Romuald
Romuald (c. 951 in Ravenna, † June 19, 1027 in Val di Castro) was a saint and founder of the Order of the Camaldolese.
Life
Romuald (now Poppi) born around 951 in Camaldoli at Ravenna, the son of a noble family and lived up to the age of 20 an unstable life. When he had to experience how his father killed a relative in the dispute, this was a turning point in life Romuald dar. He retired initially for 40 days in the Benedictine monastery of Saint Apollinare in Classe near Ravenna back, finally stepped in 972 the Order and became a monk. The observance in Saint Apollinare, which was only a few years previously reformed Maiolus, Romuald was not stringent enough. He aroused the disapproval of the other monks, because he stood up for a stricter monastic life. This meant that he resigned after three years from the monastery and a hermit named Marinus joined in a remote area near Venice. 978 he moved to the fallen Venetian Doge Pietro Orseolo in the French Cuxa in the Pyrenees, where they founded a hermit community.
After the death Orseolos Romuald returned to Italy after they had offered him the post of Abbot of Saint Apollinare. However, a position he held for only one year, gave it up again and then again lived as a wandering anchorite. Since 999 and reformed Romuald founded many monasteries. Finally settled Romuald was finally in Camaldoli in the Casentino valley north of Bibbiena, where he in 1010 his most famous monastery Foundation undertook the monastery of Monte di Camaldoli. In this monastery foundation, he combined elements of ancient Egyptian hermit with the Rule of Benedict. It finally came out of the Camaldolese Order, which was characterized by strict rules. Thus, the monks lived though as a community in individual cells together, but practiced in andauerndem silence and fasting.
Romuald died on June 19, 1027 in Val di Castro in a secluded hermitage, in which he had retired, he saw near death. His relics are in a marble shrine in the church of Ss. Biagio e Romualdo kept in Fabriano.
Romuald was soon revered as a saint after his death and finally canonized in 1032. In artistic representations Romuald is shown as a hermit or white Kamaldulenserhabit, with Jacob's ladder, a book and a skull.