Camaldolese - History

History

The Camaldolese were established through the efforts of the Italian monk Saint Romuald (ca. 950– ca. 1025/27) at the start of the second Christian millennium. His reform sought to renew and integrate the eremetical tradition of monastic life with that of the cenobium.

In his youth Romuald became acquainted with the three major schools of western monastic tradition. The monastery where he entered the Order, Sant' Apollinare in Classe was a traditional Benedictine community under the influence of the Cluniac reforms. Romuald chose to be under a spiritual master, Marinus, who followed a much harsher ascetic and solitary lifestyle that was originally of Irish eremitical origins. Some years later, Marinus and Romuald settled near the Abbey of Sant Miguel de Cuxa, where Abbot Guarinus was also beginning reforms but was building mainly upon the Iberian Christian tradition. Later drawing on his various early experiences, Romuald was able to establish his own monastic pattern, though he himself never thought of it as a separate unit, seeing it as a full part of the Benedictine tradition.

A thousand years ago, Saint Romuald founded the Sacred Hermitage of Camaldoli. There are Camaldolese hermitages and monasteries throughout Italy. The most ancient is the urban monastery originally established by Saint Gregory the Great in the heart of Rome in the sixth century.