Saint Caesarius of Arles

Caesarius was born about 470 near Chalon-sur-Saône, in Burgundy, into a Gallo-Roman family. At eighteen he received the tonsure from the bishop of Chalon against his family’s wishes, and about 490 he left home in secret for the monastery on the island of Lérins, off the coast of Provence. There he served as cellarer, and his fasting so damaged his health that his abbot sent him to Arles to recover. Aeonius, bishop of Arles and a kinsman, ordained him deacon and then priest and placed him at the head of a monastery near the city.

On the death of Aeonius, at the end of 502 or in 503, Caesarius succeeded him, and he governed the see of Arles for forty years. Accused of treason more than once, he was exiled to Bordeaux by the Visigothic king Alaric II and later allowed to return. After the siege of Arles in 507 and 508 he ransomed captives and cared for the poor and the sick, and he sold ornaments of the church to pay ransoms. In 513 King Theodoric summoned him to Ravenna and cleared him, and that year Pope Symmachus granted him the pallium, probably the first given to a bishop in the West. In 514 the pope made him vicar of the Apostolic See in Gaul.

He called and led the councils of southern Gaul: Agde in 506, Arles in 524, Carpentras in 527, Orange and Vaison in 529, and Marseille in 533. The Second Council of Orange, whose canons on grace and free will he drafted, condemned Semi-Pelagianism, and Pope Boniface II confirmed its decrees on January 25, 531. Caesarius preached constantly, in sermons of about fifteen minutes drawn from the daily life of his people, and some 238 of them, identified by Dom Germain Morin, survive. The Catholic Encyclopedia calls him the first great popular preacher whose sermons have come down to us.

On August 26, 512, he founded at Arles a monastery for women, dedicated to Saint John, and placed his sister Caesaria at its head. For it he wrote the Rule for Virgins, the first rule in the West written for women, which required strict enclosure; he also wrote a rule for monks. The community numbered about two hundred nuns at his death, and Saint Radegund later adopted his rule for her monastery of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. Caesarius died at Arles on August 27, 542; the Catholic Encyclopedia gives the year as 543.

A Life attributed to Bishop Cyprian of Toulon and others is the main source for his story. He was buried in the monastery of his nuns, which later took his name, and Archbishop Rostang restored his tomb there in 883 after it had been violated in a raid. The monastery was closed and sold in 1792, and his relics were scattered. On November 3, 1964, he was named secondary patron of the diocese of Aix and Arles, and his feast is kept on August 26 in the calendar of France and on August 27 in the Roman Martyrology.

Some of his vestments are kept at Arles: two palliums, a tunic, leather shoes and a belt with an ivory buckle. The Ministry of Culture, which classified the palliums as historic monuments in 1998, describes them as the oldest liturgical vestments in France. From March 24 to June 25, 2017, the Musée départemental Arles antique lent them to the Vatican Museums for an exhibition titled Dilectissimo fratri Caesario Symmachus, from the opening words of the pope’s letter to him.

The works most closely linked with Caesarius are the objects that tradition says he wore. The ivory buckle of his leather belt, dated to about 500, is carved with soldiers before the tomb of Christ. One pallium bears a chrismon, the monogram of Christ, at one end and is wrapped in Hispano-Moorish silk; the other is wrapped in plain silk edged with a band that once showed four running hares. A reliquary statuette and an enamel made in the Middle Ages also survive, according to the diocese of Aix and Arles.

Secondary patron of the diocese of Aix and Arles since November 3, 1964.

• Arles, Saint-TrophimeSaint-Trophime, the former cathedral of the see that Caesarius governed for forty years.
• Arles, Saint-CésaireThe site of his monastery of Saint-Jean, later Saint-Césaire, in the southeast corner of the old ramparts, where his tomb stood and whose eighteenth-century portal is a historic monument.
• Île Saint-HonoratThe abbey of Lérins, a few minutes by boat from Cannes, where he became a monk about 490; Cistercian monks live there today and welcome visitors at Mass.

On our ways: Arles.

• Via MagdalenaeThe Magdalene Way, seven days