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A puzzle of bones · LE MANS, Gaul, in these years, about 660 AD

One basket of bones, two saints: which was St. Scholastica?

The men who carried the bones out of Italy could not tell the brother's from the sister's. Here is what the old records say.

Edition of · 3 min read

Saint Scholastica
A painted view along a banded Roman town wall with squat tiled towers, a small newly built stone church and low convent ranges standing on the empty grass between the wall and a shallow river, with a single white bird high in the sky.
The flat ground between the Roman wall of Le Mans and the river Sarthe. St. Berarius built the church of St. Peter here, and it received the body of St. Scholastica, at Le Mans about 660 AD.
About this picture

AI-generated image, in the manner of Italian panel painting in egg tempera, from the paper's reference portrait based on De dood van de heilige Scholastica (The Death of Saint Scholastica), RP-P-OB-5367 (Francesco Bartolozzi, engraver, after the painting by Luca Giordano, 1739–1780, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) View source artwork.

LE MANS, Gaul, in these years, about 660 AD — Two saints came out of one tomb, and their bones were mixed together in a single basket. Nobody could tell which of them were the brother’s and which were the sister’s.

A brother and a sister in one grave

Saint Scholastica started a house of women living under religious rule, a few miles from her brother’s at Monte Cassino. She ran it. Her brother was St. Benedict.

When she died, St. Benedict sent his monks to bring her body to his abbey. They buried her in the grave he had got ready for his own burial, so brother and sister lay in one tomb.

Away by night

Long after that, the Lombards destroyed Monte Cassino. For years the place where the two bodies lay stood empty.

Then Mummolus, the abbot of Fleury on the river Loire, sent one of his monks to Italy for the body of St. Benedict. The monk was St. Aigulf. On the road, men sent by the bishop of Le Mans joined him. They had been sent for the body of St. Benedict’s sister. The party took both bodies away by night.

Which bones were whose?

That is when the trouble started. The two had been buried together, and the bones came out of the tomb mixed in one basket. Until somebody could sort them out, neither Fleury nor Le Mans had a saint to carry home.

At Bonnée, in the Orléanais, a blind man got his sight back from the relics the party was carrying. Then the men of Le Mans said the remains of St. Scholastica were theirs. The argument over splitting the basket began. It ended in a miracle.

Adrevald of Fleury wrote the history of the journey. He says God wanted the brother and sister to be equal in the sign that told their bones apart. They were born of one flesh at one and the same time, he writes, and they were equal in merit.

Home on their shoulders

With the doubt gone, the people of Le Mans lifted her body onto their own shoulders straight away. They set off for home with immense joy. They carried her west from the Loire. News of them ran on ahead through the whole province.

Le Mans is built up the slopes of a hill above the river Sarthe. Round the top of the hill runs a wall the Romans built, twelve to fourteen feet thick. Between the wall and the river there is a flat strip of ground. That is where the bishop had chosen to build.

St. Berarius, the bishop of Le Mans, came out of the city to meet her. With him were priests and clerics of every rank. With him came crosses, censers, candlesticks, and all the banners of his churches. A crowd of every age walked with them, singing together. He took the body from the men who had carried it. He brought it on to the new church of St. Peter down by the river, with singing all the way.

Then he paid for the new house out of the money of his bishopric and out of his own property. He got ready everything women living under religious rule would need. Within a short time a hundred and fifty noblewomen had left the world behind and come to live there.

The city kept two feast days for her. February 10 was for her death, and July 11 for her coming into Gaul. Nobody worked on either day. On the July one her body was carried through Le Mans again, past street walls hung with tapestries.

About this story

Catholic Saints News tells the lives of the saints as news from their own time and place. This story was written with AI from the historical record, and we read and approved it before it ran.

The Saints' words. This newspaper will never make a saint say something the historical record does not preserve.

Junior Report. Written for readers ten to twelve, from the same sources and under the same rules as the rest of the paper. The words are shorter, hard terms are explained, and the question at the end is for the reader to think over.

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Image. AI-generated image, in the manner of Italian panel painting in egg tempera, from the paper's reference portrait based on De dood van de heilige Scholastica (The Death of Saint Scholastica), RP-P-OB-5367 (Francesco Bartolozzi, engraver, after the painting by Luca Giordano, 1739–1780, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) — see the original.

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Sources for this story

Listed by paragraph.

  1. Paragraph 1
    • documented Adrevald of Fleury and later Fleury monks; ed. Eugene de Certain, Historia translationis S. Benedicti, auctore Adrevaldo, in Les miracles de saint Benoit / Miracula sancti Benedicti (Latin, full volume), 2. Au siècle dernier, il existait encore à Fleury-le-Vieil ,, p. 6 ¶3
    • documented Adrevald of Fleury and later Fleury monks; ed. Eugene de Certain, Historia translationis S. Benedicti, auctore Adrevaldo, in Les miracles de saint Benoit / Miracula sancti Benedicti (Latin, full volume), III. Igitur cum, processu temporis evolventibus, p. 2 ¶4
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    • documented Adrevald of Fleury and later Fleury monks; ed. Eugene de Certain, Historia translationis S. Benedicti, auctore Adrevaldo, in Les miracles de saint Benoit / Miracula sancti Benedicti (Latin, full volume), 2. Au siècle dernier, il existait encore à Fleury-le-Vieil ,, p. 6 ¶3
    • documented Adrevald of Fleury and later Fleury monks; ed. Eugene de Certain, Historia translationis S. Benedicti, auctore Adrevaldo, in Les miracles de saint Benoit / Miracula sancti Benedicti (Latin, full volume), III. Igitur cum, processu temporis evolventibus, p. 2 ¶4
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    • documented Adrevald of Fleury and later Fleury monks; ed. Eugene de Certain, Historia translationis S. Benedicti, auctore Adrevaldo, in Les miracles de saint Benoit / Miracula sancti Benedicti (Latin, full volume), PAR AERE VALD ., p. 1 ¶1
    • documented Adrevald of Fleury and later Fleury monks; ed. Eugene de Certain, Historia translationis S. Benedicti, auctore Adrevaldo, in Les miracles de saint Benoit / Miracula sancti Benedicti (Latin, full volume), 2. Au siècle dernier, il existait encore à Fleury-le-Vieil ,, p. 6 ¶2
    • documented Adrevald of Fleury and later Fleury monks; ed. Eugene de Certain, Historia translationis S. Benedicti, auctore Adrevaldo, in Les miracles de saint Benoit / Miracula sancti Benedicti (Latin, full volume), 2. Au siècle dernier, il existait encore à Fleury-le-Vieil ,, p. 6 ¶5
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    • documented Adrevald of Fleury and later Fleury monks; ed. Eugene de Certain, Historia translationis S. Benedicti, auctore Adrevaldo, in Les miracles de saint Benoit / Miracula sancti Benedicti (Latin, full volume), 2. Au siècle dernier, il existait encore à Fleury-le-Vieil ,, p. 6 ¶5
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