Scholastica was the twin sister of Benedict, consecrated to God from her earliest youth. She founded a community of nuns at Plombariola some five miles from Monte Cassino, where she received the rule of life from her brother. Each year the two siblings met for a single day at a house between their monasteries to speak together of God.
St. Gregory the Great's Dialogues (Book II ch. 33) preserves the famous last meeting. After dinner, as the evening drew on, Scholastica begged her brother to remain through the night that they might speak longer of the joys of heaven. Benedict, bound by his own Rule, refused to stay outside his monastery overnight. Scholastica bowed her head over her hands on the table and prayed; immediately a furious thunderstorm broke over the house. 'May Almighty God forgive you, sister,' Benedict cried, 'what is it that you have done?' She answered: 'I asked you, and you would not listen; I asked God, and He has heard me.'
Three days later, as Benedict prayed at Monte Cassino, he saw the soul of his sister rising to heaven in the form of a white dove. He sent for her body and buried it in the tomb he had prepared for himself. They lie there together — the brother and sister whose joint vocation produced Western monasticism — to this day.