Okay, this is our third conversation on history, history of St. Romuald and his times and then of the various forms of monastic experience that grew out of his own holiness and his own activity as a reformer and an animator of monastic life. Shall we once and for all set aside the term founder because St. Benedict was not a founder except of the abbeys he founded of course. But Romuald was even less of a founder. We may call him a founder, that's kind of a generic term for a holy initiator or patron saint. He is a holy father, very much in the ancient category, the holy fathers and holy mothers. He's someone who generates

[01:01]

life rather than, you know, pouring concrete in the ground or something like that, you know, putting up buildings. He didn't put up a building. He let people put up buildings and encouraged them to put up buildings. He didn't build anything, but he gave life and that's the important thing, that's the important thing. He put life into the stone, as it were. So maybe that will make us appreciate him more if we think less in terms, he certainly didn't found anything in terms of legislation, no legislation. St. Peter Damian wrote down a kind of book of rules for Fonte Evola, but even that is more a narrative than a work of legislation, canons or rules or laws. We have to get back to the sense of narrative,

[02:03]

the sense of story. Fr. Knies, one of our, for those who don't know him or listen to this tape, Fr. Knies is a Franciscan, a conventional Franciscan here for a month or more, and gave us a homily in which he told a very delightful story. He's doing some interesting research into the theme, a new theme in theology, narrative theology. The story has theology, theology is story. I don't know much about it, but the idea intrigues me, because I think it perhaps can help us to shed new light on old truths and old values. So in addition to what I mentioned about our images of history, remember that kind of graph of the centuries from National Geographic, from this map here. This is the, what is it,

[03:04]

December issue of 1983 of the National Geographic map, the history of Europe, with all those, with a graph alongside that gives the same amount of space, the same number of millimeters or inches to the last 80 years as it does to the first 1,500 years of Christianity, Christian history. And of course, as was said, it was a matter of the greater availability of documents, perhaps a certain greater interest, but that shows perhaps a distortion of the reality of the historical past. One other thing I'd like to add to that, something that we should always keep in mind, it was kind of a presupposition in the worldview of the ancients, of the Middle Ages and of everyone really, almost, until just a couple of centuries ago. And that is, you see, we think we have what is called the myth of progress. You know, the positivistic

[04:06]

philosopher has given us this view of the world. We always think that we're doing things a little better than people used to be doing them back so many times, so many decades, so many centuries ago. So we have this image of history as climbing a hill, just climbing and climbing and climbing, and when we reach the summit, I don't know. But still, we have this image in our mind of history as a continual climb, as development. So anything recent is bound to be better than things farther back in the past. The ancients and medieval people and so forth, and even later, had, interestingly enough, the opposite view. You find this in the rule of Saint Benedict, you find it in the language of medieval hagiography. The fathers were so much better than we were, and we are just miserable beginners and we

[05:08]

don't hold a candle to them. Things are getting continually worse. It's another myth, of course. It's another way of relating to reality, which doesn't necessarily correspond to the absolute truth. Of course, here there's a lot of relativity, so maybe the truth stands in the middle, as it often does. But in any case, they often presupposed this. This was their worldview, that things as they are today are much worse than they were in times past. People are worse. I'm worse than the past monks, and so forth. I'm just going to add one thing, just a tale on this. This was especially true in Saint Romulus' time, and in the centuries immediately preceding him, because of the physical decay of what remained of the Roman Empire. There, you looked around, these grandiose buildings were all just crumbling apart. Everything was just falling apart. Then after the year 1000, you had this rebirth of towns, of city

[06:11]

life, and you had the building of new towns, and you had the communes. So there was population explosion and everything. But it was very, very easy to feel that things were just running down as kind of a collective entropy going on there. Steam was running out of humanity. Things were just going from bad to worse. And therefore, I think the sense of hope and a vitality that you find in the great saints, you find in Saint Romulus, is especially important, as a counter-proposal. Not another myth, not the myth of progress, but a counter-proposal to the sense of, you know, everything's falling apart, which they probably had in those times. I was pleased with what Brother Isaiah mentioned in, what was it, the last session of Brother David's seminar? About the, you know, every century, he said something like, every century,

[07:13]

every period in history has its strength and its weaknesses, its good points, its bad points. And that's probably the truth, and that could help us also to overcome the myths. Yes, Father? I was very excited about that, too. It's absurd, I suppose, to find out the very first person in the epitaph, which was the early fathers, who does actually say this. It must have been very, very early indeed. What interesting is, it goes on and on, as you say. Finally, because it's so fascinating, when Pergamia put together Tichosan's pieces on the banner, the opening sentences, in the old days, when people knew things, they didn't need spiritual lectures. It's exactly, exactly the pattern. But that's in the 17th century. It's just the same old beginning. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if something were to go right back to the early fathers. Yes, yes. That could be, in fact, that's very likely. It would

[08:25]

be a bit of a problem, where people no longer look to the old age as something that is in the past, but rather something of the future. I think it's something to do with the United States of America. That is part of it. This is here where it was invented. Well, not only of it, but I mean, in the last century, I quoted at least one or two of those tensions, which, in what it is, two tensions, in saying, it's how much you like to be able to sleep from time to time, keep waking up and see how much further everything has gone on. And, of course, when he talks about science as a fairytale, it doesn't mean, it doesn't mean any pejorative. It means an absolute positive. It's like Michael Clemenceau. There are two Michael Clemenceaus. He's the Clemenceau. Yes. What do you think of Clemenceau? Do you like your hair? I like it. Yes. In view of this decline of the Roman building and all that, it must have been particularly striking to have these churches that were

[09:26]

apparently not in these areas. They were somewhat. In other words, we don't know how well they were maintained in those periods, and probably not too well. I mean, the mold was starting to climb the walls, mildew, and the atmosphere would have been one of a kind of squalor. But still, the brilliance of them was shown through in a special way, especially because of the mosaics. And we'll get to the mosaics, because the thing about a mosaic is that the color you see today is the same color that the mosaicists put there 1,500 years ago. So you just get the same impression. You don't get that with any other medium, painting or anything. Sculpture, of course, I mean, it's solid, but then the nose can get knocked off or an arm might be missing. Think of the Veniste Milone or whatever, the Winged Victory. They're fragments. But the mosaics are there.

[10:31]

Yes, there is that, I'm sure, a greater sense of life and continuity in the church, especially in Ravenna. Most likely, the population explosion, the general improvement of health, the development of wider commercial activities. In other words, there was a kind of convergence of favorable factors that caused new things to start happening around that time, including monastic life. You said the communes. The communes, the term that the historians used for these medieval towns, the towns that developed with their own kind of total life. In other words, a secular monastery in a certain

[11:33]

sense. A guild system. A guild system, right, where they had a common life that was not simply the scattered life of the feudal realms, where you had the lord and his castle, and then you had the peasants cultivating plants and so forth, and so on. But you had a new concept of human life together. Not entirely new, of course, but I mean it was renewed, and people started to have their own center of life, which is not simply the feudal castle, and the relationships of feudalism, of vassalage, personal subjection to the lord. I've heard a theory, too, about why things were suddenly rebuilt, or began to be rebuilt. And that was that there was a general view that the world was simply going to end in one town. It was pretty much a conviction. When it didn't, they said, well, you better start rebuilding your stuff.

