A whole life given to God with an undivided heart.
January 12
Not verified yet
Virgin
Thin entry · the 1914 book gives only 91 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.
S. Cæsaria was the superior of a convent of religious women, erected by her brother, S. Cæsarius, at Arles. When, in 507, the Franks and Burgundians, under Alaric, had been defeated by Clovis, Theodoric invaded the south of Gaul from Italy, and besieged the city, and battered down the convent which had been erected for S. Cæsaria. When tranquillity was re-established, Cæsarius rebuilt the monastery, and called his sister from Marseilles to inhabit it.
Build up the community you belong to. This life was lived with and for a community.
Learn from the kind of life it was. A whole life given to God with an undivided heart.
S. Cæsaria was the superior of a convent of religious women, erected by her brother, S. Cæsarius, at Arles. When, in 507, the Franks [the Germanic people who ruled Gaul and gave France its name] and Burgundians, under Alaric, had been defeated by Clovis, Theodoric invaded the south of Gaul [roughly modern France and Belgium] from Italy, and besieged the city, and battered down the convent which had been erected for S. Cæsaria. When tranquillity was re-established, Cæsarius rebuilt the monastery, and called his sister from Marseilles to inhabit it. The rule of S. Cæsaria, drawn up by her brother, exists, and is published by the Bollandists [Jesuit scholars who since the 1600s have critically studied the lives of the saints].
Feast: January 12
One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Cæsaria's story, and a nudge to keep going.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.