decided to kill him so as at least to secure his corpse. It was a time when relics, especially on the further side of the Alps, commanded a high price in the market. Kings and emperors gave gold and jewels in exchange for them, ecclesiastics of the higher grades did not hesitate from stealing where they could not procure them otherwise. And the relics did not lose by being transferred; on the contrary, their wonder-working properties if anything increased. Romuald, however, was apprised of the country folk’s intention, and knew how to meet it. He rapidly shaved his head, and when they came, intending to kill him, they found him eating immoderately. This was contrary to all accepted ideas of saintliness; they thought he had gone mad and went away. The holy man was left to depart in peace for Italy, where he found a new work awaiting him. His father was about to leave the convent he had entered. This had to be prevented. Romuald fastened his father’s feet in stocks, loaded him with chains and whipped him till the old man’s senses returned. Romuald’s career as a reformer now began, but, as his biographer says, “the zeal was so great that glowed in this man’s breast that he was never satisfied with what he had accomplished, and ever turned to new undertakings.” Thus we find him at one time dwelling in a solitary cell in the marshes, where, like St Guthlac in the fens of Lincolnshire, he was endlessly worried through the lawless agency of bad spirits. After that, thanks to the protection of Ugo, margrave of Tuscany, he collected about him a number of monks at Bagno, in Romagna. But he so incensed them by sending money to the relief of a distant monastery which had been consumed by fire that he had to flee before their rage. Some years later, Romuald became for a time abbot at St Apollinare in Classe, where he had stayed in his youth. The Emperor Otto III., when he crossed the Alps in 996, heard that this monastery was going to ruin, and he persuaded Romuald to reform the monks. The influence which Romuald exerted on the melancholy young emperor is full of interesting particulars. Otto went on a pilgrimage on foot from Monte Gargano to Rome, and he spent some time with the hermit Nilus, who was working for the reform of religious life in southern Italy along lines similar to those Romuald was following in the north. Finally, Otto spent forty days as a penitent in the convent at Ravenna, and was almost persuaded by Romuald to become a monk. Romuald’s stay as abbot at Classe was not, however, of long duration. He soon came and laid his crozier at the emperor’s feet; an abbot’s life was not what he desired. His zeal had taken another direction. He was fired by the thought of restoring hermit life on the model of what had existed in Egypt, and he travelled about from place to place collecting together wandering monks, the _gyrovagi_, whom St Benedict had denounced as evil. He arranged that they should dwell together, and join in the