Romuald’s fame was at its height when the Emperor Heinrich II. crossed the Alps in 1022. So much was he moved by Romuald that he expressed the wish that his soul were in the saint’s body. Romuald’s appearance at the time was peculiar. Hoary, unkempt and unwashed, he came to court wearing a dirty, shaggy skin. The Germans crowded round in the hope of snatching a few hairs from it, which they wished to preserve as relics.
Romuald first came to Camaldoli about the year 1018. It has been affirmed and denied that the site of the monastery was a gift to him from a certain Count Maldolo, and that the name Camaldoli represents the words _Casa Malduli_. The saint never stayed here long, and he died away from here in his hermit’s cell at Val de Castro in 1027. But the routine of life at Camaldoli was held to represent his aspirations, and Camaldoli gave its name to all the monasteries which Romuald had founded. These were never numerous. The order did not spread much beyond Italy and the south of France. But within these limits it exerted considerable influence.
And thus attended by thoughts of the enthusiast who laid the foundations of this vast establishment so many hundreds of years ago, we entered the building by a long arched stone passage, which led up from the garden without to the courtyard within. This courtyard is said to date from the tenth century; I have rarely seen one more impressive through the stern simplicity and perfect balance of its proportions. It is built throughout of the same grey stone, and there is little attempt at ornamentation. Pillars with slightly swelled shafts and simple capitals support round arches which extend round the four sides of a paved court. In the centre of this court stands a fountain with an unceasing flow of water. Passages, staircases and narrow corridors lead off in different directions. Surely there could be nothing more suited to the solitary side of one’s nature than to sit on one of the huge logs of wood that lay on one side of the court, listening to the flow of the water and watching the clouds that floated across the opening above. Now and again there was the sound of voices and of footsteps coming and going in the far distance. A man carried faggots across the court, a woman came to wash lettuces at the fountain--living figures that moved in the round of duty and seemed to emphasise the old-world solitude of the place. There is no greater solitude than an open-air solitude from which the life of nature is excluded. And within these walls there was no sign of animal or vegetable life--nothing to remind one of the stirring of the sap or the beating of a pulse, except that of which one was conscious of in one’s self.