Let us look more closely into the account of Romuald’s life, an account written by a great man and telling of a great man is surely worth analysis. Romuald was a native of Ravenna, and was born early in the tenth century of a noble family. As a youth he was witness to how his father killed a relative; and he went to St Apollinare in Classe, to expiate the crime by forty days’ penance. The church of St Apollinare is little changed from what it was then, and visitors to Ravenna will recall with delight the simple proportions of the roomy basilica, and its brilliant mosaics, with St Apollinare preaching with his flock of sheep around him. A monk of the church proposed that Romuald should join the fraternity, and the young man agreed to do so, after spending a night in church, when St Apollinare himself appeared as the monk had foretold--a proof, as Romuald declared and as Peter Damian believed, that the saint really lay buried here. But Romuald’s innate spirit of restlessness and want of consideration for the shortcomings of others cut short his stay after three years’ noviciate. The monks would lie in bed when it was time to be in church singing, and Romuald, finding the church closed, sang in the dormitory. The monks decided to rid themselves of the inconvenient enthusiast by throwing him out of the window. Romuald, however, escaped to the woods, and there he found a companion to his heart’s desire in the unlearned but ardent Marinus. This holy hermit chanted through the entire psalter every day; he would repeat twenty verses under one tree, twenty under the next, and so on till his task was accomplished. Romuald joined him in his exercises, and mistakes in his performance were punished by a blow on the ear from the hermit’s staff. When his hearing became impaired in consequence, he turned his other ear for castigation, and his stern master was touched. On three days of the week the two hermits lived on a bit of bread and a handful of beans; on the other four, crushed corn, _pulmentum_, constituted their food. Their conduct was evidently considered unexceptionable, and in 978 when, in consequence of an insurrection in Venice, Count Petro Orseolo, who had headed it, was advised to seek refuge in a convent, Romuald and Marinus were among those chosen to escort him to a monastery near Perpignan in the south of France. There they resumed the old life, and were credited with great holiness. Romuald’s fame increased owing to incidents such as this. A lord of the neighbourhood, _impeto barbarico_, stole a cow from a peasant. The peasant begged Romuald to ask for the cow, but the lord laughed his request to scorn; the cow was roasted for the feast. However, the holy man’s interference was not wasted. When the lord came to eat of the cow, a bit of meat stuck in his throat and he died a wretched death. No wonder that the people of the neighbourhood, when they heard that Romuald was about to leave for Italy, as they could not retain him,