medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Sunday, June 18, 2006, at 4:39 pm, Phyllis wrote:
> Romuald of Ravenna (d. 1027) ... [H]e became, as
> Peter Damian termed it, "the father of rational hermits who live by
> law," founding a number of hermitages in northern Italy, staffed
> with
> communities of well-regulated hermits. He is the father of the
> Camaldolese order.
But not in a strict sense the founder of this Benedictine congregation,
which appears to have coalesced out of independent Romualdine houses
later in the eleventh century and which was approved in 1072 by
Alexander II.
One of R.'s foundations was the abbey of Santa Maria di Sitria, begun as
a hermitage in 1014 and expanded into an abbey in about 1020. It's
located in Isola Fossara, a _frazione_ of today's very rural commune of
Scheggia e Pascelupo in Umbria's Perugia province, close to the latter's
border with the Marche's Ancona province. A distance view of the
remaining structures is here:
http://tinyurl.com/m7de9
and a less appealing closer view is here:
http://web.tiscali.it/AVVENTURA/E1/IMAGECLIP/Sitria.jpg
http://www.cadnet.marche.it/fabriano/valdicastro.html
An illustrated account from Thais in both English and Italian is here:
http://www.thais.it/Romanico/Itinerario/Sitria/Medie/scheda0001.htm
R. died at another of his foundations, the abbey of San Salvatore at Val
di Castro, near Fabriano (MC) in the Marche. Views of this monastery,
which was rebuilt in the thirteenth century and, of course, has since
been modified, are here:
http://www.guanciarossa.it/leviedellafede/valdicas.htm
and here:
http://www.cadnet.marche.it/fabriano/valdicastro.html
An Italian-language account from Thais with views of the apses of the
abbey church is here:
http://tinyurl.com/onbpe
And a longer Italian-language account, with perhaps more interesting
views, is here:
http://www.fabrianostorica.it/abbazie/valdicastro.htm
In December 1480 Camaldolese monks of Sant'Apollinare in Classe secretly
removed R.'s skeleton (said to have been rediscovered in 1477) from the
then decaying abbey at Val di Castro. But they brought it only as far
as Jesi in today's Ancona province before being discovered. In this
last burst of travel of a very wandering saint ('peripatetic' might
suggest attainments he is unlikely to have possessed), in February 1481
R. was brought back up the Esino valley from Jesi to Fabriano, where
they were installed in the church of the Benedictine abbey of San Biagio
(to which the monastery at Val di Castro had belonged since 1427).
Views of this church, since rebuilt and renamed as Santi Biagio e
Romualdo, are here:
http://www.guanciarossa.it/leviedellafede/fabrianosbiagio.htm
The last view on that page is of R.'s present resting place in the
church's crypt.
A brief, stimulating account of R., very much aware of Peter Damian's
role in formulating our understanding of him, is here:
http://www.hermitary.com/articles/romuald.html
This is unsigned but appears to be derived from a reading of Thomas
Matus' _The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers: Stories from the
Benedictines & Camaldolese_ (Trabuco Canyon, CA: Source Books, 1994).
The latter includes an appreciation of R., an English-language
translation of Bruno of Querfurt's _Vita quinque fratrum_, and an
English-language translation of Peter Damian's _Vita beati Romualdi_.
For pertinent scholarly studies, of which there is an abundance, see the
bibliography in R.'s entry in the Bautz _Biographisch-Bibliographisches
Kirchenlexikon_:
http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/r/romuald_v_c.shtml
Best,
John Dillon
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