The work of S. Romuald was a reform of the Benedictine Order.  The Order of Camaldoli which he founded was the second reform which had come out of the great brotherhood of S. Benedict; it was younger than the Cluniac but older than the Cistercian reform, and it was begun in 1012.  In that year S. Romuald, who was a Benedictine abbot, having been dismissed by all the houses over which he had successively ruled, for they would not bear the penitential strictness of his government, founded a hermitage at Camaldoli above the upper valley of the Arno called the Casentino.  There each monk lived in a separate dwelling, all being enclosed in a great wall some five hundred and thirty yards about, beyond which the monks were forbidden to go.  They followed the Rule of S. Benedict, kept two Lents in the year, and never tasted meat.  They had, of course, a church in common where they were bound to recite the divine office, for this is of the essence of the Rule of S. Benedict, but certain among them—­and this is the essence of the reform of Camaldoli—­never quitted their cells, their food being brought to them in their huts, where, if the lecluse were a priest, he said his Mass, assisted by some one close by but not in the same room.  Thus we see the monks and the hermits living side by side, but scarcely together, and so they continued from the year 1012 till our own day, which has seen the great Camaldoli suppressed.  The device of the order was a cup or chalice out of which two doves drank, representing thus the two classes of hermits and monks, the contemplative and the active life.

[Illustration:  Colour Plate S. MARIA IN PORTO]

The second great Ravennese of the Middle Age, S. Peter Damian, who was born about 988 in Ravenna, of a good but at that time poor family, was the youngest of many children.  He was early left an orphan, and living in his brother’s house was treated, it would appear, rather as a beast than a man.  Presently, however, another brother, then archpriest of Ravenna, took pity on him and had him educated, first at Faenza but after at Parma, where he studied under a famous master.  Here he became immersed in the religious life so that when two monks belonging to Fonte Avellana, “a desert at the foot of the Apennines in Umbria,” happened to call at the place of his abode he followed them.  After a life of penitence and hardship, in 1057 pope Stephen IX. prevailed upon him to quit his desert and made him cardinal-bishop of Ostia, and later pope Nicholas II. sent him to Milan as his legate, till in 1062 the successor of Nicholas allowed him to return to his solitude; but in 1063 he was sent to France as papal legate.  Later we find him as papal ambassador in Ravenna—­this in 1072.  He was then a very old man, and on his way back to Rome he died at Faenza.

This famous saint has often been confused with the third great Ravennese of this time, Pietro degli Onesti, called Pietro Il Peccatore[1] This confusion, which Dante disposes of in the well-known passage of the Paradiso: