This morning I just want to begin with some general thoughts about history and what history means. You might ask yourselves the question, what does history mean for me? And another question which I ask, a kind of provocative question, which doesn't necessarily imply, yes, but is to suggest that there is a problem, a special problem for us today here in the United States, and that is, are we living perhaps in the first non-historical age? And you see the paradox from the very start, because we say age, you know, we say period, we obviously are fitting into time, and yet this non-historical problem for us in this country, I think more than, but in general modern man, perhaps because of the destructive nature of recent wars, or just the kind of wars that now exist on the face of the earth,

[01:06]

that tend to obliterate large areas, that obliterate cities and populations and large areas. If you could please come close, because it makes me feel nervous, isn't it? I don't know if I'm projecting my voice far enough. But anyway, the problem of history is a special problem for us. I think here in the United States we have this idea, you know, that everything began with us, or that anything that comes before us is, if not useful, oppressive. But I'd like to suggest perhaps a kind of a koan, a kind of a maxim that might help us to get out of the impasse, and it's this, it is only by knowing the past that we are freed from our slavery to the present.

[02:07]

Well, that might surprise us, the idea of the present as a kind of a slavery, the now, now generation, it's supposed to be the now generation that we're living in. And yet, I'm really convinced that knowledge of the past is a way to freedom. But our culture, Western in general, but specifically American, I think, it doesn't really say this, but it makes us tend to feel, unconsciously, or to think just on the borderline of consciousness, that the past would enslave us if we let it. Our past is slavery, you know? We begin with a revolution. And actually, the history of the United States can be seen as a series of revolutions, a kind of continuous revolution. Think of the Civil War, think of what that caused. Think of the whole industrialization process. Think of the way cities are built and torn down and rebuilt and torn down again.

[03:12]

You don't find any buildings that are older than 20 years, almost. And then you find the phony antique, you know, the buildings like theme parks, you know, Disney World sorts of things, you know, that look like the Middle Ages, or that look like the Renaissance. And they're papier-mâché, they're that thin. We want to feel something beyond our immediate yesterday, and yet we're very hesitant before this past or this history. But since this is mainly just a kind of an unconscious problem, it's enough just to be aware, you know, that there will be this kind of difficulty, and then we should just go ahead and see what we can get out of our own particular past. We're talking about Kamaldoli's history, but this is maybe wrong to say, because we're

[04:15]

looking at an historical phase of what is in some ways a meta-historical reality. History isn't everything. I'm not saying, you know, that the only reality is history, that there's only flow, there's only process. Monasticism, in a way, the monastic person, you know, is in a way a sign of transcending history, transcending the flux, is this universal archetype of the monastic. And we're called, really, to represent this in a certain way, but we don't arrive at this except through connection with some kind of lineage. Now, there's really no separate Kamaldoli's monastic history. There's monastic history in the Western Church, and the Kamaldolis are part of it, and this will be something that I will try to bring out as we continue to examine certain, well,

[05:21]

early sources and other things. I can't really give you much of a bibliography, because we don't yet have a book about it, and I'm working on something like that, and maybe the give-and-take here among us will – in fact, not maybe, but certainly it will be very helpful in this, translating or re-translating, revising translations of two basic sources, the life of the five brothers and the life of Saint Romulo. I always mention them in this order. This is a matter of … this is the historical, you know, the methodology of history that tells me that not only are they in this order in time, but in this order in their usefulness for answering what is our own particular preoccupation, and that is the meaning of the person of Saint Romulo within his own historical context and how he really blends with his background

[06:29]

and how he emerges from it. And the life of the five brothers comes first and serves as a basic controlling point of reference for reading this other document, which is later, a generation later, and which has another characteristic as a literary work, and that is the life of Saint Romulo by Saint Peter Damian. There may be more information, you might think there are more facts about Romulo, obviously, in the life which is supposedly dedicated to him alone, but on the other hand, for our way of understanding or investigating or inquiring into the past, the life of the five brothers is extremely important, so I kind of shift the emphasis there. But I do so because that's the way we read history today. Now, talking about inquiry, the word history, speaking of bibliography, for something general about history I'm finding this very useful, I haven't gotten through it yet, but Henri

[07:33]

Marou is one of the great Catholic historians of our time, and this book, The Meaning of History, published by Palm Publishers Montreal, is, I'm sure we have a copy in the library, is a very excellent book about history from the standpoint of the historian, and it's especially useful because he is a man of real faith and he's a specialist, of course, in what you Anyway, he says, the word history, of course, comes from the Greek historia or historie, which means inquiry, you're inquiring into, investigating, but specifically with reference to events that took place in the past.

[08:33]

Marou's definition is very succinct. History is knowledge of man's past. Now, this is history as discourse, as something we do, or we say, or we write, or we know. This other sense of history, we'll take that in a second, and we have one word in English for two things. We're talking about history as the knowledge of man's past, the past of human beings, of the human race, the human family. There's the other meaning, which is the past itself, the human past, that which took place. But first of all, let us talk about history as knowledge. And Marou's emphasis is interesting, because most other definitions talk about history as the written narrative of past events, or history as the study of the past. Marou's making it broader, but also interiorizing it.

[09:36]

He places an emphasis here on consciousness, on awareness. And here I would like to play on the word history. If you take this emphasis, you have to say that history is not only his story, you know, third person, someone else. It is my story. It's your story. It's my story. You see the emphasis there? It's on the interiorization of the story. And by the way, story is also another word derived from the same Greek root, and really from the same word. And perhaps we should today become less insistent upon the distinction between writing history and writing a story. Let me put this in parenthesis and say that perhaps in future ages, historians of the

[10:40]

Civil War, take that as an example, historians of the Civil War will make great use of a book like Gone with the Wind, a so-called historical novel. Well, of course, Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler never existed. But on the contrary, perhaps we can know something about the Civil War better through seeing the movie or reading the novel than plowing through the dusty tomes. And in a way, we are also helped by referring to that kind of model, that kind of writing, when we do read medieval hagiography, because in some way, they are like historical novels. Of course, St. Romuald did exist, much more than Scarlett O'Hara, but in a way, he is presented, especially by St. Peter Damian, as more, as a symbol or a sign, or rather as a project for the future, not so much as a narrative of what really took place. But anyway, it's important, I think, what Marou says about history as knowledge, this

[11:46]

interiorization of the past. Now, it's a history of man's past, to use a non-inclusive language, but we would say, you know, the past of human persons. Marou insists that this is not only the past of society, social history, because the life of each person is history, too, and precisely because we're not making it only his story, but also my story, the attention to also individual persons, and not necessarily what Thomas Carlyle called the great men, you know, not only the big biggies, but just someone very, very unimportant, who yet had his life, or her life, and we can know that time, his or her time, by entering into that person's life. So we can talk about society, and talk about groups, and talk about great individuals,

[12:50]

but we also need to be aware that history involves the inner lives of individuals. Now, it's also a knowledge of the human past, and not just the facts, not just of the events, the things that happened, because history also is a knowledge of past ideas, feelings. You can have a history of symbols. A history of art doesn't deal with facts, it deals with things like beauty and harmony and so forth. Now, knowledge, in all the classical definitions, involves participation. So history is knowledge of the human past, means also, history is a participation in the past. Now, you might have heard of the saying of the philosopher Santayana,

[13:55]

he who is ignorant of the past is doomed to repeat it. Now, that's also a good maxim. It's something like what I said at the beginning, it is only by knowing the past that we are freed from our slavery to the present. It's good to know, you know, the mistakes of people who have gone before me, so I won't repeat them. Or, if I learn from the past, I won't set about reinventing the wheel or something like that. But there is a good sense of repeating the past. If knowledge of the human past is also participation in it, then there's something good about repeating it. Now, of course, we cannot repeat it exactly as it was. We can't even know it exactly as it was. The 19th century philosophers of history and historians emphasized the objectivity of historical research, perhaps to defend themselves against the natural sciences, objections from natural sciences. And so, they were all concerned with, what is this Ronke's phrase, expression here, wie es eigentlich gewesen, as it really happened.

[15:01]

But you can't reach that. You can't get back there. There's no time machine. There's no way you can tune your TV set to tune in on the 10th century. It's always in another mode of being that you participate in the human past. This participation in the past could be called a reenactment of past experience. Maru cites the English historian Collingwood as suggesting this kind of other dimension. A reenactment, the root of enactment, you know, act, like acting on a stage, drama. You might say that one way of repeating the past in a good sense is by reliving it the way you participate in an exciting story. Think again about Gone with the Wind.

[16:03]

You go see this great movie, you know, and you're there, and you're excited by it. And I think we should learn to feel that. If I don't give you this, I have to apologize and beat my breast, because I'm turned on by this history that I'm studying. I'm really excited by it, and I hope we can all become enthused about it and relive it in this way. There's another way that we repeat the past in a good sense, or reenact past experience, and that is by renewing a value, or by performing some kind of action as it was done in the past, but—I'll use the Latin phrase, mutatis mutandis, changing those things that have to be changed. We're not there back then, we're here now. But here's a kind of quasi-sacramental way of repeating the past. Well, we do that in the Eucharist. I mean, that is the prime example of how we reenact a past experience.

[17:07]

Now, we're not back there in the Cynical. The Mass is not the Last Supper, not only ritually, but also there's something very important in the fact that it's not exactly the same thing. It looks very different. We have a different attitude than the Apostles had around the table there. For one thing, we stand or sit. They were lying down. The first Mass was celebrated lying down. But still, it is a reliving of it. It's a reenactment of something that was past, but is not totally past. It's something that comes into a new mode of being in the present. But of course, this is something very special. This is a sacrament. But if you kind of extend this by analogy, you can find many other things that we do. Just the fact, for instance, that we live in a monastic community. Now, we don't say the same psalms. We don't sing in the same language. We don't sing the same melodies. We don't do a lot of the things that we don't do the way they did it.

[18:11]

Even the way they did it 20 years ago has come out of it. Same schedule, anything like that. But still, we are reliving or reenacting in some way a similar action. And we're in communion through that. We're in contact with the past. The past comes alive, and it's when we do that, when we commemorate that. And also, whenever we renew a value, even in another form, in another form of expression, perhaps especially in another form of expression, the value of monasticism itself can be renewed. Of course, in a more explicit monastic life, the life such as we live here. But it can be renewed also, for instance, in a completely different style. Married people or something like that, they can renew the value of monasticism, or part of the value of monasticism. That's, of course, Panikkar's thesis.

[19:14]

But it's true, it's true. Basically true. Now, anyway, this is one meaning of history. Some people have complained about the fact that in English we only have this one word, history, and it means more than one thing, and the German-speaking peoples are lucky because they have Geschichte and Historie. But I don't know if the distinction is that clear. Maybe Brother David could explain it. But I'm not worried about the linguistics of it. It's knowledge about, and that which we know. The same thing as faith. Faith is the act and habit of believing. It's also that which we believe. It has these two dimensions. They're never separate. They can have different relationships, and there's implicit faith and explicit faith, and all of that. And the scholastics really split it up into fine fragments.

[20:15]

But even so, history, we don't need to worry about the fact that there's only one word. We just realize that it's a very rich concept. But we can talk about history as our knowledge, our knowledge of the past, the human past, our participation in it, our living it, our reenacting it. And then we can talk about history as the flow or process of interconnected, unrepeatable events on an irreversible timeline. These two negatives are very important. Unrepeatable events on an irreversible timeline. There's something philosophical here, something even theological. We come to this consciousness of an irreversible timeline through the influence of the Bible and Semitic thought. And yet this concept, this conception of the timeline and of historical events

[21:18]

is something that is now embraced by philosophies that have nothing to do with Christianity or perhaps are in competition with Christianity, at least on a certain level, for instance, Marxism. But I think it's important to keep in mind these two negatives. Unrepeatable events. This morning's Mass was not a repetition of the Last Supper. It was a re-presentation, made present again, in sacrament, in the sign, in a mysterious way, known only by faith, supernatural faith. The reality, not only of the Last Supper, but of the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, the whole Paschal Mystery. But it didn't repeat it. It didn't repeat the Cross, it didn't repeat the Last Supper. Unrepeatable events on an irreversible timeline. The timeline doesn't go back.

[22:19]

Things are not repeated. There are repetitions, but they're always repetitions by analogy. They're never exactly the same thing that takes place. And this is one difficulty in approaching the worldview, for instance, of India and the farther east, because the worldview insists on the fact that it is all cyclic and that the same event does repeat itself. That we don't know how far ahead in the future, but one day there will once again be exactly the same conference given by exactly the same people, and attended, and everything will take place exactly as it was. I mean, this repetition, that's a kind of a banalization, of course. It's kind of reducing it to the absurd, and perhaps I shouldn't do that. In fact, I shouldn't. But just simply to say that it is possible to be a perfectly sane human being and yet not have the concept of history.

[23:22]

But we do have this concept, and it's inseparable. The idea of the irreversible timeline. We all of us sometimes get into the fantasy, I don't know if this is something I've had to fight with, one of my psychological hang-ups, and I share it with you, because we all kind of have this temptation to want to, gee, if I could only do it over again, only start again, I'd probably make the same mess, I'd probably make the same choices, I wouldn't end up in any different state of life, that's not my particular problem, I'd probably join a monastery earlier than I did, or something like that. But at least there I'm stuck. But anyway, we all think, gee, if I could only do it again, if I only could go back, with the benefit of hindsight, and repeat all of that, and I would change it all, and be so much better, but wouldn't. And that's impossible. You can't. It's an impossible thought. It's the greatness of human mind, of course, that we can think impossible thoughts,

[24:25]

we can think of, as the scholastic said, a horned rabbit, or hen's teeth, or something like that. It has no correspondence in reality. Irreversible timeline. There's this song, maybe I'm belaboring it, but it's just a play with the image. Somebody here must remember the Andrews sisters. I mean, I'm not the only one, I hope everyone remembers the Andrews sisters. They were three Jewish girls who sang in close harmony during the 40s and 50s, and the American soldiers in the Second World War just loved them all. Great fun, and they had all sorts of funny songs, and one of them, my favorite of the Andrews sisters' songs, was Take Me Back to Constantinople. Take me back to Constantinople. No, you can't go back to Constantinople, because it's Istanbul, not Constantinople. Why did Constantinople get the work? It's nobody's business but the Turks. Well, it's kind of facetious, but, I mean, you can't go back to what it was before.

