The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers: Stories from the Benedictines & Camaldolese [Paperback]

Thomas Matus (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: Source Books; 1st edition (July 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940147335
• ISBN-13: 978-0940147331
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #390,886 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent,poignant account of the origins of the Camldolese, September 13, 1999

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[e-mail] (Brookyn,New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers: Stories from the Benedictines & Camaldolese (Paperback)

In The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers,Thomas Matus tells the story of the origins of the branch of the Benedictine Order known as the Camaldolese.Interspersed with the histories,Matus gives us his personal history,and accounts his entering the order and conversatons with the Superior of the Order.The early part of the narrative goes back and forth,from Romuald's time to the near present.Matus tells his story very well,lyrically and,at times quite beautifully.For the English speaking world,this is a glance into a remote and unknown history,still living and active today{the Camaldolese have a Monastery in Big Sur}.As an introduction to the history and backround of this little known group, I can think of no better or more welcome guide.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Medieval background, modern context: Catholic hermits, March 8, 2006

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John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Mystery of Romuald and the Five Brothers: Stories from the Benedictines & Camaldolese (Paperback)

This collection straightforwardly introduces two early medieval accounts of a missionary effort to Poland by five brethren sent by Romauld, followed by Peter Damian's Life of St. Romauld. The few who follow Camoldolese tradition, begun around 1070, are far less known than their Benedictine forebears or, lacking a Thomas Merton to publicize and disseminate its particular rule and message, the Trappist reformers of the Cistercians, who in turn were reforming the Benedictines, just after the time Romauld started the Camolodolese observance. Perhaps all a bit confusing if you're not previously versed in Catholic medieval monastic history!

Such discipline as required of a hermit-monk is not glamorized or sugarcoated, and within Romauld's own tense and wandering life in a turbulent and violent medieval world, we see through Matus' remarks how--perhaps contrary to stereotype--the true demands of a monk or hermit bring often not seclusion but perhaps paradoxically immersion into one's times. Matus compares this task to a prophetic paradigm--Nathan to King David--of solidarity with the weak and persecuted and neglected in society. (I recall Merton's relating a remark that a monk is no different than the rest of us save that he can choose his own battlefield--the monastery--in which to fight the devil.)

Thomas Matus provides--as his superior first urged him in the late 1960s when he, as a young American monk, went to Camaldoli--not only these two medieval texts, annotated, but a very helpful, rather self-effacing, but clear and thoughtful extended preface. Here, Matus blends these tales and Romauld's efforts to balance the eremetical (hermit) with the cenobitic (communal) forms of monastic life into glimpses of his own early monastic experience as he struggled to align his all-too pervasive American individualism with a need, for the realization of his true vocation, to integrate his desires into the works of the Spirit. I wish that this volume did also reach out a bit more to those of us far from Camoldoli--but I do recognize that its primary purpose is to orient the American novice or monk towards the lodestar of their tradition's founding documents. Perhaps in another work, Fr Matus can suggest how the rest of us can also benefit from knowing more about this rarely investigated branch of the Benedictines?

For those of us who know of hermits only from fairytales or New Yorker cartoons, this corrective showing real hermits--then and now--from within this still-living practice that aligns solitude with hospitality should prove welcome, and challenging. While not an easy life, by the one-page "little rule" of Romauld printed here, there echoes nonetheless a commonsensical, earthy, and sensitively calibrated message that emphasizes not sin or sackcloth but perseverence and patience. (By the way, Matus is a monk at the innovative and flourishing Big Sur hermitage, alternating there with continued studies in Italy, and he himself blends yoga with his monastic calling.)