Saint Romuald
Abbot
Born	c. 950 Ravenna
Died	19 June 1027 Val di Castro
Honored in	Roman Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church
Feast	19 June 7 February (General Roman Calendar, 1595-1969)

Saint Romuald (c. 950– traditionally 19 June, c. 1025/27)^[1] was the founder of the Camaldolese order and a major figure in the eleventh-century "Renaissance of eremitical asceticism".^[2]

According to the vita by Peter Damian,^[3] written about fifteen years after Romuald's death,^[4] Romuald was born in Ravenna, in northeastern Italy, to the aristocratic Onesti family. His father was Sergius degli Onesti and his mother was Traversara Traversari. As a youth, according to early accounts, Romuald indulged in the pleasures and sins of the world common to a tenth-century nobleman. After watching his father, Sergius, kill an opponent in a duel, however, the 20-year old Romuald was devastated, and fled to the Abbey of Sant'Apollinare in Classe. After some indecision, Romuald became a monk there. Led by a desire for a stricter way of life than he found in that community, three years later he withdrew to become a hermit on a remote island in the region, accompanied solely by an older monk, Marinus, who served as his spiritual master.

Romuald apparently having gained a reputation for holiness, the Doge of Venice, Pietro I Orseolo, accepted his advice to become a monk, abdicated his office, and fled in the night to Catalonia to take the monastic habit. Romuald and his companion, Marinus, accompanied him there, establishing a hermitage near the Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa, at that time in the county of Barcelona, which Orseolo entered.

In his youth Romuald became acquainted with three major schools of western monastic tradition. Sant'Apollinare in Classe was a traditional Benedictine monastery under the influence of the Cluniac reforms. Marinus followed a much harsher, ascetic and solitary lifestyle, which was originally of Irish eremitic origins. The abbot of Sant Miguel de Cuxa, Guarinus, had also begun reforms but mainly built upon a third Christian tradition, that of Iberia. Romuald was able to integrate these different traditions and establish his own monastic order. The admonition in his rule Empty yourself completely and sit waiting places him in relation to the long Christian history of intellectual stillness and interior passivity in meditation also reflected in quietism and in the nearly contemporary Byzantine ascetic practice known as Hesychasm.

In San Romualdo, painted for the Church of San Romualdo, Ravenna, by Guercino, 1641, an angel uses the abbot's baton to chastise an errant figure (Pinatoceca Comunale, Ravenna).

His reputation being known to advisors of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, Romuald was persuaded by him to take the office of abbot of an ancient monastery to help bring about a more dedicated way of life there. The monks, however, resisted his reforms, eventually causing Romuald to resign his office, hurling his abbot's staff at Otto's feet in total frustration. He then again withdrew to the hermit life. He was drawn, though, throughout his long life to help in the establishment of monasteries and hermitages throughout Italy. The most prominent of these are the hermitages of Fonte Avellana (founded around 1012) and Camaldoli (founded around 1023), both located in Tuscany, where Romuald's daunting charisma awed Rainerius, marquis of Tuscany, who was neither able to face Romuald nor to send him away.^[5] Romauld founded several other monasteries, including the monastery of Val di Castro, where he died in 1027.

Romuald's feast day was not included in the Tridentine Calendar. It was added in 1594 for celebration on 19 June, the date of his death—his birth to heaven—but in the following year it was transferred by Pope Clement VIII to 7 February, the anniversary of the transfer of his relics to Fabriano in 1481.^[6] In 1969 the feast was returned to the anniversary of his death. Some Catholic faithful continue to observe one or other of the 1595-1969 calendars.

St. Romuald's Brief Rule For Camaldolese Monks[link]

Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is in the Psalms — never leave it.

If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind.

And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.

Realize above all that you are in God's presence, and stand there with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.

Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Saint Romuald

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Catholic Encyclopedia: "Saint Romuald"
• Catholic Online Saints
• Camaldolese Benedictine Monks

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Romuald Hazoumè (born in Porto Novo, 1962) is an artist from the Republic of Bénin,^[1] best known for his work La Bouche du Roi, a reworking of the 1789 image of the slave ship Brookes.^[2]

La Bouche du Roi was widely exhibited in the United Kingdom as part of the centenary remembrance of the Slave Trade Act 1807 by Parliament.

Hazoumè is also known for his mask series which he started in the mid-1980s. These masks, made from discarded gasoline canisters, resemble those used in traditional African culture and ceremonies. In explaining these works, Hazoumè has said: “I send back to the West that which belongs to them, that is to say, the refuse of consumer society that invades us every day.”^[3]

Hazoumè is among the artists represented in The Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC) of Jean Pigozzi.^[3]

Selected exhibitions[link]

Solo[link]

• 2012 Cargoland - October Gallery, London
• 2011 Romuald Hazoumè
• 2010 Romuald Hazoumè: My Paradise - Made in Porto Novo, Gerisch-Stiftung, Neumünster, Germany
• 2009 Romuald Hazoumè: Made in Porto-Novo, October Gallery, London
• 2009 Exit Ball, Aliceday, Brussels, Belgium
• 2008 La Bouche du Roi, Horniman Museum & Gardens, London
• 2007 La Bouche du Roi: An artwork by Romuald Hazoumè, The British Museum, London, England
• 2006 La Bouche du Roi, Musée du quai Branly, Paris, France
• 2005 Romuald Hazoumè Installation Art, CAISA (City of Helsinki Cultural Office), Helsinki, Finland
• 2005 ARTicle 14 - débrouilles-toi, toi-même, October Gallery, London
• 2001 Romuald HazoumèGalerie Olivier Houg, Lyon
• 1998 Romuald Hazoumè, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
• 1997 Romuald Hazoumè, Galerie 20, Arnhem

Group[link]

• 2010/2011 The Land Between Us, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK
• 2010/2011 The Global Africa Project, MAD – Museum of Arts and Design, New York
• 2010/2011 21st Century: Art in the First Decade, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
• 2010 African Stories, Marrakech Art Fair, Marrakech
• 2009 Against Exclusion, 3rd biennale of Contemporary Art, The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow, Russia
• 2008 Angaza Afrika - African Art Now, October Gallery, London
• 2008 PetrodollART, Galerie Motte et Rouard, Paris, France
• 2007/2008 Why Africa?, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin, Italy
• 2007 UN/FAIR TRADE, Die Kunst der Gerechtigkeit, Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, Austria
• 2007 From Courage to Freedom - El Anatsui / Romuald Hazoumè / Owusu-Ankomah, October Gallery, London
• 2004-2007 Africa Remix, Dusseldorf; Hayward Gallery, London; Centre pompidou, Paris; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
• 1999 Spaceship Earth, Art in General, New York
• 1999 Paradise 8, Exit Art, New York
• 1999 Liverpool Biennial: International Festival of Contemporary Art, Liverpool, UK
• 1992 Out of Africa: Contemporary African Artists from the Pigozzi Collection, Saatchi, Gallery, London

Awards and prizes[link]

• 2009 3rd Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow
• 2007 Arnold-Bode-Preis, documenta 12, Kassel
• 1996 Geoge-Maciunas-Preis, Wiesbaden

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Andre Magnin and Jacques Soulilou (eds.), Contemporary Art of Africa, New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc, 1996.

External links[link]

• "Romuald Hazoumè (Benin)", October Gallery website.

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