Section 06: Benedict and Scholastica

Benedict’s sister, St Scholastica, and the wider monastic family that the Dialogues and the Rule reveal around him. The two files cover, first, Scholastica herself — the holy woman consecrated to God from infancy, the tradition of the yearly meeting near Monte Cassino, and the famous story of the last visit, when her prayer for one more night of holy conversation was answered by a sudden storm, three days before her death and the vision of her soul ascending as a dove (Dialogues II.33–34) — and, second, the monastic family more broadly: the disciples, the women’s communities, and the spiritual kinship the tradition gathered around the father of Western monasticism.

Tradition: Pre-Schism Western (Latin) / Orthodox reception

File	Topic
His Sister Scholastica	St Scholastica, consecrated to God from infancy (Dialogues II.33); the twin tradition (a later inference); the yearly meeting near Monte Cassino; the last visit and the storm that answered her prayer — “I asked you and you would not hear me; I asked my God and He heard me” (Dialogues II.33); her death three days later and the vision of her soul rising as a dove; the shared tomb (Dialogues II.34)
The Monastic Family	The disciples and the spiritual household around Benedict — Maurus, Placid, the named informants of Gregory; women’s monasticism and Scholastica’s nuns; the later “Benedictine family” as a reading-back; the kinship of brother and sister, monk and nun, as an emblem of the whole tradition

File

Topic

His Sister Scholastica

St Scholastica, consecrated to God from infancy (Dialogues II.33); the twin tradition (a later inference); the yearly meeting near Monte Cassino; the last visit and the storm that answered her prayer — “I asked you and you would not hear me; I asked my God and He heard me” (Dialogues II.33); her death three days later and the vision of her soul rising as a dove; the shared tomb (Dialogues II.34)

The Monastic Family

The disciples and the spiritual household around Benedict — Maurus, Placid, the named informants of Gregory; women’s monasticism and Scholastica’s nuns; the later “Benedictine family” as a reading-back; the kinship of brother and sister, monk and nun, as an emblem of the whole tradition

How to Use

Read His Sister Scholastica for one of the tenderest and most humanly memorable episodes in the whole Dialogues — and for a careful handling of what Gregory does and does not say (the twinship, for instance, is later tradition).
Read The Monastic Family for the wider web of disciples and communities, and for the way the later “Benedictine family” projected itself back onto these origins.
The vision of Scholastica’s soul connects to the visions of Totila and the Prophecies and to The Death of Benedict.

Cross-References

For how to read the storm and dove episodes, see Reading the Dialogues
For the community life brother and sister shared in, see The Abbot and the Community
For the governing standard, see the repository Methodology

Section 06: Benedict and Scholastica

Contents

How to Use

Cross-References