S. Romuald, the founder of the Order, of the family of the Dukes of Ravenna called Honesti, was born in that city in 956.  He seems to have grown up amid a certain splendour, and to have been caught by it, but by a love of nature no less; so that often when he was hunting, and found a beautiful or lonely place in the woods away from his companions, he would almost cry out, “How happy were the old hermits, who lived always in such places!” The romance of just that:  it seems to have struck him from the first.  Not long after, when he was but twenty years old, his father, deciding a dispute with a relation by fighting, fell, and Romuald, who had been compelled to witness this dreadful scene, was so overwhelmed by the result that he retired for a time to the Benedictine Monastery at Classis, not far from Ravenna.  After some difficulties had been disposed of, for he was his father’s heir, he spent seven years in that monastery; but his sincerity does not appear to have pleased certain of the fathers, so that we find him at last obliged to retire to Venice, where, in fulfilment of his earliest wishes, he placed himself under the guidance of Marinus, a hermit.  After many years, in which he seems to have gone to Spain, he returned at last, and took up his hermit life in a marsh near Classis, where the monks of his old monastery sought him, and with the help of Otho III made him their Abbot.  This office, however, he did not long retain, for he found it useless to try to reform them.  He seems to have wandered about, famous all over Italy, founding many houses, but the most famous of all is this house of Camaldoli, which he founded in 1009.  The land was given him by a certain Conte Maldolo, it is said, an Aretine, by whose name the place was ever after known, Campus Maldoli; while another gift, Campus Arrabile, the gift of the same man, is that place where the Hermitage stands.  There, in Camaldoli, Romuald built a monastery, “and by several observances he added to St. Benedict’s rule, gave birth to a new Order, in which he united the cenobite and eremetical life.”  It is said that it was after a vision, in which he saw his monks mounting up into heaven dressed in white, that he changed their habit from black to white—­the habit they still wear.

Whether it be that the hills and valley are indeed more lovely here than anywhere else in Casentino, and that the monks and the hermits lure some indefinable sweet charm to the place, I know not; yet I know that I, who came for a day, stayed a month, returning here again and again from less lovely, less quiet places.  Camaldoli is one of the loveliest places in Tuscany in which to spend a summer.  Here are mountains, woods, streams, valleys, a monastery, and a hermitage; to desire more might seem churlish, to be content with less when these may be had in quiet, stupid.

IV.  BIBBIENA, LA VERNA