Saint Scholastica

Saint Scholastica was the sister of Saint Benedict of Nursia, dedicated to God from childhood. Everything we know about her comes from two short chapters of the Dialogues of Saint Gregory the Great, who described the last meeting of brother and sister and her death. The Church commemorates her on February 10.

She lived in Italy at the end of the fifth century and in the first half of the sixth. Gregory, who wrote several decades after her death, gives neither the year of her birth, nor the names of her parents, nor the place where she lived; he calls her a nun, a woman consecrated to God. Tradition adds that she was born in Nursia around 480, that she was Benedict’s twin, and that she settled at Piumarola at the foot of Monte Cassino, where she is said to have led a community of nuns. Gregory does not mention this.

The pope writes that once a year Scholastica visited her brother. Benedict would then go down to meet her at a property of the monastery, not far beyond its gate. To their last meeting he came with his disciples. They spent the whole day praising God and in holy conversation, and as dusk was falling they sat down together to a meal.

The conversation went on late. Scholastica asked her brother not to leave her that night, so that they might speak until morning of the joys of life in heaven. Benedict replied that he could by no means remain outside the monastery. The sky was then perfectly clear. Scholastica folded her hands on the table, rested her head on them and prayed with tears. When she raised it, a storm broke with lightning and rain so heavy that neither Benedict nor his brothers could cross the threshold.

Saddened, Benedict asked, “May almighty God forgive you, sister. What have you done?” She answered, “I asked you, and you would not listen to me. I asked my Lord, and he heard me.” So they kept vigil together the whole night and strengthened each other by conversation on spiritual things. Gregory explains the event with the words of Saint John that God is love: she was able to do more because she loved more.

The next day Scholastica returned to her cell and Benedict to the monastery. Three days later, standing in his cell, he raised his eyes and saw his sister’s soul ascending to heaven in the form of a dove. He thanked God with hymns, told the brothers of her death and sent them to bring her body. He had it laid in the tomb he had prepared for himself at Monte Cassino. Those whose souls had always been one in God, Gregory writes, were not separated even by the grave. We do not know the year of her death: tradition gives 543 or 547.

Scholastica has been venerated as a saint since the early Middle Ages, long before the process of canonization was established. Her commemoration on February 10 is already recorded in the marble calendar of Naples and in the martyrology of Usuard, both from the ninth century. Benedictine nuns honor her as their patroness, and the tomb of brother and sister is venerated in the abbey of Monte Cassino.