[25:28]

Something has happened in the meantime. The cross was taken down and minarets were put up, and Hagia Sophia is a museum. And it has always been the dream of the Greeks, you know, to one day invade and replace the cross there, but it will never be the same. It won't be the way it was in Justinian's time. It won't be. You can't go back to the way it was before. The nostalgic people. I mean, they're the ones who don't want history anymore. A Christian cannot be nostalgic. At least a Christian historian must discard nostalgia. A Christian remembers anomalies. A Christian remembers the past, celebrates the past, should know the past, and profit from it, live by it, and renew it and reenact it. And a Christian also hopes. When you get caught up in this nostalgia thing, I mean, you get caught up in fantasy land, in irreality.

[26:30]

You can never go back to the way the Catholic Church was before the Vatican II. The Pope said that to him. It's not a heresy. But that's true of life. That's true of humanity. How can a man who is already old go back into his mother's womb, said Nicodemus. And he was right. He made sense. But Jesus was talking about something else. He was talking about a hope, not a nostalgia. Anyway, so, the irreversible time, unrepeatable events. If we talk too much about events, we tend to think in terms of just separate things. This happened, that happened, the other thing happened. History, the real history, the real writing of history is not a chronicle of events. You can have a chronicle of events, but this really doesn't have much meaning in it. History always takes a larger view and it is always attentive to the flow, to the process, to the interconnections.

[27:33]

One of our problems, perhaps, in understanding our own life, understanding St. Romer, is that we've kind of plucked him out of his context. We've made him a founder, which he wasn't and didn't want to be. We've taken him out of the flow, taken him out of the process, and we've made him less, really, than what he was. Not greater, but lesser, smaller. The historian's task, what is the historian's task? We're all historians, we're all inquiring into, we're trying to know the past so as to reenact the experience of the men and women that are living, flesh and blood people, people who came before us and gave life to us. The historian's task is not to restore or to revive or to resurrect the past. The historian is a restorer. You have the great art and science of restoration in Italy, and Italy is the world center of it

[28:35]

for all the arts, paintings, sculptures, and so forth. Where they can remake, like they remade Michelangelo's Pietà, when the crazy guy went up there with a hammer and knocked off our blessed lady's nose. They were able to restore it, but it'll never be the same again. And they do it today. Part of the discipline of a restorer is to leave little signs of that breaking historical continuity. If you go up, at an arm's distance away, you can see a little line there, round where the nose was broken off. They put it there purposely. They left a little groove there. And yet the same effect can have for the general viewer. The historian cannot revive the past. Something that's dead is dead. Let the dead bury their own dead. Come follow me, Jesus says. Or you cannot resurrect the past. I mean, that's Disneyland.

[29:36]

That's a game. Now, what we need to acquire, perhaps, is a sense of history. We need to have the ability, I'm quoting Marou's words, we need to have the ability to perceive with equal acuteness both the reality of the past and its remoteness. The ability to perceive with equal acuteness both the reality of the past and its remoteness. What is he saying? First of all, he's saying that the past is past. You can't bring it back. You can't go back there. There's this distance. Even yesterday. Even my own personal yesterday. Even half an hour ago. We only started this. I mean, somebody can take the tape and listen to it, you know. But it's not even the same then. So the past has... There is something that is unapproachable about it.

[30:40]

And yet we also need to perceive it. We perceive its reality. I think more definitely, more concretely, I would suggest the reality of the people constitute this past. It's not just a past, a cosmic past or a geological past, where the mountains were, where the ocean was. But the past of people. And these were living people. Living, breathing human beings, just like us. And to have this sense of closeness to them, and a fellowship with them, friendship with them, even though we can't talk to them personally. But I think we can, in a way. I mean, if there are saints in heaven, certainly we can pray to them. And there is this connection, which is over and beyond. I mean, this is beyond history. It's something that takes place in a reality. History isn't all of reality, of course. And so there we are. But we can't be their contemporaries,

[31:43]

and yet we can be close to them, because we share in the same line. There are a few problems. A few problems in acquiring a sense of history or in gaining historical knowledge. One is the problem of language. I think this is a special problem for Americans in general, because the learning of foreign languages is not really practiced too well in this country. And I've heard it said that unless you can think in at least one language other than your own, the one you were born with, your mother tongue, you can't really get something. I don't know if that's absolutely true, but in a certain sense, being able to think in another language kind of breaks down certain barriers in your own mind, in your own consciousness, and enables you to accept the difference, you might say the remoteness of the past, the difference of St. Ronald in his times. I mean, he spoke a kind of declining Latin.

[32:45]

I'm sure he eventually learned to speak good Latin, but his Latin was kind of already the Romance language. I don't know if anyone can reconstruct what a man in the 10th century, what kind of language a man in the 10th century of Ravenna would have spoken, but it would sound a bit like Latin, a bit like Italian. It wouldn't have all the endings on the words, sort of thing. But certainly it's different. It's hard to connect with. You read a Latin text, you read a translation. And to translate, for instance, The Lives of Five Brothers, translate the life of St. Ronald. That rhetoric there, I mean the words, I can put the words into English, but the effect on the reader is very different from the effect that it had upon the reader or the hearer in the 10th or the 11th century. So there's a real problem of language here. But anyway, if you know more than one language, or even if you have a smattering of ignorance about some other languages,

[33:47]

it's always a great help. Just to remind yourself that, and maybe you know by experience, that people who speak a different language think in a different way. It's a real different way of thinking. I think differently. When I'm in Italy, when I speak Italian, in a way I'm a very different person. It's an amazing experience. It's disturbing, perhaps. I'm not necessarily better, maybe I'm worse, or maybe I am a little better, because I'm fresher, I'm more... I had to become a child in order to learn another language, live in another country. It's a gift of God. I'm not saying that that makes me any better as a person, but just something that... That's helped me a great deal. And if you can acquire something of that, or have some of that experience, of course, Brother David, Brother Raman, know exactly what I mean. Brother Peter, you have studied these languages, and learned to think in them. But just a little knowledge of another language can always help.

[34:49]

Let's see, we've already contrasted history with chronicle. We've already said that history is... There's more to reality than history. We are historical beings, no question about it. We are historical beings, and yet there is a dimension of our existence, of our life as human, which is beyond history. And of course, our vocation is to go beyond history. Our vocation is to eternity, which is... What is... I forget what St. Augustine called it, temp eternity, something like that. Anyway, it's a mysterious condition, you know, in which it's not the eternity of God, we participate in God's eternity, we do not cease to have our past, and yet we are gone beyond the limitations which being in history impose upon us. But we can also go beyond these limitations here and now. I said at the beginning that the monastic person corresponds to universal archetype, and therefore is,

[35:51]

by his or her nature, in a way, beyond history. But this is rooted in history. Same thing, Christianity, it deals with eternal verities, with truth. God can't be reduced to process, although there's just something important in process theology, and I don't know anything about it, so don't ask me about it, but anyway, the concept of process is important. But anyway, I mean, we just simply, as Catholic Christians, we have to say, you know, but on the other hand, I have this ax to grind with, you know, Michael Novak talks about non-historical orthodoxy. I think it's because I disagree with his politics. But anyway, I disagree with this phrase, because I don't think Catholicism can be called non-historical orthodoxy, or I don't think there can be a real non-historical orthodoxy that is also Catholic. It's heterodox. It's Gnostic, you know. Gnosticism is non-historical. But Christianity is historical. Dogma is truth,

[36:55]

but the definition of the Council of Chalcedon, for instance, the great watershed of Christian thought, in a way perhaps of human thought, cannot be understood except in its context, in that time, in that place. Its truth is in some way bound up with the meaning that the people at that time perceived. And it's because of that that we can restate the doctrine and still keep the same meaning, or keep the same sense that underlies it. But then again, we're also limited. We can never, you know, we might show a different facet to it, but it's always historical. Now, this thing is about to go off, so I don't want to get into anything else. What I might do, I mean, just suggest, is we're going to start talking about St. Ronald and try to bring him back into his, bring him alive for us, and also bring him back into his own history.

[37:55]

What would it be like if I just kind of ran through a very, very brief kind of sketch of the life of St. Ronald in two minutes? I think that's all I have left. And maybe this, you know, can give you some kind of, maybe a different answer. I don't know. Anyway, we have the context of monasticism at the time of St. Ronald, or preceding his, immediately preceding his time. You can read the monastic history in many different ways. I'm not saying mine is the only way. But I kind of see that this Western monastic history is tending perhaps in two basic directions, sometimes parallel and sometimes divergent. Now one direction aimed at the institutionalization of monasticism and its integration with the hierarchical clergy on the basis of a more or less

[39:00]

literal observance of the rule. Now there was the rule of St. Benedict became to be the rule, excellence, and it was to be observed. More or less as it was written. Then there was another current. I'm not saying these are the only currents, but I think you can kind of sort things out on the basis of these two. The other current harked back to monasticism's origins in the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts and emphasized various forms of the solitary life as well as missionary work among the still pagan nations of northern and eastern Europe. I connect this missionary work also with this other, you know, harking back to the origins type of thing. More desert or solitary type monasticism. Now these were interwoven. There was not an absolute separation. But anyway, St. Romuald represented this latter tendency. In other words, to hark back to monasticism's origins. Although he was formed within the context of institutionalized monasticism,

[40:01]

that's in quotes, and never repudiated it. Romuald entered the abbey of Santa Polinare in Place near his native town of Ravenna on the east coast of central Italy. But shortly after making his vows, he left for the Venetian lagoon to live as a hermit in the company of a holy eccentric named Marino. Now he's leaving the monastery. The reasons for it, St. Peter Damian gives a very traditional reason. It's based on other lives of other saints and it's a literary genre where he says the monks were sober and relaxed and they tried to kill him so he had to leave. There was also something within Romuald that did not allow him to stay too long in any one place. That's part of his nature and that's the kind of saint he was. But anyway, he did. He left the monastery after about three years or so and he joined up with his Marino, a very mysterious man

[41:01]

there's very little historically that we can say about him. Now, while Romuald was there and he wasn't there for too long a time. That was a few years, three years maybe. He was befriended by one of the great monastic reformers of the 10th century, the Catalonian Abbot Garry. Garry is the way the Catalonians call him. Guarinus in Latin and perhaps you've heard of Guarinus, Abbot Guarinus. Garry we'll call him. And he was on his way back from one of his numerous trips to Greece and Palestine. He was a reformer. A lot of the reforms in Italian monasticism, Catalonian in this case, involved the renewed contacts with Greek monasticism, Mount Athos and so forth, Constantinople, and also Palestine. I mean the ways were open. The conditions were such that in the late 10th century you could make these trips and a lot of them did. And then there was also reform of Monte Cassino. Right around that time, a little later than Garry, of an abbot who had lived

[42:05]

on Mount Sinai of all places. He lived in the Abbey of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai. But anyway, there's this abbot coming through, returning to his monastery, and he invites Romuald and Marino to join him at the newly founded Abbey of St. Michael at, I think it's pronounced something like Uixa in Catalonia, Cuxa, you might say, in the Pyrenees. Now it's part of French Aquitaine. But at that time it was under the Count of Barcelona and so it was part of Catalonia. And so with a group of Venetians, including the doge Peter Orseo I, St. Romuald, he was about 30 at this time, still rather young, followed Abbot Garry to Catalonia. And it was there that Romuald, dwelling with his companions in a cell near the Abbey, kind of a little satellite community near the Abbey of St. Michael, learned to integrate the Benedictine heritage of the West with the aramidical experience characteristic of Eastern Christian monasticism,

[43:07]

and he was ordained a priest. The help that Romuald got there was very, very important for what happened later, his founding work. He attained a kind of a balance or kind of an inner reconciliation, which, of course, never quite happened outside him. But anyway, he himself learned to bring the two together in a very personal way, which perhaps no one else has quite done since then. Now, Romuald comes back to Italy. He's worried about his father. His father is an old man, enters a monastery, as very often they did, look at Umberto. I mean, that's something very archaic pattern in Italian culture. The old man, you know, might be a grandpa or the old bachelor uncle, you know. He ends his days in a monastery. And so here was Sergio, is his name, who was Romuald's father, who goes in the monastery. But he gets restless,

[44:08]

and he doesn't stay there. And there's all sorts of other family complications, which, you know, we can't pinpoint, but there's more to it than just this old man. So Romuald comes back to Italy. And this gives him the opportunity to renew his contacts with the community of Santa Polinari in Plaza. Now, where does he go? He still lives in Sir Hermit, but this time he goes and lives on lands belonging to the Abbey. And he reconnects with Santa Polinari. Then in 998, Romuald's about 46 at this time. So he's an old man. I mean, for the Middle Ages, that's an old man. I mean, people didn't live that old normally. So at that time, the young German emperor Otto III comes along. Otto III, about 19 years old. And he has inherited the rule from his mother, Feofano, who was from Constantinople. She was a Greek princess. She was the regent while he was a child. And so now he's the emperor. And he comes along. He appoints Romuald Abbot of Clase. The monastery needs toning up. Needs reforming. And so, well, you'll see,

[45:08]

Hermit, holy man. And he makes him abbot. But Romuald renounces the office less than a year later. And he never again accepted the duties of superior. Never again. Even though the remaining 28 years of his life, that is from 999 to 1027 when he died, were filled with incessant activity as a founder and reformer of monasteries and hermitages. Romuald sent several of his disciples as missionaries to Eastern Europe. We all know that. And he himself attempted, though unsuccessfully, to leave for Hungary. So he founded monasteries and hermitages. And then he kept moving about and wanted to become a missionary. Now, the story of Romuald's wanderings is disconcerting for us as it was for his biographers, both St. Bruno Querper, the author of The Life of the Five Brothers. He was living at the time. St. Romuald was living when he wrote the book. It has to somehow kind of excuse him. St. Peter Damian also does. Don't judge him. Don't judge this as instability

