2. The holy and most blessed Caesarius, bishop of Arles, is said to have been a native of the territory of Chalon; whose parents, equal in lineage (which is a great and outstanding example of honor and nobility), flourished above all their fellow citizens rather in faith and morals. This venerable and holy man, when he was bearing his seventh year of age or more, would, without any hesitation, give to the poor from the garments he had about him. Often the blessed man, returning home half-naked, when he had been seen by his parents and was strictly examined as to what he had done with his garments, would answer only this: that they had been taken from him by passers-by.
Therefore, just as certain little trees of noble stock are wont to bear fruit before they grow—in which, indeed, the younger the age, the more gracious the abundance—so in that holy man, amid the very rudiments of infancy, the joyful germ of a flourishing hope so burst forth, that before he might flower in the span of age, he overflowed with the fruit of his native talent.
When therefore he was bearing his eighteenth year of age, desiring—without the knowledge of his household or parents—to attain a dwelling-place of the heavenly kingdom, he prostrated himself, with supplication sent ahead, at the feet of the holy pontiff of that time, Silvester, asking that, his hair being shorn from him and his garb changed, the pontiff might consign him to the divine service, and not suffer the suppliant to be henceforth recalled by his parents to the estate and his former affections. The pontiff therefore giving thanks to Christ, there was no delay to his most excellent vows.
And when he had there served under this beginning for two years or more, kindled by the prompting of divine grace, he resolved to consecrate himself more strictly and more readily, according to the Gospel, to the divine service, so that for the love of the heavenly kingdom he might be rendered a stranger not only to his parents but also to his fatherland. 5. Having therefore salutarily seized the liberty of fleeing from the fetters of the world, the holy novice sought out the monastery of Lérins. And when he was making the journey with but one servant as companion, before the inquisitors sent by his mother, as he crossed a river he was not seen by them. But the devil, having entered into a certain wretch, following his journey, cried out incessantly behind his back: Caesarius, do not go. Whom he straightway cured with a cup of blessed drink held out to him:
which, made known by the relation of that companion of his, it was established that he had wrought as his first miracle. Received therefore by the holy abbot Porcarius and by all the elders, he began to be prompt in vigils, careful in observance, eager in obedience, devoted in labor, outstanding in humility, singular in meekness, so that those who had received him to be instructed in the first elements of regular discipline rejoiced to have found him perfected in the increases of all instruction. 6. After a short time, therefore, he is chosen for the cellar of the congregation. Attentively and zealously, then, he began to be willing to give to those to whom it was necessary, even if, from love of abstinence, they asked nothing;
but to those to whom he had proved it was not necessary, he gave nothing, although they wished to receive. Whence it came about that those to whom holy discretion was unwelcome entreated the abbot that he ought to be removed from the cellar; which was also granted. Soon, that care set aside, he at last gave himself over to the desired assiduity of reading, chanting, praying, and keeping vigil; so that he reduced the weak body of his youth—which it had been fitting rather to coddle than to weaken—to being bent and broken alike by the excess of the cross: so that from the scant boiling of a vegetable or porridge, which he prepared for himself on the Lord's day, he would draw out his sustenance until the next Lord's day. 7. These things therefore in the beginnings of his merits brought good fruit:
which in the life that followed were augmented by manifold virtues. For he wore down the strength of the flesh, that he might strengthen the virtue of the spirit by the solidity of hope and faith. And, as the Apostle says, triumphing over himself for himself, that he might merit the crown, conquering, he transcribed the outer things of the inner man, and by the commands of an illustrious mind cast off the rebellious incitements of the body. After these things, however, with his stomach failing, he incurred the languor of a quartan fever. And when the holy abbot was gravely troubled over his infirmity—and the sickness was, as it were, divided between master and disciple, so that the one labored in mind, the other in body—and the holy Father saw in the monastery that no remedy could be supplied to him:
where, even if a physician were present, the boy's fervent custom toward spiritual things would suffer nothing to be relaxed from the reins of abstinence and the rigor of vigils because of his thirst; the most blessed abbot bids him—nay, compels him—to be brought to the city of Arles for the sake of recovering his health. 8. There was then at that time Firminus, illustrious and fearing God, and his close kinswoman Gregoria, most illustrious of women in the aforesaid city of Arles, by whose zeal and vigilance and care toward the clergy and the monks, and toward the citizens and the poor of the city, the aforesaid city was rendered more illustrious. For both did not consume their own resources in worldly luxury, but transmitted them to paradise for themselves by the conveyance of the poor. They received the aforesaid holy Caesarius to themselves for the sake of mercy.
There was, moreover, very familiar to these persons a certain man named Pomerius, a rhetorician by knowledge, an African by birth, whom the teaching of the grammatical art rendered there singular and renowned. These generous persons therefore conceive in their mind that, inasmuch as holy Caesarius was filled with so great a grace of God, and seemed to be supported by so great a gift of memory by the bounty of Christ, monastic simplicity in him might be strengthened by the disciplines of secular learning. 9. But he did not receive the figments of human erudition, whom divine grace had prepared to instruct of itself for itself. And so the book which the teacher had handed him to read, wearied by chance from his vigil, he placed in his bed beneath his shoulder:
upon which, when he had nonetheless fallen asleep, he is presently struck by a terrible vision sent from on high; and relaxed for a little while into slumber, he sees, as it were, the shoulder on which he lay, and the arm by which he had been leaning upon the book, being gnawed by a dragon that entwined it. Shaken therefore from sleep, terrified by the vision itself, he began more terribly to reproach himself from this very deed, because he had wished to couple the light of the saving rule with the foolish wisdom of the world. Therefore he straightway despised these things, knowing that the ornament of perfect speech would not be lacking to those in whom spiritual understanding had shone forth. 10. After some days, moreover, the aforesaid persons suggested to holy Eonius,
the bishop of the city, saying that there was with them a certain venerable monk, outstanding in all praise, whose person he ought to come to know by familiar and private inquiry. He bids him therefore to be brought to him. The venerable bishop Eonius therefore questions holy Caesarius, presented to him, rather diligently: what citizen he was, of what parents he had been begotten. And when he had made public his city of dwelling and the origin of his parents, the bishop, rejoicing with holy alacrity, said: You are mine, my son, fellow citizen and likewise kinsman; for I remember your parents very well, and by consanguinity I embrace you with parental recollection.
He began therefore to contemplate the young man, not as a stranger or foreigner, but with more attentive regard, with the inmost eyes of the heart. Soon then he sought him from his holy abbot Porcarius. At the request therefore of the blessed man Eonius the bishop, though from one unwilling, he is granted. Forthwith he is ordained deacon, and thereafter presbyter. But never relinquishing in the slightest the canonical chanting of a monk, never the institutions of the men of Lérins, in order and office a cleric, in humility, charity, and obedience, under the cross, he remained a monk. At church indeed, at the morning offices and the other assemblies, he was the first of those entering, the last of those departing.
Neither sight nor hearing could sever the blessed man's soul from the nectar of heavenly goods, so that the very cast of his countenance seemed always to shine with I know not what heavenly light. After this, when the abbot of the island in the suburb of the city had died, the blessed Father Caesarius was appointed by holy Eonius so that, succeeding to that same authority of reverence, he might shape according to the discipline of an abbot the monastery which had recently been left without a head by the death of its ruler. He therefore gladly took up his life in the suburban monastery, a life which even within the city he ever cultivated by his daily deeds and ever longed for in his prayers; and by such daily diligence and with the divine offices he so formed the aforesaid monastery that, God being favorable, it is preserved there to this very day.