Scholastica

Saint Scholastica is invoked against storms because of the most famous scene from her life, recorded by Saint Gregory the Great. At their last yearly meeting, she begged her brother Benedict to stay through the night to speak of God; when he refused, she bowed her head in prayer and at once a violent thunderstorm broke, so fierce that he could not leave — “You would not listen to me,” she said, “so God did.” Three days later she died, and Benedict saw her soul rise to heaven as a dove. Because her prayer commanded the storm, she became the saint to call upon against tempests and, since the storm in Gregory’s account afflicted a child elsewhere in the tale’s tradition, against the convulsions of children. As Benedict’s twin and the first Benedictine woman, she is the patroness of Benedictine nuns.