made superior, first practised himself what he
taught others, joining rigorous fasts, solitude, and continual prayer,
with hard manual labor. He had an extraordinary ardor {372} for prayer,
which he exceedingly recommended to his disciples, in whom he could not
bear to see the least sloth or tepidity with regard to the discharge of
this duty; saying, they had better recite one psalm with fervor; than a
hundred with less devotion. His own fasts and mortifications were
extremely rigorous, but he was more indulgent to others, and in
particular to Urseoli, who had exchanged his monastery for St. Romuald's
desert, where he lived under his conduct; who, persevering in his
penitential state, made a most holy end, and is honored in Venice as a
saint, with an office, on the 14th of January: and in the Roman
Martyrology, published by Benedict XIV., on the 10th of that month.

Romuald, in the beginning of his conversion and retreat from the world,
was molested with various temptations. The devil sometimes directly
solicited him to vice; at other times he represented to him what he had
forsaken, and that he had left it to ungrateful relations. He would
sometimes suggest that what he did could not be agreeable to God; at
other times, that his labors and difficulties were too heavy for man to
bear. These and the like attempts of the devil he defeated by watching
and prayer, in which he passed the whole night; and the devil strove in
vain to divert him from this holy exercise by shaking his whole cell,
and threatening to bury him in the ruins. Five years of grievous
interior conflicts and buffetings of the enemy, wrought in him a great
purity of heart, and prepared him for most extraordinary heavenly
communications. The conversion of count Oliver, or Oliban, lord of that
territory, added to his spiritual joy. That count, from a voluptuous
worldling, and profligate liver, became a sincere penitent, and embraced
the order of St. Benedict. He carried great treasures with him to mount
Cassino, but left his estate to his son. The example of Romuald had also
such an influence on Sergius, his father, that, to make atonement for
his past sins and enormities, he had entered the monastery of St.
Severus, near Ravenna; but after some time spent there, he yielded so
far to the devil's temptations, as to meditate a return into the world.
This was a sore affliction to our saint, and determined him to return to
Italy, to dissuade his father from leav