[12:34]

Yeah, yeah. Gearing up again. I'm sure the same thing's going to happen. Yeah, it's going to happen 16 years from now. 16 years and one month from now. They're going to start saying, well, it's not over yet, so let's get back to work. Another point they had to run is, of course, the people went on having this sense of the open doors, especially in the 12th century, not having to have text from Roman times coming up much at all. In fact, it became usual to refer to the monarch as a philosopher, because they thought that they were taking up the tradition of the academy, where people talked about things, and so on. And also, of course, with somebody like Andrew Bridges, they could still see. And lots of catapults from Roman buildings were incorporated into churches, and so on. So they were constantly aware of the Roman past, physically, as well as in terms of dogma. Yes. As, of course, it was true also in Rome. The Roman past was visible.

[13:36]

Also, with regard to the monk as a philosopher, the language goes back even farther, of course, as you well know, than the 12th century. And it is the language used by Bruno Querfurt when he talks about the beginning of monastic life. So, a monastery is a monastery. It's filosofari. That is the verb for it. That when you become a monk, you become a philosopher. You start philosophizing. That's the way he speaks of it. But it's the conservative philosophy as a life. As a life, as a love of wisdom, and a love of life, and a wise living, and so forth. It's a whole integral thing. And not fragmented, as ours is. But that ties in, again, with what Father Bruno says about the monastery being a school of wisdom and theology. Because here is the world of wisdom, and that's where the monastery goes on. Yes. But it's not, of course, a wisdom as a kind of distillate, a kind of cognac of existence,

[14:40]

but as life, as a total thing. In other words, you're wise when it all comes together, when you bring your whole thing together. You know? Your body, your soul, your spirit. You bring together the work, the prayer, the contemplation, and the daily round. And it's this sense of the value of the totality that, I think, is the real dominant spirit among the monastic revivers, and so forth, at this time. One thing I wanted to add, of course, you see. One thing that, strangely enough, all of the modern historical writing tends to be dominated by the myth of progress, of course. By what? By the myth of progress. In other words, even when this assumption is not enunciated, it is sometimes implied

[15:42]

or taken for granted, and sometimes to the detriment of the actual historical truth. It blinds a historian sometimes to facts when he presupposes that it took place back then, couldn't have been good, couldn't have worked. But we have an interesting expression. Have you ever heard of the High Middle Ages? I was trying to have to sit down for about five minutes whenever I read that term and think about, now what does it mean? What is high and what isn't? What is low? And high means remote. High means farther back in the past. High antiquity means remote antiquity. So you see this one little linguistic fossil that pops up in the language of historians of the other myth, of the myth of the decline, of the degeneration of humanity, so that the High Middle Ages, even though, of course, it's contradicted when they talk about it, there's the Dark Ages, you know, beginning of St. Gregory the Great, Pope Gregory the

[16:43]

Great, I mean, kaput, I mean, history is finished until you start getting back to the Renaissance, I mean, getting back to humanism and so forth. Whereas, still, they speak of that as the High Middle Ages, you know, what is it, 600 to 1100, something like that. I mean, each one has its own time frame. The language, it's curious, yeah. We ought to say that something has come down to us from the past. That's another, yeah, that's another expression, sure, in more popular parlance. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful, beautiful. Yeah, our horizon is a bit more distant, we can see a bit farther. Yeah, but it's only because we're standing on, you know, we dwarfs are on a giant surface. I think it is. He was sitting on the shoulders of the prophet Isaiah.

[17:47]

Yeah, you know, he's got the view, but Isaiah's holding him up. That is marvelous. I'll find out. Yeah. Anyway, that brings us right, yeah. There's not a lot that says that. It is true, I think. Now, that brings us around to the point, which was kind of the point of the homework. The question was vague, I don't know, in fact, I think the fact that there are a lot of people playing hooky today is probably that it kind of frightened them off or something. But the question was, looking at these three books of, art books of Ravenna, what can you say about the visual environment of St. Ronald? Now, visual, not only, I mean, what did he see? And also, think of this in terms of his own way of learning about the faith. In other words, he did not learn to read and write. He did not learn from books. And he did not learn from television either.

[18:49]

And I was thinking about this, thinking about this when I was taking my shower this morning. It just came to me, the fact that we don't know how to use our eyes. We don't know how to learn by looking. By just gaping, by just gawking at things. We don't learn by looking at things. Even those people who can't read a book anymore, they look at television and that also, it compresses it, it filters it. I mean, even if it's a color TV, it's still a small screen. And the way to reality is just so compressed. Whereas I think earlier people, things were better back then, you know? Earlier people opened their eyes, they looked at nature, they looked at the mosaics, they looked around at each other. They were much more of lookers. And they learned, they learned to learn from their eyes. Of course, from their ears too, learn by hearing.

[19:51]

Faith comes by hearing, says St. Paul, by what is heard. But still, they were much more receptive to the visual than we are. Even the television generation, I repeat, is not as receptive as St. Romuald would have been by the very fact of being born in 1950. And that is why it's so important to take into consideration the mosaics and the churches and all of Ravenna. Because if he learned his religion, he learned it from those images. Also from what the priest said in the church. There wasn't that much preaching though. There wasn't the Catholic school you went to, you got your catechism, Sister Sofronia teaches you everything. No, you didn't have that.

[20:53]

So they were very, very important. And if you get a group of children into Santo Polinari in Mogo, where you have all those, the 26 bible scenes, 26 gospel scenes, they're way up on the wall and you'd think they'd be hard to see. But you're thinking about children, they have sharp eyesight, they don't wear glasses. And so they put a lantern on the end of a long pole, and the acolyte would go along, and the priest, or the monk, would tell the story. And they'd look up, and for them it would be like the movies. But even better, even more. Because they were already so alive to what is visual. Now, what do you think? How do they grab you? What do you think they would have said to Saint Veronica? What do they say to you? These mosaics. One thing they convey is the splendor of heaven,

[21:54]

but also the intimacy of heaven, because these things are very near, and you have heaven all around you. Continuity, also. Wouldn't it be that what we do in church, what we celebrate in the mystery, is already heaven? And the communion of saints, their nearness. Can it also be the other way? The hominess, in the good sense. The hominess of heaven. That it's not alien. It's not like the planet Saturn, or something like that. It's a place for people, human beings to live. Where it's appropriate to be with your body. Where our Lord and our Lady are, and the way we all will be. Please come. We all get there. Uh-huh.

