“Then he said to Scholastica, ‘May God pardon thee, my sister, but what hast thou done?’ ‘Ah yes!’ she answered him, ‘I prayed thee, and thou wouldst not listen to me; then I prayed God, and He heard me. Go now, if thou canst, and send me away, to return to my convent.’

“He resigned himself, against his will, to remain, and they passed the rest of the night in spiritual conversation. S. Gregory, who has preserved this tale to us, adds that it is not to be wondered at God granting the desire of the sister rather than that of the brother, because of the two it was the sister who loved most, and that those who love most have the greatest power with God.

“In the morning they parted, to see each other no more in this life. Three days after, Benedict, being at the window of his cell, had a vision, in which he saw his sister entering heaven under the form of a dove. Overpowered with joy, his gratitude burst forth in songs and hymns to the glory of God. He immediately sent for the body of the saint, which was brought to Monte Cassino, and placed in the sepulchre he had already prepared for himself, that death might not separate those whose souls had always been united to God.

“The death of his sister was the signal of departure for himself. He survived her only forty days. A violent fever having seized him, he caused himself to be carried into the chapel of S. John the Baptist. He had before ordered to be opened the tomb in which his sister slept. There, supported in the arms of his disciples, he received the viaticum: then, placing himself at the side of the open grave, at the foot of the altar, and with his arms extended towards heaven, he died standing, murmuring a last prayer.

“Died standing!—such a victorious death became well the great soldier of God.”[[3]]

He was buried beside his sister, on the very spot where had stood the altar of Apollo which he had cast down.

S. BRIDGET OF KILDARE.

IX
S. BRIDGET

One would have to look through many centuries, and over a wide tract of the earth’s surface, to find a woman who possessed in her own generation so large an influence, and who so deeply impressed her personality on after generations, as S. Bridget. A woman she was, with no advantages of birth; but who by the mere force of character and her marvellous holiness, became a predominating power in the Church of Ireland after the death of S. Patrick.