Daily Martyrology for June 19

At Val-di-Castro, in 1027, St. Romuald, abbot. After seeing his aristocratic father kill a relative in a duel, he joined the Cluniac monastery at San Apollinare-in-Classe near Ravenna. He became a hermit and founded hermitages in northern Italy. Peter Damian (Febraury 21) was his disciple, and together they established Fonte Avellana and Camaldoli, austere eremitical communities following the Rule of St. Benedict.

In Milan, in the second century, Sts. Gervase and Protase. St. Ambrose discovered their relics in the presence of St. Paulinus of Nola and St. Augustine. While their relics were being carried to the newly constructed cathedral, a blind man was cured.

In 1009, at Braunsberg. St. Boniface of Querfurt, bishop and martyr. Influenced by St. Romuald, he became a monk. Inspired by St. Adalbert of Prague, whose life he wrote, he became a missionary among the Slavs. He was murdered with eighteen companions while trying to evangelize Prussian tribes.

In 1113, Blessed Odo of Cambrai. A renowned teacher of the arts and sciences, he was moved by a book of St. Augustine to become a monk. He refounded the monastery of St. Martin, which adopted the Rule of St, Benedict and soon became a flourishing community of sixty monks and sixty nuns. He was made bishop, but was forced into exile by Emperor Henry V, and spent much of his last seven years writing books of theology.

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Our daily martyrology was written by Fr. Hugh Feiss, OSB. Copyright © 2008 by the Monastery of the Ascension, Jerome, ID 83338.