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The saints

St Scholastica

Benedict’s sister prayed for a storm, and won the argument.

Feast: 10 February · died about 543 · Monte Cassino, Italy

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The Abbey of Monte Cassino seen from below, across a green valley.

Ludmiła Pilecka, 2007. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

Home / The saints / St Scholastica

A house near Monte Cassino, about 543

Once a year, Benedict comes down from his monastery to visit his sister Scholastica.1

This evening she begs him to stay and talk through the night, and he refuses.1

So she folded her hands on the table, bowed her head, and prayed.

01St Scholastica

The storm

Gregory the Great tells how such a storm broke that Benedict and his monks could not set foot outside.1

“I desired you to stay, and you would not hear me, I have desired our good Lord, and he hath vouchsafed to grant my petition”

Scholastica to Benedict, in Gregory’s Dialogues1

It is the only story we have in which Benedict loses an argument. It is also one of the tenderest stories in the lives of the saints.

02St Scholastica

Together

Three days later Benedict saw her soul rise to heaven in the likeness of a dove, and had her buried in the tomb he had prepared for himself.1

The Abbey of Monte Cassino seen from below, across a green valley.
Monte Cassino, where Scholastica and Benedict were buried together. Ludmiła Pilecka, 2007. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.

Notes

  1. St Gregory the Great, Dialogues, Book II: the Life of St Benedict (c. 593). 1608 translation, revised by E. G. Gardner (1911). tertullian.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: Douay-Rheims, Challoner revision (public domain). Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an error.