Ravenna in 950 of a rich noble family, was the real founder. After leading a gay youth, at the age of twenty, he entered a Benedictine monastery to atone for his father's sin in murdering a relative, which crime he witnessed with his own eyes. He intended to remain only forty days but stayed three years, yet found no peace for his soul. Then he turned hermit, practised the severest tortures to defeat the devil, travelled from place to place, gained great fame, had a crowd of followers wherever he went, organised them and appointed a leader, and then moved on to a new field of labour. As his life drew near its close, he retired to Camaldoli in the Apennines, and hence the name of the place was given to his order (1018). To govern these little bands St. Benedict's rule, modified by eastern asceticism, was used. The monks lived in single cells, but had a common meeting place for worship and for eating. Wine and meat were forbidden, and all days except Thursday and Sunday were fast days. The monks were barefooted and went about in silence with hair and beard uncut, performing the duties of farmers and makers of nets and baskets. Some of the more ascetic lived for years without leaving their cells. They were the first to use assistants as servants. St. Romould had a great influence on his age and was called a prophet and a miracle worker. He induced men like the Doge of Venice to take up the monastic life and was visited by the young Otto III. (999). He sent missionaries to Russia and Poland, and went himself to Hungary with twenty-four monks, but was compelled by illness to return to Italy. He preached with great power against the immoral, simoniacal, and wicked clergy, the monastic abuses, simony, and the marriage of churchmen. After his death in 1027,
his work was carried on by his disciples and the order has lived on through the varying vicissitudes of succeeding centuries.[431:1]
The Vallombrosians originated in Tuscany in 1040 as an outgrowth of the Camaldolian reform movement. St. John Gualbert, the scion of a noble Florentine family, was the founder. Sent by his father to kill the murderer of his brother, he spared his life, when he made the sign of the cross with his arms. On his return to Florence, entering the little Church of San Miniato to pray before an image of Jesus, the figure nodded its head in approval of his act of mercy. As a result in 1038 he became a monk and soon joined St. Romould. Two years later he determined to found an order of his own at Vallombrosa. Followers enough came to begin his organisation and they were put under St. Benedict's rule modified to meet his ideas. Candidates were put on a year's probation and members were divided into three classes,—the religious, the serving brethren, and the laity. When he died in 1073, seven cloisters had been established in Italy, and when the founder was made a saint in 1193 they numbered sixty.
The monastery of Hirshau was established in the Black Forest of Germany.[431:2] William of Bavaria began the reformation there in 1065 by freeing the monastery from secular control, drawing up a constitution for it on reform lines, patterning its policy after the Clugniac movement, and introducing lay brethren. From Hirshau reformation spread over a large part of
Germany, and these reform cloisters strongly supported the lofty programme of Gregory VII.[432:1]
Peter Damiani was born in Ravenna of poor parents in 1006 and early left an orphan. As a boy he had a hard life, but was educated by a brother at Ravenna, Faenza, and Parma. Then he became a teacher and gained wealth and fame as an instructor in grammar and rhetoric at Ravenna. Suddenly at the age of twenty-nine resolving to become a monk, he entered a monastery at Fonte Avellano where he excelled the old monks in intemperate tortures, studied the Scriptures and preached, and wrote a biography of St. Romould. At the age of thirty-seven he was chosen abbot and then introduced St. Romould's Benedictine rule, which made fasting and torture a regular system. Each psalm was to be recited accompanied by one hundred lashes on the bare back and the whole psalter with one thousand five hundred lashes. This practice soon became a regular craze and was taken up later by the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Flagellants. He permitted his monks to read the Scriptures and the Fathers, encouraged them in performing hand work, but cut them off wholly from the world. He soon became the recognised leader of the reform party in Europe. He denounced his age as worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah; demanded a reformation of monasteries, of all the clergy, and of the Church in general; dedicated his life to a crusade against simony and marriage of the clergy; and condemned in the clergy the practice of bearing arms as Leo IX. did in driving back the Normans (1053). Damiani was too big a man to remain in obscurity, hence he became
Bishop of Ostia and in 1058 was made Cardinal. In the papal court he was a very prominent personage, serving as legate on many an important mission, and in 1061 was almost chosen Pope. He was the spiritual counsellor and censor of seven Hildebrandine popes, and called himself the "Lord of the Pope" and Hildebrand's "Holy Satan." He won the confidence of Henry III. and exercised great control over Henry IV. He died in 1072 just a year before Hildebrand became Pope.[433:1]
Next to Peter Damiani both in time and importance comes Hildebrand. From the scanty sources concerning his youth it is known that he was born in Tuscany at Saona about 1020 of parents in humble circumstances. His father's name was Bonizo, but whether he was of Teutonic or Roman race, or whether his occupation was that of a carpenter, a farmer, or a goatherd, are unsettled questions. His mother is unknown, but she had a brother who was Abbot of St. Mary's on the Aventine in Rome and one of the twenty churchmen who helped the Pope celebrate mass. To that uncle's monastery in the Eternal City young Hildebrand was early sent and there studied Latin, rhetoric, mathematics, music, dialectics, and the Church Fathers. There too he became imbued with the venerableness of Holy Rome and the sacred authority of the Chair of St. Peter, so that in the stormy days of his old age he could write that St. Peter had nourished him from childhood. Under these surroundings it was but natural that he should decide to be a monk. Soon he was driven to ascetic severities, probably by the corruptions and abuses thrust upon him from all sides.
In this monastery he met such men as Odilo, Abbot of Clugny, leader of the reform movement in France, who was accustomed to make St. Mary's his stopping place when in Rome; Archbishop Laurentius of Amalfi, who may have taught him the classics; and Archpresbyter John Gratian, a teacher in St. Mary's, who later purchased the papal crown and became Pope Gregory VI.
Abbot Odilo, favourably impressed with the young monk's ability and piety, took him to Clugny, where he completed his studies, practised the severe discipline of the Benedictines, and became grave and puritanical. The life of a monk probably affected Hildebrand as later it did Luther. He seems to have travelled some in Germany—perhaps even visited the court of Henry III. for his order. He may have completed his novitiate at Clugny. From this reform atmosphere Hildebrand returned to Rome when three Popes were claiming the apostolic seat and the Papacy was in its depths of humiliation. Gregory VI., one of the trio, Hildebrand's old teacher, who had bought the office for 1000 pounds in silver, made the young monk his chaplain. Soon he saw the German Emperor, Henry III., come to Rome, hold a council, depose the three Popes, exile his master to a German monastery, and in 1046 elect a new Pontiff. True to his unfortunate friend, Hildebrand followed him to Germany to see him die in 1048 of a broken heart and then, apparently, he returned to Clugny.[434:1]