[22:57]

The colors of the enrichment, the colors of the warmth, that you just expressed that enrichment. In a moment, it draws you into it. It draws you in. And yet, without bound, it's very hard to remove it. I know. It just immediately has an impact on you. It draws you in. To breathe. Without bounding. I think it loves something that has to do with it. Yeah. So your keywords are on the one hand the warmth, which suggests that it's welcoming. It's warm. Accogliente. Accueillant. Isn't it? And then also it broadens makes your own consciousness

[23:59]

expand to infinity without bounds. Interesting that both, it's not alienating. Yes. If anyone did it in writing, he's a good boy. Please read it. Yes. I said, what strikes me is an imagery dominated by a joy of life. A joy of living. Animals, birds, flowers, trees, green lawns, jewels, crowns, stars. Though stylized, the bodies are sensuous. Adam and Princess Abraham were sacrificed as lambs. They were beautiful. Fleshed out body, as lit on in religion. It's more like carved out of wood. Not real. Incarnation of spirituality is quite big.

[24:59]

Not, however, in contrast to eschatological spirituality. And that seems important. Rather, the glory of God incarnate in creation reaches an eschatological pitch, as in Hopkins' book, the God's grandeur. The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out like shining moon should fall. A nature so transparent to God's presence in it is a vision of heaven. And even the cross is still the group's shemata, the gemmed cross, and the torturous crucifix will not appear in History 1 until long after St. Norbert's time. This is 500 years before St. Norbert, but even 500 years later there was no tortuous crucifixion of God in History 1. In a sense, monasticism is always eschatologically, yet

[25:59]

if the monks at Santa Marina in Chace live what they saw depicted in the museums of their church, it may well have been an eschatology of what divine diaphragm the entire tradition has since foraged in this time. In other words, not so much an appearance of God dropped into the world, but the world becoming transparent for the presence of God. So in terms familiar to St. Norbert, the glory of God is there and the glory of man and the life of man is the vision of God. I think it has a real bearing on monastic life I mean eschatologically in a sense that it's opposed to the incarnational aspect or is it eschatologically opposed to a super-incarnational approach. Yes.

[27:01]

Thank you. I think Father Realready has the next chapter. Because it's rather lovely to take up from there and from Sister Mary, I think. I would like to suggest it's not meant to be a humble thing. Father, could you take the machine because I want this to register. Leave this little microphone here that I have. I didn't attach it So if the light flickers as you speak that means it's going. What I would like to say in just fleshing out a bit more still what Brother David has been saying and perhaps also answering Sister Mary's problem about trying to put into words what it is you experience is that I'm very, very struck as somebody who's interested in early Christian archaeology by the absolute continuity of all these images that in fact you get

[28:03]

as Brother David's already said you get a cross which is in fact really the cross of St. John's Gospel it's a cross with the glory of God shining behind it. In fact it emerges when you look at it this is a transfiguration scene you've got Moses and Elijah on either side of a cross and this is the way of course Leo the Great is going to talk about the glory of the cross so this is in direct continuity with patristic convictions and so on and with the ordinary catechetical schools of both East and West it's completely the undivided church's tradition whether you look at these images in which the human beings are drawn up into the lambs of God and so on or you look at the enthroned statue of the Mother of God

[29:03]

it's a theological statement first and foremost the child sitting on her lap is not interested in his mother is not becoming yet interested as he will even in the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir which is about 12th century in Greece and is beginning to be paralleled also in the West at the same time these two movements are almost concurrent but first and foremost what the images in the catacombs or these mosaic images of Our Lady show is her as the Theotokos, the Mother of God the God bearer and so the son is looking towards us in his majesty whether he's giving us a blessing or not it's still there and this is terrifically a different world in which the pictures make you conscious of the theology not as something in a book but as something which immediately affects our life the transfiguration

[30:03]

is there as the mystery which matters most of all for us in our Christian living and it is so interesting then also below the transfiguration image done for us in a quite unusual way with the cross in the middle and the two prophets on either side you've then got the martyr standing very clearly depicted and this is the first conception of what holiness is it's the one who witnesses to our Lord by his blood and then of course the monks are going to remember Cyprian saying it's not our blood that God asks for but our faith so slowly the image of the confessor and of the monk is developing out of this but still before their eyes are kept those who go as far as shedding their blood in their witness to their belief in the transforming power of the incarnation and the resurrection and so on

[31:04]

this is very interesting maybe you could open up that picture yeah I was just looking for it excuse me there is a fold out because as you were talking it occurs to me but this is purely this is what we're talking about yes and the listeners to the tape will you know exactly we can see now if we take the image as a whole we've got above above the transfiguration we've got the Pantocrator the one who is Lord where the incarnate wisdom is above it all above the freeze of the apse and so on there is the Pantocrator who later on will appear always in the domes of big churches but still this is common this is the common theology the common conviction of the church that he is Lord of all which we still sing as a canticle

[32:05]

though many Christians don't think of Christ first of all as being Lord in that sense really curious I think in other words everything is really in his hand and so on yes I thought that Santa Polinaria when you were speaking was standing there as a witness but he is really standing there as an intercessor he is the witness gesture is this one which you also find in the mosaics that means witness and this means prayer that's why it makes a great difference whether at the Our Father you have your hands up like this which means prayer or some people stand like this at the Our Father that's a different attitude that means witness when you see that in the pictures it is a martyr giving witness yes while this means come down or something like that I am surprised

[33:06]

I thought I remembered him standing as a witness but he is the witness yes he is a witness he is standing ahead of us doing the same thing it's your point for those who are not familiar let me point out in detail here the Montecrato on the arch above the apse itself above the half-dome and on the two sides on each side on that same strip there are the four evangelists so there is the lion of St. Mark the ox of St. Luke the man of Matthew the eagle of John and the lower of the lambs so verging on the Montecrato the hand representing God the Father and the cloud around the jeweled cross

[34:07]

which one is which which one is which Moses and Elijah it is the transfiguration what is the patronal title of the holy hermitage of Camaloli and practically every other hermitage around the world the transfiguration hear that sister dog San Salvador is the title of a church dedicated to the transfiguration the basilica of the so called St. John St. John is the patron of the baptistry but the title of the pope's cathedral is the Holy Savior that is the transfiguration of Rome's cathedral anyway that is the transfiguration and then the saint one little detail which I find just fun

[35:08]

is how they misspelled his name they left out one L I noticed that because they are already speaking this is in the 6th century 500 they are already speaking a kind of Italian degenerate Latin not Apollinaris but Apollinaris so they are already moving towards the vernacular and this is the church even if it is a monastic church it is still a church that speaks to the people this is a marvelous way another footnote to what Brother David said Brother David's statement ended with a sentence of irony now that is admirable I have struggled with some of these I had a tremendous struggle to produce just one page it took hours because the sentences are very complicated but what these mosaics remind you of is that this theology can be communicated through the eye even if you can't read difficult sentences as they could by that time

[36:09]

nobody could write like Arrhenius at that period but they can still see what Arrhenius beneath in front of them that's the really impressive thing it's no use when people say to make it simple the ears won't make it simple to give you something to see and not a TV TV is not going to help TV is an epic book I don't know whether it's appropriate to tell this but when I was saying this I was thinking of a lovely experience I had with a young American who was with me at Oxford and we both of us had the privilege of being privately taught by a very distinguished expert in Chinese art William Cone and one day we arrived to a class in which he had on a shelf six examples of oxblood glazed and the student

