St. Romuald

June 19 is the feast of St. Romuald (c. 951-1027), the founder of the Camaldolese congregation and the great hermit of 11th-century Italy. Born at Ravenna to the ducal family of Onesti, he entered the Benedictine monastery of Sant'Apollinare in Classe at Ravenna after his father killed a relative in a duel over property. He found the monastery too lax, left to live as a hermit, and spent the next decades wandering through Italy, founding hermitages.

In 1012 he founded the hermitage of Camaldoli, in the forests of the Casentino, in Tuscany, which became the mother house of the Camaldolese — a congregation of hermits living in individual cells, gathered around a central church, under the Rule of St. Benedict supplemented by the hermit customs. The Camaldolese monks live to this day at Camaldoli, in the forest where Romuald planted his first cell.

Romuald died at Val di Castro, in the Marche, in 1027, and was canonized in 1595. His body was translated to the hermitage of Camaldoli in 1465. From Ravenna, where he began, to Camaldoli, where he founded his order, the June 19 feast is the feast of the hermit who planted the forest monastery.