Founder of the Camaldolese Order
Romuald was born into a noble Italian family in 956. He spent his youth wildly in comfort and laziness.
One day, when he was twenty, he saw his father kill another man in a duel. He fled to a monastery in disgust, and he stayed there for three years before deciding to travel, and spending the next thirty years building monasteries and hermitages in Italy.
On one occasion, Romuald was falsely accused of a scandalous crime. The accuser was a young nobleman whom the holy monk had previously rebuked, and Romuald’s fellow monks believed the young rake. Romuald was severely reprimanded, forbidden to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass and excommunicated, an unwarranted sentence which he endured for six months without complaint.
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