[37:09]

said to me afterwards isn't it extraordinary when I came into this room I thought I was looking at six red vases now I can see every single one is different so in other words a good teacher can make you see we're used to flicking the pages over books or your example from the TV where everything flicks you hardly have time to know what colour anything is but when you really look as you had to look in these churches there was nothing else so exciting to see the impression is enormously vivid and lasting it goes right down to the depths of your being and it calls out everything you've got to respond with yes and if you have faith this is what nourishes your faith this is what nourished Robert's faith the meaning of his faith had nourished him made a monk out of him because it was the night he spent with the old lay brother kneeling and gazing on the steps that gave him the conviction that God wanted him to be a monk

[38:10]

yes and it was looking at one little one little etymological footnote does everyone know that the verb to see and the verb to say are closely linked together the verb to say is the causative form of the verb to see I make you see when I say the Latin dicere dic is connected with dic meaning Greek to show and so to say means to make this goes back to the roots of all of the Indo-European languages in Sanskrit there's different words but the convergence of these two concepts is seemingly important may we make one last point also connected with what Father David said in relation to perhaps what later commodities might have thought about these things is that of course not only is the cross still without the crucified figure on it

[39:10]

but even when we get a couple of centuries later into the life of St. Francis the cross that folks of St. Francis is not a devotional object of at all the kind that most people would expect the crucified one to be he's still very dispassionate in this terrible position looks like an icon he's much more like an icon and his eyes are wide open he has a hint of a smile exactly he has he still remains although he's now depicted on the cross he still remains Lord but it's only in the later Middle Ages he becomes somebody with whom you feel compassionate let me add a footnote to that in a passage yes oh I'm sorry let me add a footnote to that in a passage which I hope I can let me put this on point I'm going to be quoting from a delightful little book called Everyday Life in Medieval Times by Marjorie Rowling and Eric mentioned this last time

[40:12]

and I did find it, we have it here and it's not all I mean certain things have to be added and modified to refer it to the Italian scene because she's talking very much about France and Britain and much less about Italy but certain things are just wonderful here with regard to what Father Aylward has just said this is in a chapter called Church Builders and Artists individual artists also defied the conservatism of the Church and made changes in traditional forms now before we think about conservatism and traditionalism conservatism means the remaining part of this the vision of the absolute that's what he's talking about but the case of Tiedemann a German carver shows how seriously the matter of ecclesiastic discipline was taken by the Church authorities in 1306 Tiedemann had made a crucifix for a London church

[41:14]

which was, quote, wrongly carved with a cross piece quite contrary to the true representation of the cross to which the indiscreet populace flock in crowds as to a true crucifix which it certainly is not whence we see great peril for their souls it was not a true crucifix why? because it represented a dead, agonizing Christ that's the point it could not be a true crucifix because it represented photographically the physical condition of the suffering Jesus whereas the true crucifix always proclaims the resurrection at least for the conservative tradition of the times the bishop ordered that Tiedemann must surrender the bond for 23 pounds which the rector of the church had given him he also had to carry away the crucifix secretly and without scandal before dawn or after dark into some other diocese meantime he must take a solemn oath that henceforth he would never neither offer nor make for sale such, quote, deformed crucifixes

[42:16]

in our diocese of London okay, continues Marjorie Rubley perhaps an earlier case brought against a certain Spanish craftsman against certain Spanish craftsmen in the late 13th century 1200 and something may explain this matter of deformed crucifixes Bishop Thuy accused the men of, quote painting or carving ill-shapen images of saints in order that by gazing on them the devotion of Christian folk may be turned to loathing in derision and scorn of Christ's cross in derision and scorn of Christ's cross they carve images of our Lord with one foot laid over the other so that both are pierced by a single nail thus striving to annul men's faith in the Holy Cross capital H, capital C and the traditions of the sainted fathers by super introducing these novelties end quote in the earliest crucifixes the figure was draped and the feet separately nailed why? because, well, he's standing

[43:18]

only during the 13th century did it gradually become customary to omit draperies and portray the ankles crossed, whereby one nail could be used instead of two which probably was what happened, but, you know, that's not the point, but so important was tradition that artists who tried to introduce novelties were often at first penalized, as was Didemann nevertheless tradition did change from century to century, not to say that what came later was reprehensible but certainly in those times it was seen by the people who were most attached to the early Christian vision of the cross and the paschal mystery, for them it was something that was pretty far out and very dangerous here Marjorie Rowling on page 158 and 159 have two contrasting things she has a crucifix which she says is of the 11th century probably very late in the 11th century which is the first crucifix with the crucified Lord 11th century, and on the other

[44:20]

hand she has on the other facing page a 14th century plague cross why start representing the dead or the agonizing Jesus, because people were dying and agonizing, and I think that perhaps is what is positive then about this new imagery of the paschal, simply say to tell people the only thing you can tell them is that Christ also went through this so that later we can say looking back on both both have their meaning, both have their value but certainly the earlier vision of the paschal mystery is without question more complete and more coherent with the liturgy and really with the gospel this is one way of approaching it but I think it's perhaps more a pre-evangelization than true evangelization in my opinion, you can disagree if you wish but anyway, the contrast here is remarkable because in the 11th century here, he has his eyes open

[45:21]

his feet are standing you know, separate whereas the 14th century crucifix has this Y-shaped cross arms you know, with the arms way up he is emaciated his feet are crossed his head is bowed down twisted down he is dead so you see the different view, even of the gospel that will come when people contemplate this as not only the difference between these two crucifixes, but in St. Ronald's time, he didn't know what to do with the crucifix they didn't exist, I'm sorry, they didn't exist in the 10th century did they? They didn't I think it's interesting that it didn't come out of this commission in the nations of the 5th century in the world and yet, during the persecutions, you would think it would have come out of the New Testament because that was written in 22nd

[46:22]

and yet, it's still here they're trying to resurrect it that was what they had, that was what kept them that was what kept them going I think it's interesting, someone was talking about something must have happened where the sensitivity, the consciousness we are talking about the revelation you have the picture no more and then, turning to the refuge in Christ well, it could also be this, that let me just repeat the phrase that Sister Mary used in case it wasn't audible on the tape that something happened in the meantime, and that's true but I think part of what happened must have been that during all the persecutions it was the church and the community of believers that was glorious and united with the glory of Christ over against the bad world that was persecuting them while in the Middle Ages I don't know

[47:23]

it was the church that was corrupt it was the people themselves that were corrupt the church was then the world and so there was no longer this glorified Christ over against us but the Christ whom we saw daily was the crucified Christ somehow like that there was no longer within the world that reference point over against the glorified Christ that was before people's eyes represented by the church was himself suffering do you remember the crucifixion the children's crucifixion it wasn't just if it were only the plague but it was the crucifixion it was the children's crucifixion it was even the beginning of the inquisition at that time I think in the 12th century 13th century yes yes I think that's true what I was going to say

