Camaldoli is situated in Tuscany, in the province of Arezzo, inside the National Park of Casentino Forests, Monte Falterona, and Campigna. The origin of the toponym is not clear.
This is the latest hermitage founded by Saint Romualdo before his retreat to Valdicastro, in the province of Ancona, where he would pass away some time later.
In the Vita Romualdi, written by Saint Peter Damian a few years after the saint’s death, the hermitage of Camaldoli is not mentioned, as it was likely a smaller community at that time. Rodolfo, the fourth prior of the hermitage, will later narrate the details of its foundation in his Consuetudines of 1080. In this work, Rodolfo recounts the story of Teodaldo di Canossa, bishop of Arezzo, and the invitation he extended to Saint Romualdo to establish a hermitage in that territory. According to tradition, the saint from Ravenna accepted the offer, arriving in Camaldoli accompanied by five disciples.
From that moment, many began to visit the small community of anchorites, finding temporary accommodation at the hospitium of Fontebono, a little further downstream, which helped maintain the separation of the hermits from the world. Later, the hospitium would become a place of preparation for ascetic life, in a relationship of subordination to the hermitage, a relationship that persisted in Camaldoli. Fontebono was officially recognized as a cenobium in 1105.
The authority of the Camaldolese community quickly grew, along with the number of possessions. Already between the 11th and 12th centuries, a significant number of hermitages and monasteries were dependent on Camaldoli. Several papal bulls defined their role. The Congregatio Camaldulensis Ordinis Sancti Benedicti was established, and Camaldoli became a major monastic center.
However, it was not immune to periods of decline, with the most dramatic being the Napoleonic measures of 1810, which foresaw the suppression of religious orders: the monks were forced to leave Camaldoli, and the monastery’s assets were dispersed. After a brief restoration, in 1866 and 1867, the Kingdom of Italy issued a couple of laws leading to a new suppression and confiscation of monastic properties.
Only in 1873 could the monks return to the governance of the hermitage and the Fontebono monastery. Since the 19th-century suppressions, the management of the forest surrounding and protecting these places has been the responsibility of the State, and no longer the monks who, over the centuries, had worked diligently to safeguard and plant it with meticulous and patient dedication, contributing to imbuing it with a symbolic meaning of profound intensity.
The Sacred Hermitage of Camaldoli is located uphill from the monastery, about three kilometers away. The complex comprises twenty cells, in addition to the so-called “San Romualdo” cell, the ancient library, the guesthouse, the refectory, and the church.
The hermitage of Camaldoli preserves the cell that, according to tradition, was built and inhabited by the founder, Saint Romuald. Since the seventeenth century, it has been included in the building that houses the library. The “cell of San Romualdo” is the prototype upon which all the other cells of the Camaldoli hermitage complex have been designed. The rooms that compose it have a spiral design, culminating in the center in the monk’s chamber, where a bed and a study are located. The centripetal arrangement of the plan seems to allude to the contemplative disposition of the hermit, as an invitation to quiet introspection, in a precise identification of form and content. The “cell of San Romualdo” is preceded by a garden, as are all the other cells in the complex, which rise beyond the enclosure gate.
The building where the “cell of St Romuald” is located also houses the hermitage library, dedicated to Ambrogio Traversari, a great theologian, humanist, and reformer, as well as the general prior of the Camaldolese order in the fourteenth century. The nineteenth-century suppressions caused the dispersion of the precious archival and library heritage, consisting of thousands of books and hundreds of manuscripts and incunabula. The collection was reconstituted starting from the 1940s and now counts about five hundred volumes.
In front of the building that houses the library and the “cell of St Romuald”, stands the hermitage church, dedicated to St Salvatore. The first oratory was built in this place during the time of the founder, Saint Romuald. The current construction is the result of various interventions, from the rebuilding and consecration of 1220, to the early seventeenth century when the current facade was added to the previous one. Two lateral towers frame the front, on which the statue of Christ is centrally placed, surmounted by the order’s emblem and flanked by those of Saint Romuald and Saint Benedict.
The single-nave building is crossed by a transept adjacent to the entrance. The baroque interior dates back to the seventeenth century, when the monumental and elaborate wooden gate was also realized. Numerous works are preserved inside the church, with the recurring subject being clearly Saint Romuald and the events in which he was involved. Among these, a fifteenth-century glazed terracotta created by Andrea della Robbia stands out.
The Camaldoli monastery, located a few kilometers downstream from the hermitage, underwent a series of interventions and assumed its current appearance following the expansions carried out between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The complex is organized around four cloisters. In the two oldest ones – the Mandolo cloister, built between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the Fanciulli cloister, dating back to the mid-fifteenth century – are located the rooms that host the guesthouse. The largest and brightest cloister is the sixteenth-century Clausura, on which the monks’ rooms open.
In a small courtyard, accessed from the square in front of the monastery, is the church dedicated to Saints Donato and Ilariano. Founded in the sixteenth century, it was renovated in the eighteenth century by Florentine craftsmen, who modified the structure of the church, resizing the plan, and adding arches, vaults, chapels, and a choir. Inside, some pictorial works are preserved, including the seven panels created by Giorgio Vasari between the thirties and forties of the sixteenth century.
The Camaldoli monastery is still known today for its pharmacy, the only remaining vestige of the hospital founded in the eleventh century to assist the local communities, closed definitively in 1810. In the Camaldolese pharmacy, the medications necessary for patient care were produced. The current structure dates back to the sixteenth century, the furnishings to the seventeenth century, as well as some of the ceramic and glass vessels stored here. Adjacent to the shop, the laboratory and part of the instruments in use are preserved, as well as the pharmacy’s library, consisting of about two hundred volumes, with treatises on medicine and surgery, herbalists, and more, written from the seventeenth century onwards.
