they were obliged to waken for matins very early
in the morning, before the breaking of day, even in summer, and this
after having risen for a short service of praise at midnight.

Abstinence from the flesh of four-footed animals was perpetually and
universally enforced. Fowls were allowed on festival occasions; but the
regular diet was vegetable broth and bread. A large part of the year was
a prescribed fast during which one meal a day was made to suffice and
that at even. No nun was permitted to speak of or consider anything as
her own, not even a girdle or any part of her dress. At first, when
members of the order became delinquent in their duties, only such
penalties as sequestration from the common table or the chapel, with
expulsion from the order in case of incorrigibility, could be enforced.
But, as the Church's disciplinary hand grew heavier on the lives of
mankind, severer punishments were adopted, which contumacy served only
to render yet more cruel, even to life-long solitary incarceration.

But the most stringent rule of monasticism, as regulated by Saint
Benedict and Saint Scholastica, was that in relation to the sexes.
According to it, they were required to treat each other as natural,
irreconcilable enemies. Communion, even between those of the closest
kin, was almost entirely interdicted. The two founders, brother and
sister though they were, and united not only in a perfect harmony of
disposition and affection, but in devotion to the same life purpose, saw
each other but once a year. "There is something striking," says Milman,
"in the attachment of the brother and sister, the human affection
struggling with the hard spirit of monasticism. Saint Scholastica was a
female Benedict--equally devout, equally powerful in attracting and
ruling recluses of her own sex, the remote foundress of convents almost
as numerous as those of her brother's rule." We are indebted to Gregory
the Great for the narration of some interesting incidents in the lives
of these two saints. The only one which our space will permit, and
perhaps the one which best illustrates the spirit that governed them in
the hard and self-denying path which they elected to walk, is the
account of their last meeting. Though the convent was situated not far
from the monastery, though they were brother and sister, aged, and
devoted to the same holy aims, they met but once a year, for so said the
rule. Scholastica was dying, and the time came for Bene