[48:26]

what did happen in the meantime the division east and west it came to a head not that 1054 is you know it's an absolute before and after ADBC but it's still a the century following is the century in which the unity of Catholic tradition falls apart we're not denying of course that the true faith was still found in Rome that we should remain united to the successor of St. Peter pick me up it's recording ok this is our fourth meeting the last time you remember we had those of you who were present we had a very good very lively conversation about the mosaics of Ravenna about the kind of visual environment of St. Romuald and what kind of formation

[49:27]

it might have given him in the Christian faith what kind of Christianity was instilled into Romuald not so much by formal catechism although some lessons he must have had somewhere along the line but especially by his participation in the life of the local church and especially his attendance and services in these great churches of Ravenna and the kind of spirituality that we saw there was a very positive spirituality where the theology of creation was deeply linked with the mysteries of the resurrection and of the transfiguration this kind of union of heaven and earth and the sense of the church the sense of the liturgical assembly as a kind of a heaven on earth we have said a few things about history in general what does history mean

[50:28]

for us I've just discovered a little quotation from Panikkar he's talking about it was for a commemoration ten years after the death of Abhishekta Nanda Henri Le Sault who was the co-founder of Satchitananda Ashram where Fr. B. Griffiths is now and Panikkar says quote, man needs historical perspective to recognize true values and true greatness this has become especially true of today when mass media and propaganda can inflate almost anything into uncommon proportions we require the sifting power of history for clear vision, end quote isn't that a good thought there, he's contrasting history, sense of history, knowledge of history consciousness Maru's emphasis on knowledge or consciousness of the human past, he's insisting on this as contrasted to

[51:30]

the mass media and propaganda this is not to condemn them totally of course but still we need the sense of history to be able to sift out the chaff or the wheat from the chaff today I'd like to say a few words about the education of St. Robin this might sound like a provocative title, perhaps it is a little provocative because perhaps we have an image of St. Robin as an uneducated person there's one little point which came to my attention, it's amazing how we can know details of history and not connect them together, now I had heard of this famous, brilliant mind of the Middle Ages, one of the greatest minds

[52:31]

of the Middle Ages, Gerbert of Aurillac, he was a French monk and teacher and professor, okay, Gerbert and then I knew about Pope Sylvester II I didn't connect that they're the same person but not only was this the case that probably happened to you but I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, that I just hadn't connected them, but the one connection which simply floored me I hadn't realized in 998 when Otto III made Romuald abbot of Placé by the same act he made this Gerbert Archbishop of Ravenna you see what Otto III was doing he was putting the greatest mind of the 10th century on the Archbishopal throne of Ravenna and he was putting, installing Romuald as abbot of Placé which was the most prestigious, I suppose the most important monastery of

[53:32]

Ravenna-Placé at that time certainly the most prestigious with the age of its foundation and the burial place of Sinapolis but you can see there, although of course this is not to say that Romuald was of the same category of person as Gerbert he wasn't a scholar he wasn't a teacher, he wasn't a professor but neither was he a pious ignoramus now Otto III was a very wise, very intelligent man, young man and how old was he? He was 19 at that time, but he was in his full vigor as far as his own political ideas and his own concept of the renewal of the Roman Empire as a Christian family, community including all of Europe he certainly saw that these two nominations somehow converged and somehow were linked together

[54:33]

so it's not accidental, then of course a year later Romuald renounced the office of abbot and the Pope died Pope Gregory V, so here was an opportunity for Otto III to nominate the Pope and who did he nominate? Gerbert so Gerbert became Sylvester II Sylvester II was Pope until 1003, which means he consecrated Bruno Crerford Archbishop and sent him on his missions to Eastern Europe so you see the connection there with Romuald, Romuald's disciples Otto, Ravenna and so forth, things come together that are sometimes surprising but anyway, this association of Romuald with Gerbert suggests that Romuald was also in his own way a well-formed, well-educated person different kind of education but solid not the

[55:37]

professor type, not the intellectual but certainly wise and certainly deep in his understanding of what was the teaching that he was called upon to give as an abbot if Romuald was not a learned man perhaps I may be excused for playing with words and say he was a learning man he was a seeker, what do you seek? It's the first question of Jesus in the Gospel of John and it is the question that Saint Benedict asks of the novice well of course he is seeking God and he also has a zeal for the work of God the Holy Liturgy prayer and humiliations all of this perhaps closely linked with the formation of a spiritual

[56:38]

and even intellectual culture not to put things out of order but simply to reaffirm the total formation of the human person as the goal of monastic life as of any decent form of existence anyway if not learned he was certainly a learning man he actively sought and received an education appropriate to his state in life and to his own personality which was anything but narrow or obscurantist a person who does not seek to understand does not challenge his own convictions learning involves also unlearning it involves recognizing one's ignorance one's need to learn the only way such a person goes who doesn't recognize the need to learn is into narrowness of mind and Bromfield had nothing of that as far as we know from all that is

[57:40]

handed down to us about him now Peter Damien we all know about Peter Damien about his complaints against the learned of his time Peter Damien the rhetorician and philosopher could vent his rage on the worldly use and abuse of rhetoric and philosophy but his was the sophisticated rage of a well endowed and if anything over educated intellectual you might say he had the equivalent of three PhDs Peter Damien's education was much different from Romuels but they had this in common a desire for a knowledge which transforms itself into wisdom and which bears fruit in the kind of actions that transform human hearts and human society the indivisibility of knowledge wisdom and life was of course taken for granted in all pre-renaissance cultures the ancient east as well as medieval times

[58:42]

this common sense of learning as the way to living the good life how you define a good life of course depends upon your goals and your whole world view but the principle was commonly shared if anything education in the middle ages was all too practical and concrete it wasn't entirely theoretical or lofty intellectual or kind of you know hair splitting and so forth it was very practical and concrete in many ways and except for the peasantry education in the middle ages was extremely detailed since every aspect and every moment of life had to be minutely regulated when not disrupted by war or some other catastrophe which were fairly frequent but anyway

[59:42]

when not disrupted daily life in the middle ages had a formality and regularity about it that we 20th century Americans would find hard to bear even at the most solemn liturgical service or civil ceremony life according to precise rules was regarded as reasonable that is as proper to the nature of rational animals St. Bruno has the expression when he speaks to St. Romuald as the father of reasonable permits who live according to a law, according to a rule and he says the father of reasonable permits, the father of humane permits you might say, those who live not according to their own fancies or kind of a brutal exaltation of the will, pure will but according to

[60:43]

a structured mode of existence which has harmony which is balanced where discretion is the golden rule discretion so living according to precise rules was reasonable, that is proper to the nature of rational animals, to the human being human nature, and yet precisely because the normal conduct of human existence held no surprises the general tenor of life was in our terms quite relaxed at least I think so we have perhaps, we have this romantic image in the Middle Ages we have this romantic image you know, 19th century revival of medievalism and so we don't see it was a hard life it was a life which limited people to a great degree, perhaps because they needed this in order to feel a sense of security, a sense of order

