The life of St Scholastica of Italy
A later tradition, first recorded some centuries after her death, holds that she and Benedict were twins; Pope Gregory the Great's own sixth century Dialogues, our earliest and fullest source, drawing on memory kept alive within Benedict's own monastic circle, does not itself make that claim. Though her convent stood only a few miles from his monastery, brother and sister held strictly to their rule and allowed themselves only a single day together each year, spent in prayer and in talking over the sacred texts that mattered most to each of them.
Their very last meeting became the one story told most often of her. Sensing, somehow, that she would not see her brother again, Scholastica begged him to stay through the evening rather than return at once as their rule demanded; Benedict would not break his own discipline even for her. She wept, laid her head down, and turned instead to prayer, and a sudden violent storm broke out as she did, trapping Benedict there for the whole night after all.
She died only days later, shortly before her brother, in 543.
