Lindsay Rudge PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

they received the rule of saint Caesarius and blessed Caesaria’. 109 The Regula virginum
was perceived as the work of both siblings.
In both of these examples, the focus is on the formative role and example of
Caesaria. Caesarius’ status as the writer of the rule is important, but he only functions as
an adjunct to Caesaria’s dedicated life, which is the feature of central importance. How,
then, can the details of Caesaria’s life be teased out from those of Caesarius?
According to tradition, Caesaria was born in 465, with her birth date recorded as
12 January, still her feast day. 110 She was therefore older than Caesarius, whose accepted
year of birth is 470. The children were brought up in an atmosphere of devout
Christianity. At the age of seven, according to his vita, Caesarius donated his clothes to
the poor but kept it secret from his parents. 111 The holy child with uncomprehending
parents may be a hagiographical motif, but the subsequent lives of Caesaria and
Caesarius suggest that they had received a thorough grounding in familial piety. 112
The next point at which Caesaria enters record is in 506, when, aged forty-one,
she and a few other women were preparing to live in a monastery Caesarius was building
for them outside the walls of Arles. This lacuna of nearly thirty years can only be filled
by informed speculation. Although a very late vita of Caesaria exists, it is clearly drawn
from the Vita Caesarii and conveys a picture of Caesaria as a seventeenth-century
gentlewoman: ‘La devote & jeune Cesarée passoit doucement les jours à la maison de ses
parents... pour assister par ses tendres soins, sa bonne Mere’. 113 The historical interest this
account possesses lies in the fact that it was published in Arles, and therefore presumably
drew on traditions about Caesaria which were still current in the monastery, by then
109
Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, IX.40, tr. Thorpe, 530.
110
AASS Jan. 12, at 11. The Bollandists took their information from martyrologies.
111
V.Caes, I, 3.
112
Other examples of holy children in hagiography are Sulpicius Severus’ Martin, who wanted to a be a
hermit at the age of twelve (Vita Martini 2:4, in J. Fontaine (ed.) Vie de Saint Martin, I SC 133 (Paris,
1967); and Radegund, who polished the floor of her oratory with her dress (Venantius Fortunatus, Vita
Radegundis 2, MGH SSRM II: 358-377 at 365).
113
‘The young and devoted Caesaria quietly spent her days at her parents’ home, in order to assist her
mother by her tender care’. Vie de Sainte Cesarée, 314.
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