(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.
February 29.