Saint Caesarius of Nazianzus

Nearly everything known of Caesarius comes from Gregory: the funeral panegyric he gave for him, probably in the spring of 369, and four letters he wrote to him. ¹² The translators note that Jerome placed this oration first among Gregory's. ¹ Gregory warns his hearers at the start that he will neither lament "more than is good" nor praise his brother "beyond due measure." ¹ The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia, Butler's Lives and the Italian biography by Gian Domenico Gordini all retell his life from that oration. ³⁴⁵

He was born probably about 330 at Arianzus, near Nazianzus, the son of Gregory, bishop of Nazianzus, and of Nonna. ¹³ The encyclopedia calls him the "younger and only brother" of Gregory and says he received "a careful training" from both parents. ³ Gregory, describing those parents in the oration, says they were "far greater lovers of Christ than of their children." ¹

After their schooling at home the brothers separated for the first time. Gregory went to study rhetoric in Palestine, and Caesarius to Alexandria, "esteemed both then and now the home of every branch of learning." ¹ Weber adds that he probably studied first at Caesarea in Cappadocia. ³ Gregory praises him for avoiding bad company and attaching himself to the best, and says that from astronomy he took only what led him to reverence the Maker of the stars. ¹

Medicine was his great subject. Gregory speaks of "the wonderful art of medicine, in so far as it treats of physiology and temperament, and the causes of disease," and says no one could think himself his equal in it. ¹ Weber says that in medicine "he surpassed all his fellow students," and Butler calls him "the first man of his age" in that profession. ³⁴

Nonna had prayed that the sons she had sent out together might come home together, and without any plan between them they arrived at Byzantium at the same time, one by sea from Alexandria and one by land from Greece. ¹ The saint-nonna.ts profile tells this as her story; Gregory tells it here as a sign of God hearing a mother's prayer. ¹

Constantinople wanted to keep him. Gregory says he was offered public honors, a marriage into a distinguished family and a seat in the council, and that the city petitioned the emperor to have him as its physician. ¹ Gregory persuaded him to come home instead. ¹ Weber dates his arrival in the capital to about 355 and Gregory's to about 358. ³

The capital drew him back. He became a physician at court, under the emperor Constantius according to the translators, Butler and Gordini; Weber writes Constantine. ¹³⁴⁵ Gregory says he gave his services to the authorities "free of cost," and that among all his honors "he himself cared most for being, and being known to be, a Christian." ¹ His brother did not approve of the career. "I think it a better and grander thing," Gregory said, "to be in the lowest rank with God than to win the first place with an earthly king." ¹

When Julian became emperor, the letters' editors say, he dismissed the high officials of his predecessor but tried hard to keep Caesarius. ² Gregory wrote him a sharp letter repeating what people were saying, "Now a Bishop's son takes service in the army," and warning that their father was distressed and their mother had been kept from hearing of it. ² Either he would stay a true Christian and be ranked among the lowest, Gregory wrote, or he would grasp at honors and "have a share in the smoke, if not actually in the fire." ²

Julian at last tried argument. Gregory, who would not repeat the details at a funeral, describes a public debate in which Caesarius, "fortified with the sign of Christ," answered every sophistry and "in a loud clear voice declared that he was and remained a Christian." ¹ The emperor, Gregory says, then uttered "his famous saying — O happy father, O unhappy sons!" and put off a further hearing because he was leaving for war with Persia. ¹ Gregory says his brother lived in retirement during those evil days. ¹ The letters' editors say he resigned his office and withdrew to Nazianzus; Butler says the remonstrances of his father and brother prevailed on him to leave the court. ²⁴

After Julian's death he was received back with honor, and Gregory says the emperors who followed vied with each other to count him a friend. ¹ Under Valens he was given charge of the imperial revenue in Bithynia, "the stewardship of his revenue, and care of the exchequer," in Gregory's words; Weber and the letters' editors call the office quaestor, Butler treasurer. ¹²³⁴ Gordini says it was Jovian who appointed him. ⁵ Weber notes, and rejects, an old identification of him with a prefect of Constantinople imprisoned in 365. ³

On October 11, 368, an earthquake almost entirely destroyed Nicaea. ¹³ Gregory says it was "the most serious within the memory of man," and that Caesarius was one of very few men of rank to survive, "shielded by the very falling ruins." ¹ The letters' editors add that he lost his house. ²

Gregory wrote to him at once, and Basil wrote too. ²³ "Even frights are not without use to the wise," the letter begins, and it urges him to belong to God now that the danger was over. ² The translators say the escape moved him to be baptized; Gordini says he had been a catechumen and asked for baptism then, and that he gave up his office and turned to prayer. ¹⁵ Gregory says he "dedicated himself entirely to the Supreme Providence" and "attached himself to another court." ¹

He did not live to carry it out. "Unscathed though he had been by the earthquake," Gregory said, "he was not proof against disease, since he was but human." ¹ The letters' editors say he died suddenly early in 369, "aged only 40"; Weber puts his death at the end of 368 or the beginning of 369. ²³

His body was brought home to Nazianzus with hymns and orations and buried, the letters' editors say, in the Church of the Martyrs, in the vault his parents had prepared for themselves. ¹² Gregory addressed them at the grave: the tomb "seasonably prepared as it was for his parents in their old age" had been "unexpectedly bestowed on their son in his youth." ¹ His mother, Gregory says, put on festal clothes in place of mourning and lulled "to sleep lamentations by psalmody." ¹

He had not married. ³ Gregory tells the mourners of a promise "to give entirely to her son his wealth as a funeral offering on his behalf, leaving nothing to those who expected it." ¹ Weber says he directed that all his goods go to the poor, "an injunction which his servants abused in their own interests," and the letters' editors describe the looting of his house and the claims of creditors that Gregory, as his executor, had to deal with. ²³ Gregory later called these orations the panegyrics he had been "preserved to pronounce" on his brother and his sister. ⁷

None of the sources consulted names Saint Caesarius as the patron saint of anything, and this page does not supply one. ³⁴⁵ He was a physician, and Butler and the Martyrology both describe him first by that word; neither makes him a patron of physicians. ⁴⁶

Saint Caesarius's feast day is February 25. ⁵⁶ The current Roman Martyrology, as the Italian bishops print it, remembers on that day "a Nazianzo in Cappadocia, nell'odierna Turchia, san Cesario, medico, fratello di san Gregorio Nazianzeno": at Nazianzus in Cappadocia, in present-day Turkey, Saint Caesarius, physician, brother of Saint Gregory Nazianzen. ⁶

Butler says the Greeks keep his memory on March 9, and Gordini agrees, adding that the Latin cult probably came late and that its first mention is in the Roman Martyrology at February 25. ⁴⁵

He was not a monk or a bishop, and his brother did not pretend he was. Gregory thought the court was the wrong place for him and told him so, in a letter that does not soften anything. ² What he praised afterward was the Christian who stayed at court, worked without pay, and when it came to it said aloud what he was. ¹

His conversion came late, after the earthquake, and the life he then intended never happened. ¹² Gregory did not treat that as a loss of the time he had left. He said his brother was baptized, gave everything away, and went to God with all that was his. ¹

The funeral has his mother in festal clothes and his brother telling the old men among the mourners, a young man consoling his elders, that they would soon follow him. ¹ Grief and hope are both in it, and Gregory does not let either one cancel the other. ¹