saint cesario deacono (12. 843)

A deacon originally from the Roman province of Africa, Caesarius began preaching the gospel to the poor of the ancient harbour town of Terracina along the Via Appia between Naples and Rome, accidentally arriving their after a shipwreck brought him providentially to a receptive audience, is feted on this day on the occasion of his martyrdom in year 107 AD. Critical of the long-standing pagan custom—“Alas for a state and emperors who persuade by tortures and are fattened on the outpouring of blood”—of this community under the direction of the priest of Apollo of choosing every first of January a sacrifice, a young man to be indulged all material delights and luxuriated for a span of eight months to become a fit propitiatory offering for the god and on the kalends of the ninth (novem), ceremonially regaled in finery and mounted on a generally recalcitrant steed, made to throw himself from the clifftop into the sea. For refusing to honour their patron and protector (though the pictured temple on the promontory is actually dedicated to Anxurus, a youthful avatar of Juno) and sowing heresy among the community, the priest of Apollo, Caesarius and a local presbyter called Julian were incarcerated and ultimately sentenced to the same fate as the sacrifice, without the pampering beforehand and unceremoniously bundled in a sack and flung off the mountain top. His name meaning “devotee of Caesar,” prompting his sainthood was seen by the early Church as a way of replacing the cult of emperors with their own pious servants—particularly after the daughter of Valentinian I Galla was healed after a visit to his shrine in the fourth century, translating some of his relics to Rome, building a basilica for them on Palatine Hill. With reference to his manner of death, Caesarius is the patron invoked against drowning and protector of Caesarean sections—though Galla would later die during childbirth. Bone fragments are preserved in churches throughout Italy and around the world, including Germany, the United States, the Philippines, Croatia and England.