[61:44]

a sense of rationality but at the same time and I noticed this even living in Italy, you know, it's not that different from America, but even there where I could see, you know, that the attitude very often towards a rather structured existence rules and everything was much more relaxed than ours would be, we have to eliminate the rules in order to be ourselves, whereas perhaps other cultures, other people find they're able to, you know, set up this very rigid structure and then relax within it you see, and this helps them relax because they feel, well, there are these boundaries here but as long as I'm inside the boundaries I can just, you know, be very laid back anyway, the concept of what was a reasonable way of living was rather different from ours I think so I kind of conceive of medieval life as all in one sense very restricted, very rule-bound and the others had rather relaxed

[62:44]

everyone knew their place and kept it everyone was supposed to know all the rules and observe them the purpose of education was to learn these rules, you know learn good manners we sometimes lack that Bruno of Querfurt and Peter Damian seemed to suggest that Romuald was regarded by many of his contemporaries as an outrageous rule-breaker and yet precisely because medieval society was so rule-bound, it had to make room for personalities like Romuald's in effect the category of rule-breaker was reserved for saints and when authentic sanctity was recognized it made it possible for Romuald and other misfits to fit into a broader scheme of things insofar as medieval people were Christians they had to recognize the perennial prerogatives of God and the Holy Spirit

[63:44]

and hence make room for the divine exception miracles, the suspension of nature's rules, conferred an exceptional person's holiness and verified his or her behavior as obedience to a higher rule Saint Romuald did not begin his life even his monastic life as a wonder-worker and not even as a saint as a child of his time he made every effort to learn his lessons to keep the rules, to conform to society's expectations he broke out of the pattern only when he began to taste a freedom that few men and almost no women of his time enjoyed I have emphasized that before the experience of freedom which was given to Romuald when he decided to enter a monastery at the old age of 20 years which was fairly rare, although he does meet another conversus in the monastery

[64:46]

a classe perhaps an older man perhaps even a relative, an old uncle or something who had retired to the monastery to weep for his sins or simply to expire quietly Saint Romuald was born into the lower Lombard aristocracy of Ravenna a member of the military caste but not as some hagiographies have claimed a duke, in other words the term duke is used to indicate perhaps some level of nobility he had connections his family was important in the city and therefore his choice of entering the monastery was a problem for the monastery because here all sorts of political consequences came about, but what kind of education did he get just by being born into that kind of a family there was no need for him to learn to read and write this can be taken for granted in fact it was even perhaps thought of

[65:49]

as below the level of the nobleman to be involved in these things, although not necessarily but in all events, the important thing was he learned how to ride a horse use a sword bow and arrow there's a phrase in Saint Peter Damian whenever he girded himself to the study of hunting this is not a good translation but the Studium Venatium anyway, the expression sounds like he's learning how to hunt so whenever he would, actually the Studium here means attention to engaging in the activity of hunting there was intentness implied in his going hunting and whenever he found a pleasant place in the woods there in the pine woods around Ravenna, he would say oh what a wonderful place for hermits how wonderful

[66:51]

it would be for hermits to live in these recesses of these woods how could they how well they would be able to avoid all the noise of secular affairs well this for Saint Peter Damian means of course, aha, he was already felt this calling to the hermitage but anyway he thought of this and then went on to hunt for whatever he was looking for, I don't know, I suppose they had deer woods there so he learned the use of sword, he learned to ride a horse and all and various other things I'm sure he also learned I suppose the seasons of the year and a certain amount of manners of how to behave when you meet the hierarchy of society

[67:53]

and if you are invited to dinner it's a nobleman, you have to do a certain thing in a certain way and so forth and so on this book which I will be quoting from time to time Marjorie Rowling, Everyday Life in Medieval Times, has a chapter entitled Schools and Scholars and she has a quotation here from a French romance she doesn't give a date or a footnote or anything like that, I'm supposing it's talking about the 13th or 14th century entitled Ayole for the name of the young man about whom it's written and it describes the ideal education for a young aristocrat it says, his father made him ride through wood and meadow to learn how to trot and ride a horse. Ayole knew about the courses of the stars and the changes of the moon Moses the hermit schooled him in letters, writing and speaking both Latin and French interesting isn't it?

[68:54]

So this young aristocrat you know, learning to learn a little bit of letters he goes to school to a hermit and doesn't that sound rather like Saint Romuald going up to Venice after spending a couple of years in the monastery in Classia and not really finding what he was looking for he goes up to learn something from Marino the hermit and he also learns how to read at least that's what Peter Damian says anyway, what is the story of Romuald's entry into the monastery you all know it more or less well anyway Sergius his father gets involved in a duel and Saint Romuald takes this guilt upon himself and goes into the monastery to Duke Pence and then he has he meets this old who says what will you give me if I show you a vision of Saint Apollinare

[69:56]

and Romuald says I shall leave the world, I shall join the monastery and so he shows Romuald has this vision and afterwards he says well I don't know whether I'm quite ready for this so the old conversist the old monk, my brother begins to insist vehemently that Romuald fulfill his promise so Romuald says well once more, let me see him once more and then maybe I'll enter the monastery well he does and Romuald undergoes this process of conversion and prays before the altar and then one time, one day we don't know how long this process took we think in terms of just one week to the next it probably took several months for him to come to this decision to enter the monastery so he goes and walks into chapter one morning after prime while the monks are sitting around and he kneels before them and says I want to become a monk, let me join and the abbot and the community

[70:56]

are very disturbed because of the political implications they're concerned that they are afraid of the hardness of his father his father is a tough guy powerful and so they don't want to let him join but then there is the bishop bishop Onestus of Ravenna who once was the abbot and this by the way is one way of dating the entry of Romuald into the monastery because this Onestus was archbishop of Ravenna from 971 to around 982 so certainly it was after 971 that Romuald entered the monastery we suppose 972-973 but the archbishop says alright and gives his approval and the monks to accept him and then Romuald enters the monastery and of course he comes to to this monastic way of life in all of the first fervor of a convert

[71:56]

and he throws himself into the life with a kind of extreme zeal and eagerness and begins to be tormented by my thoughts it says here, St. Peter Damian is tormented by these thoughts now St. Peter Damian presents Romuald in a golden light but at the same time this kind of inner torment, this kind of inner conflict projecting outward upon others his own insecurity in his vocation we wouldn't have to say this I think to be honest with what can logically be assumed on the basis of human psychology and so he begins to complain about these monks, some of them are not living up to the rule and he shows them here it's written in the rule you're supposed to do this and you're not doing it and naturally they get mad at it and so it says, St. Peter Damian says that they were at a certain point

[72:59]

they couldn't put up with him anymore so they conspired the lax members of the community conspired to kill him but Romuald is warned about this so he stops insisting so much on certain things like getting up early and praying out loud out in the terrace outside the dormitory because that's what he was doing he was going outside and getting up a little earlier and going out there and saying his prayers out loud with his arms raised to heaven wonderful fervor but certainly disturbing to the other monks who went to sleep so all of this is fit into a very typical literate pattern which finds many lives of monastic saints where they're threatened with murder and this goes back to the Old Testament, it goes back to popular stories and everything that St. Benedict you know, his first foundation they tried to kill him, they tried to poison him anyway he's still

