took counsel how to prevent his departure, and with impious piety (impia pietate) decided to send men to kill him, thinking that since they could not retain him alive, they would have his corpse as a protection for the land (pro patrocinio terrae). Knowing of this, Romuald shaved his head, and as the murderers approached his cell in the dusk of morning, he began to eat ravenously. Thinking him demented, they did him no injury. He then set forth, staff in hand, and walked from the centre of Gaul, even to Ravenna. There finding his father still seeking to return to the world, he tied the old sinner's feet to a beam, fettered him with chains, flogged him, and at length by pious severity so subjugated his flesh that with God's aid he brought his mind back to a state of salvation.[1]
Thus far Romuald's life affords striking illustration of the fact that prodigious austerities and the consequent repute for miracles were the chief elements in mediaeval sainthood; also of the fact that the saint's dead body might be as good as he. But while he lived, Romuald was much more than a miracle-working relic. He was a strong, domineering personality. It was soon after he brought his father back to the way of holiness that the old man saw a vision, and happily yielded up the ghost. The son continued to advance in his chosen way of life and in the elements of character which it fostered. He became a prodigious solitary; one to whom men and their ways were intolerable, and who himself was sometimes found intolerable by men. Even his appearance might be exceptional:
"The venerable man dwelt for a while in a swamp (near Ferrara). At length the poisonous air and the stench of the marsh drove him out; and he emerged hairless, with his flesh puffed and swollen (tumefactus et depilatus), not looking as if belonging to the genus homo; for he was as green as a newt."[2]
Such a story displays the very extravagance of fleshly mortification. It has also its local colour. But one should seek its explanation in the grounds of the hermit life as set forth by Peter Damiani. Then the incidents of Romuald's life will appear to spring from these hermit motives and from the hermit temperament, which became of terrible
