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It was into this church that Caesarius himself, feeling his end approach, had himself conveyed, that with feeble uplifted hands he might bestow his final blessing on that band of faithful women who were labouring to bring a higher ideal of womanhood before the Arles folk, corrupted by the vices of the decayed civilisation of Rome.
Patrick's Purgatory". Paris, 1718. Preface. "Cesario," which carelessness or the exigency of metre has separated from the "Esturbaquense," of the next line is Caesarius of Heisterbach, a well-known hagiological writer of whom Adrien Baillet thus speaks: "Un religieux Allemand de l'ordre de Citeaux nomme 'Cesaire de Heisterbach', qui mourut du tems de l'empereur Frederic II. travailla aussi a la vie des Saints."
The confusion, for example in Caesarius's will between his two foundations of S. John's and S. Mary's, resolves itself, if we suppose that the monks were at the one, and the nuns at the other, and that they associated in the great church in the monastery, described by the authors of the Life of S. Caesarius, as being dedicated to S. Mary, S. John and S. Martin.
The Church of S. Caesaire is modernised, and has, alas! nothing of interest remaining in it, only its historic memories to hallow it. S. Caesarius, son of a count of Chalons, born in 470, had been educated at Lerins, but thence he was drawn in 501, to succeed the first fathers of that holy isle, Honoratus and Hilary, upon the archiepiscopal throne of Arles.
"Yes, I will lose him, as I have lost Suhm, and as I shall soon lose my Caesarius, the good Kaiserling. Alas! why did God give me so warm a heart for friendship, and then deprive me of my friends?"
Bernard the Abbot, our beloved Brother Caesarius Coninc died. He was a native of Utrecht, and Prior of Lunenkerc, but he had made his profession at Mount St. Agnes. He went on the concerns of his House to Antwerp, where he fell sick, and having been in a fever for nearly eight days he fell asleep in the Lord, and was buried there in the Convent of the Sisters of our Order.
A priest, a relative of Caesarius, had the meanness to let himself down the walls at night, escape to Theodoric the Ostrogoth king, and denounce him as engaged in secret communication with Clovis, king of the Franks. As soon as Arles was taken, Caesarius was led under custody to Theodoric, but was speedily set at liberty by that great-minded prince.
The church at this point was called in the sixth century S. Maria de Ratis, S. Mary of the Boats, by S. Caesarius, Bishop of Arles. William, Count of Provence, in his will, A.D. 992, gives it the same designation; so Raimbald, Archbishop of Arles in A.D. 1061, "The Church of the Ever Virgin Mother of God, Mary of the Boats." So also Bertrand II., Count of Provence, at the same date.
Another and similar charge was made against him later, and Caesarius was forced to travel to Ravenna to exculpate himself. On his return to Arles he set to work to rebuild his monastery, not this time without the walls. He made his own sister, Caesaria, the abbess, and she governed it for thirty years, and gathered about her a community of two hundred nuns.
This catastrophe happened January 25th, 1145. The next day the dispersed cardinals came together again in St. Caesarius' church, and set the thorny tiara on the head of a stranger to their order. This was the abbot of the Cistercian convent of St. Anastasius in Rome, formerly a monk under St. Bernard at Clairvaux.
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