[46:10]

because it's the love for souls, the zeal for souls. He was steadily taught he was impotent. He couldn't endure sterility, sterile life, a life without bearing fruit. So he always moved about. But it's still disconcerting. His personal lifestyle was not typical of the Western monasticism of his time. And no one in the subsequent history of Kamaldoli ever really attempted to imitate his example to the letter. Even the missionary dimension of his reform died with the first generation. Kamaldoli, from its fragile and humble beginnings in the Tuscan Abenines, a group of five hermits with a guest house and a support community a short distance away, soon struck roots in the local church and it thus became a center of monastic reform within the Benedictine mainstream. The movement initiated by Romuald, monastic, hermitical, missionary, became,

[47:11]

less than a century later, a kind of simple popular monasticism, eventually absorbing most of the Benedictine communities in those areas of central and northeastern Italy where Romuald had lived. The growth of what became the Kamaldoli's congregation was more by absorption of existing communities than by founding new communities. Some new communities were founded, of course. Not very much of what Romuald founded really survived. They were usually rather small communities and some of them were purposely tempered. Even Kamaldoli, in the earliest document we have, 1027, the year Romuald died, suggests that the bishop gives them the land for as long as possible. In the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. We ask you, Lord, to bless us as we meditate on your wonderful works which have never ceased. There is no time without your presence. There is no history

[48:13]

which is not made alive by your Holy Spirit. Grant that we may live our history now, today, in the same spirit. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. Thank you, Brother Emanuel, for your lovely prayer this morning. Everyone has the chronology of the life of St. Romuald? Okay. I don't know how helpful it will be, but maybe we'll just give some framework, kind of a skeleton, that we can try to flesh out as we go. Last time we talked about history. I referred quite a bit to this outstanding Catholic theologian, I guess, in a way, but Catholic historian, Henri Marou. And his definition of history is the knowledge of the human past.

[49:13]

And it's a knowledge, a consciousness, an awareness. And the emphasis that I like to give to it is that history is not only his story, but also my story. It's also something that has to do with me. Or, as another person once said with a touch of humor, it's also her story. It's not an exclusive record of great men. You know, the romantic notion of history Thomas Carlyle, he had to talk about the great men, you know. And we sometimes tend to see history as identified with the big wheels, the big guys. They are the ones who make history and no one else does. And I can't accept that for any reason whatsoever. I don't think it enables us really to have a true knowledge of the past as relating to our present. And I think that's We isolate the great men

[50:18]

from their times and their place and their environment, and even from the chance events of their life. Sometimes the real turning points of history depend on rather minor things and rather minor figures, you know, who sometimes erupt into the, you might say, the grander stage of history and then subside or disappear in casual things that, however, have a profound influence. Sometimes just a purely superficial choice, a superficial decision somebody makes, you know, can have all sorts of repercussions we never know, both positive and negative, of course. And then, as Christians, we always have this hope and confidence that in the long run things work out and all things work together for the good of those who love God. So I don't believe in history as stories about great men.

[51:19]

And I don't believe in history as dates. We have a list of dates in this chronology. But, you know, why does everyone, you know, have bad memories of the history class? Why does everyone hate their history teacher? Because they had to memorize those names and dates and the list of popes, you know, our dear professor Cassius Hallinger, and so forth. And that kind of history I don't believe in, which means probably that I wouldn't pass muster as an historian, professional historian. I don't care to be one. But I love to meditate on the flow of things and the flow of events, especially in rapport with where I have lived. I mean, the experience for me of living in Italy, of living in Comaldoli, of being in the places, the physical localities where Romuald was,

[52:21]

makes it all very meaningful for me, although I don't know how much of an advantage or disadvantage this would be. But at least it excites me to think about the life the human life, the human existence that did take place in a certain place and to have lived in there for some length of time and to have shared, perhaps absorbed some of the vibrations of it. So even though we need to deal with dates, the utility of having like a chronology or something is simply to have something to remind when we forget now, when was that? Was that in 1009 or was that in 978? Well, we go back and look and we can find it out when we need to know that. Otherwise, it doesn't make a great deal of difference. However, the sequence does. I mean, the kind of flow of this life, you know, the sense of the process.

[53:23]

Today, there's a lot more attention to process, of course, in all fields of thought, but I mean, in history, that would mean attention to the psychological processes, how we work something out in his mind, insofar as we can know. Of course, there's a considerable limit to what we can know, and the exercise in psychohistory is sometimes a bit futile. Sometimes people imagine that they know more about the workings of a person's mind than actually they do, or anyone can. What was on the mind of Jesus as a man when he went to be baptized by John in the Jordan? Think about it. I mean, it's something we today think about. It's a question we pose today. And of course, history, you know, history as a study, as an inquiry, begins with a question, the historian's question. And different historians will ask different questions, and I will ask a different question

[54:25]

from what somebody else would ask. Perhaps my question is not really important for anyone except me, but it is my question, and it's the way that I have to approach it. Now, dates, you know. Or shall we say, I mean, how do we picture the flow of history? I think we do have a lot of images that can help us to understand history, provided we realize that they're there. Sometimes they can hinder us if we imagine that our mental structures are identical with reality. It's like the saying, the map is not the territory. Here's a map of Europe. But this isn't Europe. This is a map. And it tells us something about Europe, and it's partly true and it's partly false. We have to know the limits of it. Now, I put this thing on the board. This is a history of Europe,

[55:28]

the major turning points. So they have, along one side of this map, the latest issue of National Geographic. What is it? It would be the November issue or something like that. November or December issue. And down the side here, they have this graph, which I traced here on the board to give you an idea of what they have. You notice that we have different periods of time, and the space between them on the graph is very different. Look at it. Here, between 500 BC and approximately the date of our Lord's birth. It's a bit more than this space from our Lord to 580. Why is that? The space from 500 to 1000 is less than from 1000 to 1500. And from 1500 to 1600

[56:30]

is almost as, in fact, looks like a bit more than half. In other words, it's equal to more than 250 years. And notice how it widens up here. Here we have 1900 to 1979. 80 years. Notice how big that is. Like a thousand years. What does that mean, actually? What is most recent, we're most aware of, and we think of it as more important, and as we go back, it's getting less important. It seems to be here, and that's a drawn-off point. Here, the century is broadened. Here, there's greater attention is paid, whereas the century is preceding. In this period here, 1000 years equals 500, and 100 years equals 250.

