ST. SCHOLASTICA
St. Scholastica was the sister of St. Benedict (see), born at Nursia around 480, and died near Cassino on 10 February 547 (earlier it was believed to be 543), according to tradition forty days before her brother.
The only historical source remaining is the Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great (I. II, chaps. 33-34: PL 66, 194-96; ed. U. Moricca, Rome 1924, pp. 125-28), which forms the basis of all that later hagiographers recount about the life of the saint (cf. Martyr. Romanum, p. 56). Consecrated to God from childhood, St. Scholastica remained always closely united to St. Benedict: at Subiaco (monastery of Roccabotte?) and at Cassino, in the monastery near Plumbariola (Piumarola or Primarola, in the territory of Aquino, three miles from Cassino) or, as Cardinal Schuster prefers (see op. cit. in bibliography), at the foot of the mountain, where their annual meeting took place, near the so-called “Chapel of the Colloquy.” Here, in fact, recent excavations (1939 onwards) have brought to light the remains of an apsidal church, which was later extended and transformed into a triconch. Here, on 6 February 547, the final colloquy with her brother is said to have taken place, and the miracle of the storm referred to, according to the account of St. Gregory, in the Roman Breviary (10 February). Three days later, Benedict, in contemplation in the tower of his monastery, saw the soul of his sister ascending to heaven in the form of a dove, and 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 (see “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 Monte Cassino, would have the two saints as twins. A gentle figure that softens the austere one of Benedict, and an ideal model of a life consecrated to God in the cloister. St. Scholastica has been chosen by the Benedictine nuns as their singular patroness. She is represented as an abbess, with the book of the Rule and with the dove recalling the vision of Benedict, or in her final colloquy with him. She is invoked against lightning, and also to obtain rain. In the 9th century, in the time of Leo IV (c. 847-55), the principal Benedictine monastery of Subiaco was dedicated to her.
Contrary to the constant Cassinese tradition, many scholars, especially French ones, believed that the bodies of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica had been taken in the 7th century to Fleury-sur-Loire (cf. H. Leclercq, Fleury-sur-Loire, in DACL, V, cols. 1709-61). But the discovery of their relics at Monte Cassino, in August 1595, beneath the high altar of the devastated cathedral, definitively resolved the age-old controversy (see bibliography). The scientific anatomical and radiological study of the remains (which were mixed together) demonstrated that they belonged to only two persons, whose bodies had been substantially preserved intact in the tomb: that of St. Benedict proved to be tall and robust (height 172 cm); that of St. Scholastica was that of a small woman in her various parts, yet healthy and robust (height 159 cm). — See plate IV.
