Her achievement such as it was in the earlier mediaeval
period consisted in the production of three men of real importance, S.
Romuald of the Onesti family of Ravenna, who was born in the city
about the year 956 and who founded, as we know, the Order of
Camaldoli; S. Peter Damian, who was born there about 988; and Blessed
Peter of Ravenna, Pietro degli Onesti, called _Il Peccatore_, of the
same stock as S. Romuald.
The work of S. Romuald was a reform of the Benedictine Order. The
Order of Camaldoli which he founded was the second reform which had
come out of the great brotherhood of S. Benedict; it was younger than
the Cluniac but older than the Cistercian reform, and it was begun in
1012. In that year S. Romuald, who was a Benedictine abbot, having
been dismissed by all the houses over which he had successively ruled,
for they would not bear the penitential strictness of his government,
founded a hermitage at Camaldoli above the upper valley of the Arno
called the Casentino. There each monk lived in a separate dwelling,
all being enclosed in a great wall some five hundred and thirty yards
about, beyond which the monks were forbidden to go.
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