Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/398

376 intensity with him. Also the egotism, so frequently an element of that temperament, rose with him to spiritual megalomania:

"'One day (apparently in the latter part of his life) some disciples asked him, 'Master, of what age does the soul appear, and in what form is it presented for Judgment?' He replied, 'I know a man in Christ, whose soul is brought before God shining like snow, and indeed in human form, with the stature of the perfect time of life.' Asked again who that man might be, he would not speak for indignation. And then the disciples talked it over, and recognized that he was certainly the man.'"

In another part of the Vita, Damiani, having told of his hero's sojourn with a company of hermits who preferred their will to his, thus continues: "Romuald, therefore, impatient of sterility, began to search with anxious eagerness where he might find a soil fit to bear a fruitage of souls." It was his passion to change men to anchorites: he yearned to convert the whole world to the solitary life. Many were the hermit communities which he established. But he could not endure his hermit sons for long, nor they him. His intolerant soul revolted from the give and take of intercourse. Such intolerance and his passion to make more converts drove him from place to place. He seemed inspired with a superhuman power of drawing men from the world. Now

"therefore he sent messengers to the Counts of Camerino. When these heard the name of Romuald they were beside themselves with joy, and placed their possessions, mountains, woods, and fields at his disposal, to select from. He chose a spot suited to the hermit way of living, intrenched amid forests and mountains, and affording an ample space of level fruitful ground, watered with crystal streams. The place was called of old the Valley of the Camp (Vallis de Castro), and a little church was there with a convent of women who had turned from the world. Here having built their cells, the venerable man and his disciples took up their abode.

"And what fruitage of souls the Lord there won through him, pen cannot describe nor tongue relate. From all directions men began to pour in, for penance and to bequeath in pity their goods to the poor, while others utterly forsook the world and with fervent