S. ROMANUS, AB. OF CONDATE.
(A.D. 460.)
[Roman, Benedictine, and most Latin Martyrologies. Authorities:—A life by a contemporary monk of Condate, also a life by S. Gregory of Tours.]
Romanus, trained in the monastery of Ainay, near Lyons, left his father's house at the age of thirty-five, and carrying with him "Lives of the Fathers of the Desert," and some tools and vegetable seeds, made his way into the high mountains and inhabited forests of the Jura, found a site enclosed between three steep heights, at the confluence of two streams, and there founded, under the name of Condate, a monastery destined to become one of the most celebrated in the West. The soil was well adapted for cultivation, but in consequence of the difficulty of access to the place, it became the property of the first occupant. He found shelter at first under an enormous fir tree, the thick branches of which represented to him the palm which served Paul, the first hermit, in the desert of Egypt, for a tent; then he began to read, to pray, and to plant his herbs, with a certainty of being protected against the curious and importunate, by the extreme roughness of the paths which crossed those precipices, and also by the masses of fallen and interlaced trees, which are often met with in fir woods not yet subjected to regular care and tendance.
His solitude was disturbed only by the wild animals, and now and then by some bold huntsman. However, he was joined there by his brother Lupicinus and others, in so great a number, that they were soon obliged to spread themselves, and form new establishments in the environs. The two brothers governed these monasteries together, and maintained order and discipline, not without difficulty, among the increasing multitude of novices, against which an old monk protested, complaining that they did not even leave him room in which to lie down. Women followed; and upon a neighbouring rock, suspended like a nest at the edge of a precipice, the sister of our two abbots ruled five hundred virgins, so severely cloistered, that having once entered the convent, they were seen no more, except during the transit of their bodies from the death bed to the grave.
As for the monks, each had a separate cell; they had only the church and the refectory in common. In summer they took their siesta under the great firs, which in winter protected their dwelling against the snow and the north wind. They sought to imitate the anchorites of the East, whose various rules they studied daily, tempering them by certain alleviations, which were necessitated by the climate; their daily labour, and even by the constitution of the Gaulish race. They wore sabots, and tunics of skins tacked together, which protected them from the rain, but not from the rigorous cold of these bleak heights, where people are, says their biographer, in winter sometimes crushed beneath the snow, and in summer stifled by the heat produced by the reflection of the sun upon the perpendicular walls of rock. Lupicinus surpassed them all in austerity; he slept in the trunk of an old tree, and lived only upon pottage made of barley-meal, ground with the bran, without salt, without oil, and without even milk; and one day, disgusted at the delicacy of his brethren, he threw indiscriminately into the same pot, the fish, the herbs, and the roots, which the monks had prepared apart, and with some care. The community was greatly irritated, and twelve monks, whose patience was exhausted, went away. Upon this, an altercation arose between the two brothers. "It would have been better," said Romanus to Lupicinus, "not to have come hither, than to be a cause of dispersion to our monks." "Never mind," answered Lupicinus, "it is the straw separating from the corn; those twelve are proud, mounted on stilts, and God is not with them." However, the more gentle and forbearing Romanus succeeded in bringing back the fugitives, who all, in their turn, became superiors of communities.
S. Romanus made a pilgrimage to Agaunum (S. Maurice in the Valais), to visit the scene of the martyrdom of the Theban Legion. On his way, he cured two lepers by a kiss, and the fame of this miracle coming to the ears of the Genevese, the bishop and clergy, and the whole town, turned out to meet and receive him with honour.
When he felt that he must die, he called to him his sister from the convent on the rock, and his brother Lupicinus, to whom he commended the care of his monks, and then fell asleep in Christ.[71]
Relics in the Church of S. Romain-de-Roche in the Jura.
[71] Chiefly from the Monks of the West, ii. p. 486, seq.