SCHOLASTICA, Saint. - Sister of St. Benedict (v.), born at Norcia around 480, died near Cassino on 10 February 547 (previously the date was thought to be 543), according to tradition 40 days before her brother.
The only historical source remains the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great (bk. II, chs. 33-34: PL 66, 194-96; ed. U. Moricca, Rome 1924, pp. 125-28), the basis of everything that later hagiographers narrate about the life of the Saint (cf. Martyr. Romanum, p. 56). Consecrated to God from infancy, S. remained always closely bound to St. Benedict: at Subiaco (monastery of Roccabotte?) and at Cassino, in the monastery near Plumbariola (Plumarola or Primarola, in the territory of Aquino, 3 miles from Cassino) or, as Cardinal Schuster prefers (v. op. cit. in bibl.), at the foot of the mountain, where the annual meeting with her brother took place, near the so-called "Chapel of the Colloquy." Here, in fact, recent excavations (1939 ff.) have brought to light the remains of a small apsidal church, which at a later time was enlarged and transformed into a triconch. Here, on 6 February 547, the last colloquy with her brother is said to have taken place, and the miracle of the storm recounted, according to St. Gregory's account, in the Roman Breviary (10 February). Three days later Benedict, in contemplation in the tower of his monastery, saw his sister's soul rise to heaven in the form of a dove, and he buried her mortal remains in the tomb he had already prepared for himself on the summit of the mountain, in the oratory of St. John the Baptist ("ut, quorum mens una semper in Deo fuerat, eorum quoque corpora nec sepultura separaret").
A tradition, which perhaps originates from these words of St. Gregory the Great, but which in the 9th century was accepted at Montecassino, would make the two Saints twins. A gentle figure who softens the austere one of Benedict, and an ideal model of a life consecrated to God in the cloister, S. was chosen by the Benedictine nuns as their special Patroness. She is represented as an abbess, with the book of the Rule and with the dove that recalls Benedict's vision, or in her last colloquy with him. She is invoked against lightning, and also to obtain rain. In the 9th century, in the time of Leo IV (ca. 847-55), the principal Benedictine monastery of Subiaco was dedicated to her.
Contrary to the constant Cassinese tradition, many scholars, especially French ones, held that the bodies of St. Benedict and St. S. had been carried, in the 7th century, to Fleury-sur-Loire (cf. H. Leclercq, Fleury-sur-Loire, in DACL, V, coll. 1709-61). But the rediscovery of their relics at Montecassino, in August 1950, beneath the high altar of the devastated Cathedral, has definitively resolved the age-old controversy (v. bibl.). The scientific anatomical and radiological study of the remains (which were intermingled with one another) has shown them to be bones belonging to only two persons, whose bodies were preserved substantially intact in the tomb: that of St. Benedict proves to be of slender and robust stature (height 172 cm); that of St. S., of "a woman small in her various parts, yet nonetheless sound and robust" (height 159 cm). - See plate IV.
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