CJESARIUS
136
C-ffiSARIUS
summary, or speculum, of ancient Christian life in
the Roman West, in its own way a counterpart of the
Apostolic Constitutions (q. v.) and the Apostolic
• 'annus (see Canons Apostolic) for the Christian
Orient. If we add to these councils his own above-
mentioned council of Agde, those of Gerona, Sara-
gossa, Valencia and Lerida in Spain (516-524), and
those of Epaone (517) and Orleans (538, 541) in Gaul
(influenced by Csesarius, Malnory, 115, 117), we have a
contemporary documentary portrait of a great Gallo-
Roman ecclesiastical legislator and reformer whose
Christian code aimed at and obtained two things, a
firm but merciful and humane discipline of clergy and
people, and stability and decency of ecclesiastical life
both clerical and monastic. To a Catholic mind the
above-mentioned Second Council of Orange reflects
special credit on Csesarius, for in it was condemned the
false doctrine concerning grace known as Semipelagi-
anism (q. v.) ; there is good reason for believing that the
council's decrees (Hefele, ad. an. 529; P. L., XXXIX,
1142-52) represent the work (otherwise lost) "De
gratia et libero arbitrio" that Gennadius (De vir. ill., c.
86) attributes to Csesarius, and which he says was ap-
proved and widely circulated by Felix IV (526-530).
It is noteworthy that in the preface to the acts of the
council, the Fathers say that they arc assembled at the
suggestion and by the authority of the Apostolic See,
from which they have received certain propositions or
decrees (capitula), gathered by the ancient Fathers
from the Scriptures concerning the matter in hand;
as a matter of fact the decrees of the council are taken
almost word for word, says de la Bigne (op. cit., 1145-
46), from St. Augustine. Finally, the confirmation
of the council's doctrinal decrees by Boniface II (25
Jan., 531) made them authoritative in the Universal
Church.
( Isesarius, however, was best known in his own day, and is still best remembered, as a popular preacher, the first great Volksprediger of the Christians whose sermons have come down to us. A certain number of these discoarses, forty more or less, deal with Old Testament subjects, and follow the prevalent typol- ogy made popular by St. Augustine ; they seek every- where a mystic sense, but avoid all rhetorical pomp and subtleties, and draw much from the admirable psalm-commentary, " Enarrationes in Psalmos", of St. Augustine. Like the moral discourses, "Admoni- tiones " , they are quite brief (his usual limit was fifteen minutes), clear and simple in language, abounding in images and allusions drawn from the daily life of the townsman or the peasant, the sea, the market, the vineyard, the sheepfold, the soil, and reflecting in a hundred ways the yet vigorous Roman life of South- ern Gaul, where Greek was still spoken in Aries and Asiatic merchants still haunted the delta of the Rhone. The sermon of Csesarius opens usually with an easy and familiar introduction, offers a few plain truths set forth in an agreeable and practical way, and closes with a recapitulation. Most of the sermons deal with the principles of Christian morality, the Divine sanc- tions: hell and purgatory (fur the latter see Malnory, 1S."> Sli i, the various classes of sinners, and the princi- pal vices of his day and surroundings: public vice, adultery and concubinage, drunkenness, neglect of Mass, love of (landed) wealth, the numerous survivals of a paganism thai was only newly overcome. In them the popular life of the Prowincia is reproduced, often with photographic accuracy, and frequently with naive good-nature. These sermons are a valua- ble thesaurus for historical students, whether of canon law, history of dogma, discipline, or liturgy.
Many of these sermons win' frequently copied in
with works of St. Augustine, whose text, as stated, they often reproduced. The editio princeps is that of Gilbertus Cognatus N'ozarenus (Basle, 1558), anil includes forty sermons, of which, according to Arnold (see below, 492), only about twenty-four were surely
genuine. The great Maurists, Coustant and Blanc-
pain, made clear his title to 103, which they printed
in the appendix to the fifth volume of the Benedictine
edition of St. Augustine (P. L., LXVII, 1041-90,
1121-25). Casimir Oudin, the ex-Premonstratensian
and familiar in his Catholic period with the aforesaid
Maurists, intended (1722) to bring out a special edi-
tion of the sermons and the writings of Csesarius, the
former of which he calculated as one hundred and fifty-
eight in number. The Benedictine editors of the
"Histoire Litteraire de la France" (III, 200-217) put
down as surely genuine one hundred and twenty-two
or one hundred and twenty-three. Joseph Fessler,
Bishop of St. Polten, had planned an edition of St.
Ca>sarius, but death (1872) surprised him. and his ma-
terials passed to the Benedictines of Maredsous in
Belgium, who have confided this very important task
to Dom Germain Morin. In the "Revue Benedic-
tine" (Feb., 1893) he made known the principles and
the method of his new edition. Several other essays
from the same pen and in the same place represent
the choicest modern learning on the subject.
In the history of monastic life and reforms in Gaul, Csesarius occupies an honourable place between St. Martin of Tours and St. Honoratus of Le>ins on the one hand, and St. Columbanus on the other, while he is a contemporary of St. Benedict, and in fact sur- vived him but a few months. He composed two rules, one for men ("Ad Monachos"), the other for women ("Ad Virgines"), both in Migne, P. L., LXVII, 1099 sqq., 1103 sqq., reprinted from Holstein- Brockie, "Codex regularum monasticarum" (Augs- burg, 1759). The rule for monks is based on that of Lerins, as handed down by oral tradition, but adds the important element of stability of profession (ut usque ad mortem suam ibi perseveret, c. i), a legal re- nunciation of one's property, and a more perfect com- munity of goods. This rule soon gave way to the Rule of Columbanus, and with the lat><"7, eventually to the Rule of St. Benedict. The rule tor nuns, how- ever, had a different fate. "It was the work of his whole life", says Malnory (257) and into it he poured all his prudence, tenderness, experience, and fore- sight. It borrows much from the famous Epistle ccxi of St. Augustine and from John Cassian; nevertheless it was the first rule drawn up for women living in per- fect community, and has remained the model of all such. Even to-day, says Malnory (263), "it unites all the conditions requisite for a cloistered nunnery of strict observance". His own sister, St. Coesaria, was placed at the head of the monastery (first built in the famous Aliscamps, outside the walls of Aries, afterwards removed within the city), which at the death of the holy founder counted two hundred nuns. It astonished his contemporaries, who looked upon it as an ark of salvation for women in those stormy times, and drew from Pope Hormisdas a cry of ad- miration, preserved for us in the letter by which, at the request of Csesarius, he approved and confirmed this new work (super clericorum et monasteriorum excubias consuetas puellarum quoque Dei choros noviter instituisse te, P. 1... LXVII, 12S5).
The pope also confirmed the full exemption of the abbess and her nuns from all episcopal authority; fuvure bishops could only visit them occasionally, in the exercise of their pastoral duties, or in case of grave violation of tin- rule. Flections, constitution, internal administration, even the choice of the Mass-priest, were confided exclusively to the com- munity in keeping with the rule that ('a'sarius did no! cease to perfect at all times: in the "Recapitu- latio" which he finally added (and in his Testament) he insists again on the quasi-complete exemption of the monastery, as though this freedom from all external control or interference seemed to him in dispensable. The nuns on entering made a solemn promise to remain until death; moreover, at his re-
