urther. Next
are the cells and lodgings for the porters. Somewhat further is the
church, which is large, well built, and richly adorned. Over the door is
a clock, which strikes so loud that it may be heard all over the desert.
On the left side of the church is the cell in which St. Romuald lived,
when he first established these hermits. Their cells, built of stone,
have each a little garden walled round. A constant fire is allowed to be
kept in every cell, on account of the coldness of the air throughout the
year: each cell has also a chapel in which they may say mass: they call
their superior, major. The whole hermitage is now enclosed with a wall:
none are allowed to go out of it; but they may walk in the woods and
alleys within the enclosure at discretion. Every thing is sent them from
the monastery in the valley: their food is every day brought to each
cell; and all are supplied with wood and necessaries, that they may have
no dissipation or hinderance in their contemplation. Many hours of the
day are allotted to particular exercises; and no rain or snow stops any
one from meeting in the church to assist at the divine office. They are
obliged to strict silence in all public common places; and everywhere
during their Lents, also on Sundays, Holydays, Fridays, and other days
of abstinence, and always from Complin till prime the next day.

For a severer solitude, St. Romuald added a third kind of life; that of
a recluse. After a holy life in the hermitage, the superior grants leave
to any that ask it, and seem called by God, to live forever shut up in
their cells, never speaking to any one but to the superior when he
visits them, and to the brother who brings them necessaries. Their
prayers and austerities are doubled, and their fasts more severe and
more frequent. St. Romuald condemned himself to this kind of life for
several years; and fervent imitators have never since failed in this
solitude.

St. Romuald died in his monastery in the valley of Castro, in the
marquisate of Ancona. As he was born about the year 956, he must have
died seventy years and some months old, not a hundred and twenty, as the
present copies of his life have it. The day of his death was the 19th of
June; but his principal feast is appointed by Clement VIII. on the 7th
of February, the day of his translation. His body was found entire and
uncorrupt five years after his death, and again in 1466. But his tomb
being sacrilegiously opened, and his