[74:00]

he's not able to find any rest for his soul, he hears about this hermit called Marino near Venice actually north of Venice, north of the Venetian Lagoon, the two rivers that come together there according to local oral tradition, it's a place called Torre di Caligo and according to local tradition that's where Marino and Romuald were, and so he goes and joins up with Marino now Marino had many virtues says Peter Damian, he was a very simple man, very sincere very pure of heart but not very well educated he had not been taught no one had taught him how to live the hermitical life but he did what he could according to the impulse of his good will no, he had this way of living that in all the seasons of the year

[75:01]

it didn't distinguish between Lent and Easter or anything like that, through all the seasons of the year for three days in the week, and that would be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, most likely could be Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday but there's this thing about Saturday fasting which Romuald doesn't do until later, so that it might have been the Greek custom of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday okay, and then he on these fast days he would eat a half a bucella bread a wheel you know, flat, dry which could easily be kept for even months they have them in Sardinia they have this big flat wheel of bread very dry, very hard so he'd break it in half one for him, one for Romuald and then a handful of fava beans the beans would be dried beans, and then they'd soak them in water probably in salt water from the lagoon and eat them, they wouldn't have to cook them and then on the other days, the other three days

[76:03]

on Sunday you don't fast, of course, everyone knows that then the other three days of the week he would take a little wine and some cooked dish with discreet sobriety he'd set the salter, complete salter every day not that he said, the verb here is kaneva so he was singing he was singing the psalms and he had this kind of disorderly way of doing it that he would just walk out of his cell sing at the top of his lungs and go over to this tree there and sit down, and Romuald would sit down in front of him and they would sing together a few psalms 20, 30, 40 psalms and then they'd get up and walk over to another tree and sit down there and sing some more psalms, that's the way they were doing it now Romuald, it says here Peter Damon says was idiota when he left the world idiota doesn't mean idiot it means he spoke only his own native dialect

[77:05]

which was probably something rather close to the first verse we have in a Romance language which is called the Riddle of Verona and was written by a scribe who was and the riddle goes like this, just to let you hear what it sounds se pareba boves, albo versorio de neba, alba pratalia araba nigro seme seminaba if you know any Latin, you know this isn't Latin, but it isn't Spanish, it isn't Italian either, it's something in between so anyway, he he yoked up his oxen, he held on to the white plow he plowed the white field and seeded it with black seed, what is the riddle about? it's about the the scribe the white plow the boves the oxen are his fingers the white plow is the quill pan, the white field is the sheet of of sheepskin

[78:07]

and the black seed is the ink that he seeded that he sowed in the furrows of his white field that's the earliest verse we have in any Romance language, I think it's from the 8th century if I'm not mistaken 700 and something so very early, you know, Latin tended to become a kind of dialect and then became the new language so at that point Romulus was speaking I'm sure some kind of language which was no longer recognizable in any way as Latin, so he left the world with the knowledge only of his own dialect, of his own native tongue it was kind of Romance tongue, whatever it was and therefore he had to learn Latin now where did he learn Latin? here it says that Romulus, when he opened the psalter he was just barely able to pronounce the verses of the psalms syllable by syllable like

[79:08]

the second graders in elementary school, you know, learning to sound out the words the way they used to teach it in my day he was just barely able to do this and the concentration, keeping his eyes fixed on the book gave him such, you know, such headaches he just, it really worried him very much and every time he'd make a mistake Marino would slap him on the, you know, had a stick in his hand and give him a whack on the ear, you know Marino, right-handed, you know, would slap him on the left side of his face and in his left ear spare the rod and spoil the child this is the way they taught in those days this is the way they taught at school kind of hard for us to imagine, but anyway as the story continues, Romulus one day compelled by necessity humbly says master, if you wish begin to hit me

[80:11]

on the right side please, because now I am deaf I've almost lost my hearing in the left ear, and after seeing such patience Marino modified his discipline I have one problem here with this story, and that is it seems rather unlikely for me personally to suppose that that Romuald didn't after three years in a monastery didn't know the psalms by heart. It just seems unlikely that he would not know the psalms by heart. It seems somewhat unlikely that he would not have learned at least how to pronounce something on the page. It was part of the program of the novice and the role of Saint Benedict you know, that after vigils, after the nocturnes the younger

[81:12]

monks who needed to work on their Latin studied the lessons and so there was a class in reading the pronouncing the lessons for the divine office. So certainly something of this he must have been given in the monastery. It could be that he wasn't there long enough really to learn it well. It wasn't that he was thick-headed. It's obvious from his life that he was an intelligent man. So there's another thing, and this is just an hypothesis which I put in a footnote, but I've often wondered if maybe this wasn't a Greek psalter rather than a Latin psalter because it says of Marino about whom we know very little. He's only mentioned here. He's not mentioned in the accounts for instance of the journey of the Doge Peter Orseolo with Abbott Gari and John Gattinigo and John Morosini to the monastery of St. Michael, Quigsan. It doesn't say anything

[82:12]

about Marino, but then later on it says that Marino went to Apulia, southern Italy, near where Father General comes from. And there he was killed by Saracen pirates. He might have been a native of Apulia. That's not impossible. And if so, he might very well have been Greek-speaking because there was a very large Greek population. This goes back, of course, to pre-Christian times. It was called Magna Graecia, southern Italy and Sicily. And so it could have been a Greek psalter. And the difficulty here is not because Romuald didn't know Latin, he didn't know Greek. Well, Greek letters look something like Latin, and sometimes they don't. It looks like a P, but it's an R. And other things like that, that he was having difficulty making out. That is impossible. I can't be sure. I wouldn't even insist on it. But in all events, there is

[83:13]

something interesting here. This is a picture of how Romuald began to learn. Any questions? Any comments? Yes. Right.

[84:17]

That is a possibility. Here is someone who is able to think beyond what is given to him. He doesn't take things for granted. He is eager to see new possibilities for himself and for others. That's a good point. He is eager to get the feeling which evidently they gave up. They were extraordinarily inquisitive. I think that certainly proves in Romuald, this inquisitiveness. It was different certainly from, I think, various kinds of inquisitiveness, which was more systematic. It's a mental discipline.