[57:31]

You notice here that the BC from 500 BC to 80 to 1, and from 1 to 500, the BC 500 years, that is wider, it's larger, it's getting greater importance than here. I hope I don't sound paranoid, but there could very well be, in the scholars or historians, maybe a slight anti-Christian or anti-Catholic bias. Minimizing the Middle Ages, I don't suppose that would be imperative, but you find that in historians. You find that in people whom you know have a very definite anti-Catholic bias. You take a man like Will Durant, well, next seminary. He had an axe to grind with his Jesuit teachers, and so when he started to write the history of philosophy, he makes it all end before Augustine and re-begin after Thomas Aquinas. And all the in-between,

[58:33]

all those centuries in-between, no philosophy there, or at least nothing of value for a modern 20th century Western person. Obviously, there's a choice here. Obviously, there's a decision about what is important, what is meaningful. Aren't these last eight years as meaningful as the first thousand years? Huh? Where does this chart come from? It comes from National Geographic. I don't think it has a signature. In other words, the editorial board, something made up as Tapestry of History, and then the list of events, what's really important. There's a number of events that determine the width. Yeah, determines the width. In other words, here's a recent Rome, Roman Empire, so here's the beginning of Christianity. Huh. Here's the Middle Ages. Say something about it. Here we have the Reformation, Renaissance. There we go.

[59:34]

Then the history starts happening. Things start happening. Then things come along. See what I mean? I mean, here is a whole mentality, it's a whole vision of the world. I'm exaggerating a bit, but exaggerating for the sake of argument. Part two, help us to see what we would do. Why couldn't I, why couldn't I put, do the, you know, here's A.D., you know, 500, 1,000, 1,500, then what is history? Why can't I? Why can't I take the Christian centuries, the Benedictine centuries, as Paranuma, and blow them up bigger? Am I less justified in doing that than the staff of, maybe there is a signature down here, a complete map right to National Geographic. But anyway, whoever it was who made up this graph, you know, what right does he have to tell me

[60:34]

that the first 1,500 years of Christian history is less important than the last 80 years? Last 80 years. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes. That, in other words, the greater availability of documents covering recent times vis-a-vis documentation of later times. But note that there are periods, even in the Middle Ages, or the early Christian centuries, which are very well documented. And they were busy writing chronicles and keeping their carte, and so forth. You're right, you're right.

[61:38]

Naturally, I'm pressing a point. What I'm trying to suggest is that we all have a kind of a visual image of history, don't we? We all kind of picture things, and we all have pigeonholes. We need to, because we have to organize our thoughts somehow. For me, this period, the 10th and 11th centuries are just ballooning out, you know, as I go into them. I find it's the most fascinating period of time. There are all sorts of analogies other than the three zeros. Between 1,000 and 2,000, we're near to one, and the other, you know, the history before and after is identified with St. Romuald and with some other figures which I studied before, when I was at Fordham, and so forth. But this period, one little item, interesting item, mysterious item, the population explosion. Do you know there was a population explosion beginning around the time of St. Romuald's birth? I mean, real,

[62:39]

the graph going up, as it is today. Naturally, the numbers, of course, didn't hit what we have today. But in comparison, you have an upturn of the graph, of the curve of births and diminishing infant mortality, and so forth, which is surprising. And they really don't know why. There are some theories. One thing that we do know, interesting little bit of information, that the climatologists have found, studying tree rings, and I don't know what else they study, that there was a period of very, very mild weather beginning in the 10th century and on for another 200 or more years. Very mild winters, balmy summers, the area of the wine grape extended way up, I mean, into Belgium, British Isles, Scandinavia.

[63:41]

I mean, it was all in places that today, you know, they couldn't, yeah. And you wouldn't dream of growing grapes where they were able to then. And the grape is, of course, significant. It's the, you might say, the soul of European history in a certain sense. I don't know. Anyway, vino veritas. But that was one thing that happened. There were perhaps made available, it wasn't there weren't wars. I mean, there were a lot of wars. And so people got killed for that reason. But perhaps also there were some medical remedies that came through the Islamic world that enabled the survival of some of the less fit, less fit individuals. And so less infant mortality and so forth, or longer lives. Since I've touched this point,

[64:42]

I might as well get into it. I won't go through all of the historical reasoning behind this age of St. Romuald. St. Peter Damien says he lives 120 years. St. Peter Damien says a lot of things which don't correspond with the facts. And they're not verifiable. If we have to say that he was wrong, we're not saying that he was a liar. We're not saying that he was a fool. We're simply saying that he used an approximate number in relation to the oral tradition from which he drew the materials for his life of St. Romuald, written of course several decades after the passing of St. Romuald. I might mention one thing. The facility with which even today in Tuscany they use the expression cent'anni, you know, hundred years. Or one of our elders

[65:46]

at San Gregorio in the years past, Fr. Gaudenzio, when people asked him, how old are you? He would say un secolino, a little century. He was about, when he started saying this when he was around 85, he would say, well, you're getting close to hundreds, so might as well say un secolino, a little century. And so forth. And so it's very easy that Peter Damian would have asked someone, well, how long was St. Romuald in the monastery, monastic life? How long did he do penance? Cent'anni, a hundred years. And in a way, you know, I mean, this is perfectly legitimate because there simply wasn't the concern with precise dates and numbers. But we have this concern, and so we want to know how long he lived. Basically there are two points.

[66:48]

In other words, where do you fit the extra years? Because you're dealing with 45 extra years. Between the actual date, his age at death, around 75, there is corroborating evidence from when his relics were exhumed in 1980. The anthropologist, the physical anthropologist who studied them, you know, said, well, this is, you know, he's at least 60. And then, of course, they don't say, you know, they always state the youngest he could have been was that condition of his teeth and all. And then they don't say the oldest he could have been, but privately said, well, in his seventies when he died. And that's pretty evidential. The other thing is that all of the extra 45 years, even according to the life of St. Romuald by Peter Damian,

[67:49]

especially as corroborated or balanced out with the life of the five brothers, written when Romuald was still alive by Bruno Querckford, and the other documents that deal with the people with whom St. Romuald associated, like Peter Orseolo I, Doge of Venice, or Otto III, the emperor, German emperor, and so forth. From these documents, all 45 extra years have to be fit into his period between his leaving the monastery of Santo Polinare in Classe, and his leaving from Venice to Carlonia. So you have two options. Either Romuald was near 30, not quite 30, when he left Venice with Marino and Peter Orseolo and so forth, or he was 71. A man of the age of 71 could make a long trip on foot, which is what they did, and partly in ship,

[68:49]

I don't know exactly where they crossed the Mediterranean. We don't know. But anyway, a long trip. A man who was 71, but Marino. Anyway, the one argument you can reduce to the absurdity of saying that if Romuald lived 120 years, you had a whole tribe of men living to 120 years, because his father obviously had to live to over 100, and Marino had to live over 100. Everyone had to live over 100 in order to fit in the chronology, which is not impossible, but it just doesn't, it's not very probable. Anyway, we have finished that question once and for all. St. Romuald was born around the year 952. I think most of the scholars prefer the slightly late 950-952, that period in there. I've always meditated on the fact that 949, which is very well documented, is the year of birth of St. Simeon the New Theologian in Constantinople. He wasn't born there, but anyway, that's where he became a monk.

