Romoaldo

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In the twenty-second canto of the Paradiso, within the Heaven of Saturn, Dante includes Romoaldo in a list of contemplatives alongside Macarius, in an enumerative pattern that recalls the surveys of saints already used elsewhere. The authorized critical note identifies him as San Romualdo (Romoaldo in the form of the verse), of the Ravennate family of the Onesti, founder in 1012 of the hermitage of Camaldoli and of the Camaldolese Order, a branch of the Benedictine family, to which the hermitage of Fonte Avellana also belonged; the note fixes his death in 1027 and recalls how Pier Damiani wrote his celebrated Vita. Romoaldo is presented as a representative of the reform of Benedictine monasticism in a more strictly eremitical and contemplative sense, in parallel with Macarius, who in the same note is indicated as the initiator of Eastern monasticism. The Macarius-Romoaldo pair thus symbolizes the two branches, Eastern and Western, of the contemplative tradition brought by Dante into the crown of the blessed contemplatives.