Romuald

Romuald (; 951 – traditionally 19 June, c. 1025/27 AD) was the founder of the Camaldolese order and a major figure in the eleventh-century "Renaissance of eremitical asceticism". Romuald spent about 30 years traversing Italy, founding and reforming monasteries and hermitages.

==Life== According to the vita by Peter Damian, written about 15 years after Romuald's death, Romuald was born in Ravenna, in northeastern Italy, to the aristocratic Onesti family. His father was Sergius degli Onesti, and his mother was Traversara Traversari. As a youth, according to early accounts, Romuald indulged in the pleasures and sins common to a 10th-century nobleman. At the age of 20, he served as second to his father, who killed a relative in a duel over property. Romuald was devastated and went to the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe to do 40 days of penance. After some indecision, Romuald became a monk there. San Apollinare had recently been reformed by St. Mayeul of Cluny Abbey, but still was not strict enough in its observance to satisfy Romuald. His injudicious correction of the less zealous aroused such enmity against him that he applied for, and was readily granted, permission to retire to Venice, where he placed himself under the direction of a hermit named Marinus and lived a life of extraordinary severity.