[69:50]

And the proximate date of birth of Abhinavagupta in Kashmir, the great mystic of the Hindu tantric schools. But you have throughout the world, and this is also perhaps connected with the population explosion, you have a kind of a spiritual explosion. You have a monastic explosion. And a monastic explosion that doesn't go up parallel with the curve of the population, but shoots up way above it. And mostly men. It's interesting. Female monastic life, monastic life for women, was not terribly cultivated through most of the period from 1000 to 1300, even though men's monasteries flourished in numbers, in numbers of monasteries and numbers of population. So when we see the expansion of Kamaldali, it's really rather modest when you compare it with other bigger monasteries, bigger monastic congregations

[70:52]

and so forth. But it's part of that phenomenon. It's kind of general monastic explosion, population explosion. So these are some ways Ramayana fits in. Are there any questions about this chronology? I mean, you had a chance to look at it. Yeah? How did they keep records then? They would go to church and it would record birth, marriage and death. It's recorded. In those days they didn't? Well, they kept some records. I'm not too well informed on that in detail. Yes, of course, there were some church records and in practice what they did there in Ravenda, which was a town in decline. It had a great old history, great old past, but the town was kind of crumbling. I mean, it was really, you know, had gone through a lot and so perhaps the life, the social life was not terribly well organized and some records were kept.

[71:53]

And of course records tend to get lost too. Even if they were kept, they'd get, the sacristy would burn down or something like that and they'd be lost. Maybe Father Edward knows more about record keeping in the Middle Ages, which I know very little about. It seems to me that in one way you're lost. The last thing in the organology is one of the key things is the dimension of childhood. Yeah. Because you generally get a child's dying sight with a lot of people and nowadays we can generally kind of make up our minds whether it's a forgery or not because we were studying videography and so on, we know whether the thing is likely to be happening today or not. I think, as you say, this is very reasonably scientific and what I'm saying is that they won't get a good bit of experience in the year and a half to twenty years from now to now. Because in some cases we do know that childhood, especially foundation documents are very important. Yeah. This is the kind of document that you'd rather

[72:54]

follow the book than the ones you get. I said documents and that's possibly not so many people whose information depends on finding the secrets of the people either in their own book or somebody else's. Sometimes avoidant factors like the one who goes round the wrong platform and suddenly there'll be several occasions when lots of people around him will have to sign something. So that's the way most people do it. Yes. One argument in favor of this 1027 I make him content right here, yeah. Anyway, this 1027 document one of the things is that we know it's authentic because the monks of Kemaldele continually tried thereafter to eliminate the bishop from the picture and thus they played around with the legend of Maldalo, Count Maldalo, about whom

[73:54]

there is absolutely no document, no information. And then you have actual lies and forgeries. You have a false testimony. I'm sorry, but he did it of a monk in the 13th century, I think, 1200 something, where he goes into this whole thing about Maldalo and it wasn't the bishop has no jurisdiction over Kemaldele. Because of the fact that the hermits thereafter, the community of Kemaldele was always uncomfortable with this tie-up with the local bishop, this indicates that the document is quite authentic. You see the reasoning? You see how you get to one way of authenticating a document is if it is inconvenient for later generations and yet it's still there so that you can whatever is more difficult is more likely to be true, as they say

[74:55]

in studying texts. So that is something, the end of his life and the probable year is probably the same because it speaks of blessed memory and all of that. And June 19th is oral tradition and can be very, very reliable oral tradition so the date of his death can be very solidly also because pilgrimages began immediately thereafter to his tomb. And so the year of his death is most likely the year of founding of Kemaldele and the year 1012, there was reason to push it back because 1012 was before Bishop Teodaldo became bishop so that was another way of saying well he wasn't the one here it wasn't his property. There may be some connection with the founding date of the Grand Lavra the Great Lavra of Mount Athos which is exactly 49 years

[75:55]

before that a symbolic number seven weeks of years 963 to 1012 that could be but we haven't got it. Probably 1026 the year before sounds logical or maybe two years before. Anyway the first date the certain dates the first date is solidly attested 978 documents what are the documents the documents in Venice the documents of the the monastery of Cuixa or Cuxa whatever you want to say in Catalonia now near Prague in southern France so there are a number of corroborating documents there. When we think about Romuald in connection with the Abbot Garry and Peter Rossello the first and so forth we think of him as the important figure because he's near to us and these others well they tailed along with him

[76:56]

but it's the other way around. I mean he wasn't quite he wasn't yet well he wasn't yet the great founder the great reformer in fact he was still a learner really St. Peter Damian says that he does say it ultimately and he he went to he went with with Garry and studied for the priesthood there he studied St. Peter Damian says this while he was there in the Abbey much more likely that a man less than 30 years of age would be able to settle down and study learn to read read well enough to to nourish his mind than a man over 70 so that's another argument in favor of the what all historians except a couple of faithful few do recognize any other questions about chronology again it's a skeleton why do you say that he's mature at 26 because for us

[77:56]

26 I mean you're still an adolescent you know it's a prolonged adolescence especially because of college education that sort of thing unemployment that's another thing that keeps keeps a man or a woman a child you can't get a job you're not going to feel that you're you're an adult it's just our concept of it people do mature in other ways I think younger they become more aware of the world there's more of a global consciousness in a 5 year old today than for instance when I was 5 years old I was vaguely aware of the second world war in 1945 but I wasn't aware of being you know this global thing there's young people today you know have a sense of you know much more of a sense I'm sorry I'll cut you off I think this is something that moved very quickly in my own lifetime that people have forgotten that people did all people like Lance Drake and all the other people they'd all done all these things before they were born yeah yeah

[79:02]

yeah they never had a chance and isn't it also true that they tended to hurry because people died young you got to get your life's work done you know before before you catch malaria or you catch smallpox and and so people you know made themselves become adults earlier and then you know really threw themselves into living because they didn't know how long they were going to have well no at that time yeah he was young but you're talking about 998 you see you're talking about 998 you see that's right uh the emperor Otto the third you know Otto the second is the one that has more

[80:04]

perhaps impact on history but and of course Otto the first Otto the great as they call him Otto the third in 988 was 19 years old Romuald would have been 46 so he was old enough I mean he was already a venerable man you know 46 and then in the year 999 Bruno Querfurt writing in 1003 speaks of him as bone erat etatis he was of a good age you could I mean you could take this as meaning he was senile but hey I don't see how you can how I can mean that it means that he was he was in the prime of his life he was you know physically and mentally in great vigor in spite of having lived a rather long time for many of those days so 46 you know was he was really quite venerable when is it that

[81:05]

a man begins to be called senior or sennex in the ancient Roman calculation isn't it around 45 or something like that yeah so he was already sennex in fact a chapter after where he where he talks about the good age of St. Romuald he calls him senior you know he was the eldest of a group of people a group of monks there older than them you know older than than Bruno of Querfurt Bruno of Querfurt probably was was about 30 at this time you know he was already priest and studied well learned man and was one of the chaplains of the he was the Latin rite chaplain of the emperor whose mother was Greek and he had very much this sense of you know of being kind of universal even ecclesiastically and some of that also is important for understanding Romuald's type of monasticism but at all events yes had the abbot died when

[82:05]

when the abbot or was he proposed to the monk embarrassing question I don't know I'm not certain but no I think there was a vacancy I think there was a vacancy but there was also well it's usually spoken of as you know the need to reform there was this decadent community now was it really so decadent it was involved in local politics especially the the feuding families the the the petty you know family affairs that that in a what had become rather a small town a small town a provincial town once great world capital now rather provincial rather backwater even literally marshy and the circumstances perhaps would be seen differently if we looked at them today from from our vantage point or with our mentality they usually speak of it as you know it was very decadent and therefore he was the reformer but also it was a way

