Further Reading
Primary Sources
Allen, Hope Emily, ed. English Writing of Richard Rolle Hermit
of Hampole. Oxford: Clarendon, 1931.
Allen, Rosamund S., trans. The English Writings. New York:
Paulist Press, 1988.
Arnould, E.J.F., ed. The Melos Amoris of Richard Rolle of Ham-
pole. Oxford: Blackwell, 1957.
Deanesly, Margaret, ed. The Incendium amoris of Richard Rolle of
Hampole. Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1915
del Mastro, ML., trans. The Fire of Love and the Mending of Life.
New York: Doubleday, 1981.
Harvey, Ralph, ed. The Fire of Love and the Mending of Life, or
The Rule of Living of Richard Rolle. EETS o.s. 106. Oxford:
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1896.
Ogilvie-Thomson, Sarah J., ed. Richard Rolle: Prose and Ve r s e.
EETS o.s. 293. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
Theiner, Paul F., ed. The Contra amatores mundi of Richard Rolle
of Hampole. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968.
Secondary Sources
Manual 9:305l–68, 3411–25.
Alford, John A. “Richard Rolle and Related Works.” In Middle
English Prose: A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres,
ed. A.S.G. Edwards. New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Press, 1984, pp. 35–60.
Allen, Hope Emily. Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, Hermit
of Hampole, and Materials for His Biography. New York:
Heath, 1927.
Clark, J.P.H. “Richard Rolle: ATheological Re-Assessment.”
DownR 101 (1983): 108-39.
Clark, J.P.H. “Richard Rolle as a Biblical Commentator.” DownR
104 (1986): 165–213.
Knowlton, Mary Arthur. The Infl uence of Richard Rolle and of
Julian of Norwich on the Middle English Lyrics. The Hague:
Mouton, 1973.
Watson, Nicholas. “Richard Rolle as Elitist and as Popularist: The
Case Judica me.” In De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secu-
lar Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. Michael
G. Sargent. Cambridge: Brewer, 1989, pp. 123–43.
Watson, Nicholas. Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Michael G. Sargent
ROMUALD OF RAVENNA, SAINT
(c. 952–1027)
Saint Romuald of Ravenna was a monastic reformer and
the founder of the Camaldolese order and is considered
one of the founders of the Italian eremitical movement
of the eleventh century.
Romuald was born into the ducal Onesti family at
Ravenna. When he was twenty, his father killed a kins-
man in a duel, and Romuald entered the Benedictine
monastery of Sant’Apollinare in Classe to perform
a forty-day penance for this act. The monastery had
a profound effect on him. At the end of the penance
he decided to stay, took monastic vows, and entered
enthusiastically into a rigorous observance of the
Benedictine rule. However, reading the lives of the
desert fathers led Romuald to criticize what he con-
sidered laxity at Sant’Apollinare, and he soon left
the monastery to live as an anchorite in the marshes
surrounding Ravenna. About 975, Romuald became the
disciple of the hermit Marino and followed him to the
vicinity of Venice.
Through Marino, Romuald was drawn into the circle
of Venice’s doge, Pietro Orseolo, who was then undergo-
ing a religious conversion. When Orseolo abdicated to
join the monastery at Cuxa in the Pyrenees, Romuald
and Marino went with him. Romuald remained at Cuxa
for ten years, studying the works in its library in order to
refi ne his understanding of the monastic ideal. Although
the fi nal shape of his reform was the product of many
years of experimentation, the basic notions seem to have
been formulated at Cuxa. Romuald’s foundations would
be among the fi rst expressions of an eleventh-century
monastic reform movement that sought to revive the
primitive rigor of early Egyptian eremitism.
Romuald returned to Italy on the death of Orseolo
in 988. He spent the next ten years based in Pereum,
a hermitage in Ravenna’s marshes, while he wandered
the Apennines seeking followers, founding monasteries,
and experimenting with monastic organization. Like a
number of other reformers of his time, Romuald was de-
termined to develop a greater spirit of contemplation in
monastic houses; accordingly, he established hermitages
and cenobitic communities together. But unlike other
reformers, Romuald did not believe that a cenobitic life
was a necessary prerequisite for an eremitic life. At his
foundations, promising candidates were immediately
introduced to the life of the hermit. Moreover, he did not
subordinate the hermitage to the abbot of the monastery
but rather put the cenobites under the moral authority of
an experienced hermit. The monastery and hermitage
were supposed to complement each other in drawing all
monks toward the eremitical ideal of fasting, silence,
and solitude.
In 998 Emperor Otto III appointed Romuald abbot
of Sant’Apollinare in Classe, but the monks’ resistance
to his austerity led to his resignation within a year. He
then moved to the environs of Rome, near the imperial
court, and soon attracted the patronage of several of the
emperor’s courtiers. When civil unrest at Rome drove
the court to Ravenna in 1001, Romuald followed, again
settling in Pereum. Romuald now had signifi cant sup-
port from the empire. Followers fl ocked to him. Many,
including the imperial chaplain Bruno of Querfurt,
went as missionaries to convert the Slavs, inspired by
Romuald’s insistence that preaching and conversion
were the ultimate role of the monk and hermit.
After the death of Otto III in 1002, Romuald left
Pereum to wander again in the Apennines. Sometime
between 1010 and 1020, he founded a small monastery
and hermitage at Camaldoli near Arezzo. This infl uential
institution, famous for its rigor, proved to be his mostROLLE, RICHARD, OF HAMPOLE