[85:17]

But to reduce Romuald's experience first in the monastery and then with Marino as pure asceticism, without the concern to learn something, I think that is something that we need to round out. For us, it would be a frightful distraction to have to learn your Latin while you're supposed to be praying songs, singing. And yet, that conflict didn't arise so much. What would you... This is something that Chris and I thought to put on the board before, but perhaps we could suggest this as a question to take with us and bring

[86:20]

some kind of prepared feedback. If you want to write it down, that's great. More the merrier. And share it. And that is, what would you like to learn from Romuald? What question would you like to ask him? Of course, we can't go and ask him. But maybe we can interrogate the sources and interrogate what we can know about the society, the medieval society of his time, in order to understand somewhat of his, something about his own background. Something about what he probably communicated to those who associated with him or followed him in the monastic life. Does anything come to your mind right now? I have been able to do this, of course, with more than a few documents. Even to have a look at the kind of done things

[87:21]

that one might consider. You see, I don't mean to say that one may list the actual possibilities, but it does, I think, enormously help to have a kind of physical image of the works of Romuald. Have you seen any today of the psalters? 10th century psalters? No, I honestly have not. Well, they can, but they are slightly large. I wouldn't be surprised. Certainly it must have been a manageable book if it went from tree to tree. It says they sat face to face, each one had his own book. Actually, that suggests something more, because books were hard to come by. Here's Marino, he has his own book and Romuald has his book. Of course, Romuald might have brought his book with him. But even so, to have two books is already the beginning of a library

[88:22]

in those days, right? So, that again suggests kind of a picture here. The period of most intense study was, of course, after Romuald went with Gary and Peter Orseolo and the others from Venice to the Abbey of St. Michael of Cuixa. And they certainly did. And this, because part of Gary's journey was with the purpose of collecting manuscripts and collecting books. He went to the Holy Land, he was interested in gathering things for his monastery, monastery library, perhaps even, well, certainly relics. He is supposed to have gotten the crib from the manger of Bethlehem.

[89:22]

So, the monastery of St. Michael was also dedicated, it was called the Monastery of the Crib of the Lord. Kind of an incarnation priory. Anyway, he brought relics, perhaps other interesting items, set up a little museum there, and books, of course. St. Peter Damian mentions two specific moments of reading, of study in his stay there in Cuixa. One, he says, Romuald was once reading a book about the life of the fathers, and he saw that they would fast throughout the whole week, every day, and then on Saturday and Sunday they would take a little food and be more relaxed, and modify the rigor of their fast.

[90:25]

So, this idea of fasting for five days in a row, and then on Saturday and Sunday, lightening the burden of their fasting. So, then Peter Damian links to this, the story of Peter Arcelo coming to Romuald and saying, Holy Father, I am too fat, and I've had too easy a life, I can't stand to fast on just one half of a loaf of bread. Give me a little bit more. So he gave him another quarter of a loaf of bread, so he could survive. And then in the next chapter, Peter Damian speaks about Romuald reading another time, again, what St. Sylvester, the bishop of the city of Rome, Pope St. Sylvester I, at the time of Constantine, wrote about the propriety of fasting on Saturdays. Now that was a big thing for Peter Damian, and he wrote a book about that, that it's okay to fast on Saturday, you have this tradition

[91:26]

in the Western Church, and St. Sylvester approves it, and therefore you can go ahead and fast on Saturday. But perhaps he's just projecting back on Romuald what he himself was concerned about in his practice. The Eastern practice always observed Saturday as a kind of a feast along with Sunday. And this comes up also in the life of St. Nilo of Rosano, who is from southern Italy from Calabria, but a Greek monk, founder of Grotta Ferrata near Rome. His life overlapped with St. Romuald's, and they did connect through the contact with the court of Otto III. But anyway, St. Nilo of Rosano visiting Monte Cassino at one time gives them a conference, you know, on how we do things in the Greek monasteries. And it says the monks were delighted to hear this, were fascinated to hear about these different observances, and they compared one another's observances, and specifically the question of the Saturday fast. And they recognized

[92:26]

that it's good for each one to follow his tradition, but that there can be accepted differences among the faithful and the unity of the church. And that is a very interesting thing. When I heard that, what struck me was that perhaps Peter might be trying to show how roundabout he was, coming little by little to discover how he was really being called to respond. You get the impression that he is learning as he's going, as you said. And at the point they were at then, he was even so, reading the patterns, to ensure that there was a sense of trust that he had once in contemplating what had been learned through the patterns. And I think at the same time, he's showing his openness to change a decision when he sees that man is not always there to change it.

[93:32]

If indications were there to change something, it seems important I think, to allow for that. In other words, I have a little difficulty in accepting that Peter Damian is projecting his own, and how saying this is roundabout. No, what I meant is that specific question of the Saturday Fast. Since this was obviously a concern of Peter Damian, and this is just the way they wrote, you see, in those days. It's just normal for him to do this. It wasn't anything false or anything disrespectful to the memory of Romuald, but simply in the nature of the way they would write in those days. But that's not the important thing. I think you have mentioned, you know, put your finger on the real important message which is contained here, other than whether you should fast Saturday or not, or Thursday. But the real thing here is

[94:33]

that Romuald went through this process of discernment, of study, in order to discern his own life. It wasn't the book for itself, the information for its own value, simply to know well, at this time they did it in this way, and then at a later time they did it in another way. It can be useful knowledge. I mean, it's important. Some people should, you know, study and gain that kind of information. But Romuald's concern was to from his learning to gain discernment upon his own life, upon his own way of life, his own vocation, to practice what he read in a concrete way. And that he certainly did. This willingness to change, to question himself, I think is a real characteristic which emerges, you know, through the literary genre and the rhetoric of the medieval writings, and makes us feel very close to

[95:35]

St. Romuald. Makes him a very very beautiful and attractive figure for our own life. There is another reference to Romuald's reading of the Fathers in The Life of the Five Brothers. We will be getting to that a little later, because we want to follow more or less a timeline here. So, where Bruno of Cranford begins to talk about John Gradinigo, who was one of the Venetians, you know, one of the associates of Peter Orsello, who went to and who was most likely older than Romuald. After the death of Gaudi in 998, same year Romuald was nominated abbot classe, after the death of Abbot Gaudi, John Gradinigo left Cuisin and went to Monte Cassino. Monte Cassino, which at that time

[96:37]

was in the process of reform, renewal, and set up a monastic cell, an aramidical cell near the abbey, and was in high esteem by the people and by the monks. And then he would always say, Romuald is the greatest hermit of our time, and he's the real master. Well, you know, everything I tell you, you know, the people would come to him, you know, advise him this, and then there was Benedict of Benevento, who would become one of the five martyrs. Benedict, you know, went to and stayed in his cell and learned from him, and he was amazed because here was this man, this venerable monk, venerable hermit, man of great virtue, of great gentleness, great humility, who said, oh, I can't, I don't teach anything except what Romuald taught me. And Romuald did not teach what he, something that he made up in his own mind, but what he learned from the fathers and their teachings and the institutes. Generally

[97:38]

alluding to Cassian or to Peter Potten and so forth. There is this affirmation that it was not something that Romuald was interested in inventing, but rather in bringing to life something that he found in the tradition to which he attached himself. And that, I think, is very important. Even in understanding what we can and should do with what we can learn about Saint Romuald himself. We can be in a similar position. Just to have information about him, I suppose it certainly is useful. But the important thing is to move from our knowledge of his, of what he did, to understanding what his way of life can mean for us today. We are, of course, concerned with not enslavishly reproducing any given form of

[98:39]

life, but of discerning the spirit of it.

[98:41]

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