[83:06]

perhaps I say that it was an act of proprietorship of the emperor over the abbey and it was dense with political implications I would suggest that this perhaps is part of the the the whole process whereby the Germanic emperors used the monastic orders as consolidating you know centers for consolidating their own dominion especially because all of the third's predecessors didn't really have that much influence down into Italy and he very much wanted to be the Roman emperor he wanted to live in Rome and that's why he got into hot water and that's why he died young although he died of an illness not of his wounds but he was driven out because because of his he wanted to enthrone himself in the city of Rome he nominated a pope too but anyway so there was this and then later you know the following especially the following century the whole problem

[84:06]

of lay investiture you know the church then you know discovers that that this is you know this is creating problems and therefore there begins this type of war and the reform of Gregory VII and so forth but there we are in a very different phase from the time of St. Ron the life of St. Ron so by saying this you mean chiefly something like the identification yes very much like that proprietary church yeah really yeah hmm

[85:09]

really yeah you see in Asgar wasn't he roughly contemporary with Ron Wilder yes yeah 10th century I think anyway you see you see you see what he did Otto he nominated a monk of the Abbey in other words Romuald of the Abbey he made his obstability even though he didn't observe it but he was he was linked to the Abbey of Santa Polinare in Classe when he returned from Catalonia by the way and the date there is rather vague we don't know whether he was there for maybe 4 years from 4 to 10 years he was there near the Abbey of St. Michael so we don't know the date that he returned when he did return he continued his he continued

[87:29]

St. Peter Damien was born in Ravenna born in the same city as Romuald was he didn't know him personally never met him Peter Damien entered the Monastery of Font des Vallannes in 1035 which was about so it would be about 8 years after St.Romuald's death so that's the relationship of their of their ages you know is the next generation or he's the age of St. Romuald that had children and grandchildren, he would be the age of, in other words, St. Peter Demon was the age of the grandchildren of St. Romuald's brothers. Anyway, his nephews, his great-grandnephews. So two generations, you might say. Is the chronology kind of wearing itself out now? Let's see, how much time do we have? I wanted to underline, start to talk about Romuald

[88:34]

in a way that perhaps might help us to take him out of the sanctuary, take him out of the picture frame or off of the pedestal and bring him a little closer down to us, not to minimize his sanctity and his virtue and his greatness, but rather to draw near to him and to experience better his humanity. Sometimes, you know, when we're talking about our holy founder, our patron saint, someone like that, we're almost more reluctant to admit his humanity than the humanity of Jesus. I mean, we have a dogma that tells us that Jesus was human in every sense except sin, and so he grew, and he grew in knowledge and wisdom, as the Bible says, and so we accept that, and then somehow we forget it when we come to the saints, you know? We think they were born with infused knowledge

[89:43]

and the beatific vision and everything and that they never had to even struggle. Of course, some of them we know. I mean, St. Augustine and so forth. And then also, you know, St. Peter Damian does say that up until the time that Romuald enters the monastery of Classe, well, he was kind of, you know, a wild young man and, you know, was kind of worldly and, you know, got into all sorts of sin and so forth, and so he was a convert, but even so, we imagine, well, he converted, and then he was already what he was when he died. Well, no, I don't think it helps us a great deal to love St. Romuald if we don't see that he did grow, and he made his mistakes along the way, and he had his human frailties, and he had a human defect which introduced a certain conflict

[90:44]

into his own monastic vocation. We've got to face it, you know? And then, glorify God for the great virtue that came out of dealing with something that perhaps was a point of inner tension in his being a monk. First of all, St. Romuald was not a typical vocation for his time because he was an adult. He was 20 when he entered the monastery. And now, you begin to see later, you begin to see in the 11th century, the following century, you begin to see in the 12th century, more and more of these conversi, both in terms of the lay brotherhood, the lay brothers, but also in terms of men who already were a certain age in the monastery, whereas most of the vocations tended to be very young, and children were given to the monastery, the oblati, in the rule of St. Benedict. That is also another thing that we have to consider. We today, when we enter a monastery, almost all of us are over 21, 22, even older.

[91:49]

Almost all of us make this a very definite personal choice, often breaking away from family, breaking away from previous experience. And the same is true of marriage. Marriage is very much an individual decision on the part of the boy and the girl, young man and young woman. In the Middle Ages, your life was decided by your family, your parents, no choice. In a general way, Romuald is very unusual in the fact that he breaks away from his family. He does something absurd for his time in the judgment of his contemporaries. A man of 20, you're a grown man, you're ready to get married, I don't know, I guess he wasn't married, maybe had a fiancee or something like that had been arranged, and he was just biding his time to enjoy his bachelorhood or something like that. But anyway, we don't know that. I mean, just saying, that would be typical. Where he breaks away from what is typical

[92:55]

and what is accepted, what is proper and reasonable. For us, it is not proper, it is not reasonable to take a child and put him in a monastery and leave him there, expect him to be happy. In those days, it was. We just have to remember that. And then see exactly how untypical Romuald was. He was a conversus, he was a convert. He had lived a different life, and then on a very, on an impulse of the moment, the circumstances, there was a feud between two sides of the family. There were the Romualdi and the Sergi. People tended to have the same names in the Middle Ages. You find everyone, you find some monasteries. You look through the list of the monks. Everyone, there are three or four names in a community of 100. So you have John, you have Peter, you have Leo, Benedict, and that's it, and they're all the same. So you have to say, they're from so-and-so, the son of so-and-so, the grandson of so-and-so.

[93:57]

So Romuald's father was named Sergius, and Sergius's father was named Romuald, and Romuald's brother was named Sergius, and Sergius's brother was named Romuald. So it was a whole family, and everyone had the same name. Funny, and so there was this fight, and Romuald's father killed a relative, fighting probably over land or petty things, and property, and a house or something. Romuald takes this upon his conscience, which tells us something about the man, a man of very sensitive conscience, also a sense, a profound sense of solidarity in sin. I mean, he didn't do it, and yet he feels responsible. He feels that there is the burden of blood on his soul, and he has to do something about it. What did they do with murderers in the Middle Ages? Did they send them to the capital punishment?

[95:00]

No, uh-huh. There's no life imprisonment? No, 40 days, doesn't sound like very much. And life was cheap, and death was easy, especially among the nobility. Romuald rebels against this, and he takes upon himself the guilt. He takes upon himself the situation of his own fault, and he goes to the monastery to spend a night there. Penance, repentance, weeping, fasting, cold nights, sleepless nights, and so forth. And then he, from this experience, is drawn into a monastic choice. He was a conversus, and perhaps we can also call him a lay brother. I mean, he didn't enter as a priest, because, you know, he's already 20,

[96:00]

already committed a lot of sins. It might help us just to kind of imagine him, perhaps in a category which didn't exist exactly. It might help us just to kind of imagine him,

[96:10]

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