common liturgical celebrations and meals. This blended model became the hallmark of the Camaldolese Order, which received formal papal approval from Pope Alexander II in 1072, roughly forty-five years after Romuald's death.
Romuald exercised wide religious influence in his own lifetime; the Holy Roman Emperors Otto III and Henry II are recorded as seeking his counsel on religious matters. His rule stressed interior contemplation, summed up in the counsel to sit in one's cell as in paradise and to watch one's thoughts as a fisherman watches for fish.
Repose and Relics
Romuald died on 19 June 1027 at Val di Castro, a monastery he had himself founded, though scholars debate the exact year of his death. In 1481 his relics were transferred to Fabriano.
His principal feast is kept on 19 June, the day of his death; the Orthodox commemoration on 7 February is associated with the 1481 translation of his relics to Fabriano. He is titled Abbot and Confessor of the Faith.
