A new book by Good Samaritan Sister Carmel Posa, which uses the ancient method of hagiography to recover the missing life and voice of St Scholastica of Nursia, proposes that the sister of St Benedict was a Good Samaritan whose capacity for love shaped her growth in holiness and wisdom, reports The Good Oil.
Carmel is a respected historian and expert in monastic studies and women in Church history. In The “Lost” Dialogue of Gregory the Great: The Life of Saint Scholastica she has drawn on a wide range of scholarship, including the 6th Century Dialogues of Gregory the Great, biblical models, and the Rule of Benedict to follow a technique used by St Gregory himself to create an account of Scholastica’s life.
Sr Carmel Posa SGS. PHOTO: The Good Oil.
Carmel said the desire to write this book was born from her fascination over many years with the story of Scholastica as found in Gregory’s Dialogues.
Identified by Gregory as Benedict’s sister, and considered by Church Tradition to be his twin, Gregory tells the brief story of when Scholastica, a nun, went to visit her brother at a house just outside his monastery gate. After a day of rich conversation, Benedict was due to return to the monastery that evening as his Rule required, but Scholastica begged him to stay and continue their conversation.
When Benedict refused her request, Scholastica prayed to God with great fervour, and a thunderstorm arrived which prevented her brother from leaving until morning. They spent the night in conversation about “the joys of heavenly life”. Gregory surmises that Scholastica’s prayer was successful against Benedict’s wishes because “she loved more”.
It was this key insight into Scholastica’s character that drove Carmel’s desire to uncover more about her.
“I’ve always loved that story,” she said. “I’ve taught it in academic settings and classes and when I got to the end and found Scholastica there in two short pieces, it always fascinated me.”
“Despite the fact that Scholastica is quite popular and there are lots of schools and monasteries named after her, we don’t know very much about her at all, and I would always think, ‘Why can’t we hear more about her?’
“I started to think, ‘How could I find out more about her?’”
Carmel completed a Master’s Degree in Monastic Studies at St John’s University, Collegeville, US, a PhD through Melbourne’s University of Divinity, and was senior lecturer at the University of Notre Dame Australia from 1999-2012. She has also taught at the New Norcia Institute for Benedictine Studies in Western Australia and now teaches at the Yarra Theological Union, a member college of the University of Divinity in Melbourne
She said her years of academic interest in uncovering the lost voices of women in Church history and her fascination with the hagiographical method, led her to pursue that as a way of getting to know Scholastica more.
“Hagiography is an ancient way of writing which was well recognised in its day as the way in which you wrote about the lives of the saints. It is about presenting the holiness of the person and, in that sense, is interested more in the truth of holiness than facts,” Carmel said.
“While hagiographies like The Life of Benedict seem for us today to be fictitious, they are presenting their subject as another Christ, because you couldn’t be a saint if you weren’t Christ-like, so it is a legitimate means today for grasping what we really mean by truth.”
Carmel said her starting point when beginning her exploration into Scholastica was the line from Gregory’s text that she “loved more” than Benedict.
“From there, it was like prayer really. I talked to her. I had a conversation with Scholastica,” she said.
Taking historical information about Benedict and Scholastica coming from a wealthy noble family, Carmel asked questions about how Scholastica might have grown up in this environment, including imagining how she felt when Benedict left home, and how she interacted with the historical setting of 5th and 6th Century Europe.
“The strong theme that emerged was that she was a person who grew in holiness,” Carmel said.
“I think she’s a Good Samaritan. That’s what I wanted her to be and that’s what she told me she was. I see her as a woman who becomes, rather than is. She develops into the woman that Gregory identifies at the end of the Dialogue.
“And she does this through being a Good Samaritan, and a courageous one at that, particularly at this difficult time in history with all sorts of things going on around her.
“I found in writing about her that she had integrity and sought wisdom.”
At the end of the book, Carmel felt she had formed a friendship with Scholastica.
“I do feel close to her,” she said. “I think one always forms a relationship with what they are writing. It was a labour of love, but it was also a lot of fun.
“I found that you can love someone you know very little about. It’s not really that hard to find her and find what she would be like – think of everyday circumstances of how we would love more in our lives.”
Carmel said the book took some years to emerge, starting in 2017 when she wrote the paper while on sabbatical and completing most of the writing of the book over the past three years.
“By using a particular method and drawing on all the sources available to me, I’m hoping it has created a worthwhile book,” she said.
“The recovering of women’s voices in history is really interesting. Not only do I find it important, but it continually fascinates me that they have been there all this time and not been given the credit they deserve.
“There is a lot of work going on in this area by people around the world and it’s a real privilege to be a part of it.”
The “Lost” Dialogue of Gregory the Great: The Life of Saint Scholastica is published this week by The Liturgical Press, with a foreword by Father Michael Casey OCSO.
This article by Debra Vermeer was published in The Good Oil, the monthly e-publication of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan.