St. Cæsarius, Physician, Confessor


HE was a physician, and brother to St. Gregory Nazianzen. When the latter repaired to Cæsarea, in Palestine, where the sacred studies flourished, Cæsarius went to Alexandria, and with incredible success ran through the circle of the sciences, amongst which oratory, philosophy, and especially medicine, fixed his attention. In this last he became the first man of his age. He perfected himself in this profession at Constantinople, but excused himself from settling there, as the city and the emperor Constantius earnestly requested him to do. He was afterwards recalled thither, singularly honoured by Julian the Apostate, nominated his first physician, and excepted in several edicts which that prince published against the Christians. He resisted strenuously the insinuating discourses and artifices with which that prince endeavoured to seduce him, and was prevailed upon by the remonstrances of his father and brother to resign his places at court, and prefer a retreat, whatever solicitations Julian could use to detain him. Jovian honourably restored him, and Valens, moreover, created him treasurer of his own private purse, and of Bithynia. A narrow escape in an earthquake at Nice, in Bithynia, in 368, worked so powerfully on his mind, that he renounced the world, and died shortly after, in the beginning of the year 369, leaving the poor his heirs. The Greeks honour his memory on the 9th of March, as Nicephorus testifies, (Hist. l. 11. c. 19.) and as appears from the Menæa in the Roman Martyrology, he is named on the 25th of February.	1

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