ON S. CÆSAREA THE VIRGIN
NEAR CASTRO IN CALABRIA.
PrefaceCæsarea the Virgin Martyr in Calabria (S.)
D. P.
The worship of this holy Virgin, as certainly it is renewed every year on the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, so on an uncertain day it wanders, since that feast is movable; yet so that almost always it falls in May, rarely in June, in April scarcely once in single centuries. But the history of the same has the greatest likeness with the history of S. Dympna, like S. Dympna, as far indeed as pertains to the father burning with incestuous love of his daughter; yet by so much the more detestable, as it is fouler that among Christians a crime could be conceived, which among Gentiles nature abhors. And so, uncertain of the time in which Cæsarea lived, I subjoin her to S. Dympna herself on this same day. Of the worship and the place of the worship Antonius Galateus makes us certain, an erudite Physician, familiar to Hermolaus Barbarus, and (as our Beatillus wrote to us) born in the year 1444, she is venerated on the feast of the Ascension dead in 1517. Which therefore I here add so expressly, that if anywhere thou findest a history, in which S. Cæsarea is said to have been born in the year of Christ 1450, thou mayest understand it to be plainly incredible; hearing him, who lived at the same time, Galateus, speaking of her, without any indication of so near a time; near Castro, but as we are wont to speak of the ancient Saints. The place, near which S. Cæsarea now has her chief worship, is called Castro on the extreme shore of Italy, distant six miles from Otranto. The words of Galateus concerning this and her, in his little book on the situation of Iapygia, are these, according to the Basel edition of the year 1558 page 44.
[2] Thence Castro is an Episcopal town, which at the second milestone has another temple of the Divine Cæsarea: nearby is a spring of warm waters, which experience teaches to be useful for several diseases. The spring is in a cave, which having no other entrance than from rocks overhanging the sea, is approached by hanging boards and thrown bridges, nor except once in single years in the month of May. In this the Divine Cæsarea is said by the inhabitants to have lain hidden, where is her cave and in it a salutary spring: while she fled the fury of her father. Nor are there lacking those who testify that they saw there the Divine bearing a lamp. The cave can be approached only by a calm sea. A storm suddenly arising the terrified mother is said to have left her son there, whom the Divine herself is reported by fame to have nourished for a year. To her our Hymn is extant in Sapphic and Adonic verse, of which this is the beginning: The Divine lurking in the extreme hiding-place &c. Thus he: who the same on page 38 had said, that between Taranto and Gallipoli there is a village on the Neritan shore, which from the Divine Cæsarea received its name, destroyed by the people of Gallipoli, as they say.
[3] To this older testimony another more recent will add faith, sent by the Bishop of Castro himself, to whom a solemn pilgrimage interrogated about these things, in the year 1676 to the then Rector of our College of Lecce Vincent Galeota, in these words: From the city of Castro about three Roman miles if you keep the way by land, a mile and a half if by sea, there is a cave, into which the sea enters, and within it a great spring, full of sea water, and having sulphur mixed. To it from holy Thursday until the feast of the Ascension the people flock, out of religion toward S. Cæsarea: and the scabby and the lepers are washed in the said spring, and many are healed. But on the very day of the Ascension is celebrated the feast of that Saint in a church dedicated to her, twenty paces from the said cave. Which church indeed was once great, but now lies ruined, and in one wing of it only now there remains a single chapel, to which there is a more frequent concourse on the aforesaid solemnity, and that not only from the neighboring places, but also from other dioceses. There comes then also the same the Chapter of Castro, is instituted from the city of Castro. and fairs are there celebrated, and the Captain of Parabita comes there with all his cohort, the necessary expense being furnished by the Community of Cerfignano, which is a village of the diocese of Castro. The chapel of Lucugnano, In the village also of Lucugnano, of the diocese of Ugento, there is a chapel sacred to S. Cæsarea: and in the territory of Scorrano of the diocese of Otranto, a fief now desolate, distant X Roman miles from Castro called Francavilla.
[4] This nearness of place makes it verisimilar to me, that this rather is the native land of S. Cæsarea, than another much more remote Francavilla, of the diocese of Oria: which yet by its greater fame seems to have prevailed, that before the place of now obscurer fame it is believed to have first received the Saint being born; even showing a house converted into a chapel, which had been her father's. And to this opinion the author of the Life consents, and Francavilla. describing the flight of the Saint, and marking the intermediate places. Indeed I would not deny those things, which in such places are said to be extant, traces of the Saint: but whether these were left by her fleeing, or impressed on other occasions, I think can be doubted: for nothing of the whole matter sufficiently ancient, nay nor verisimilarly sufficiently devised, is extant. Yet we have some Life, in this or the preceding century composed in Italian by a certain Archpriest of the said place, such as from the papers of P. Antonius Beatillus of our Society we give in Latin. To this he had added, in his little annotations, that the narration agrees altogether with that, which as a boy he said he had heard from his elders a certain Father grave with age and learned of our Society of Alessano, his native city in the territory of Otranto, and he added that by tradition alone it is believed that there the Saint died and was buried. The Life from the Italian, of what kind. But if the Saint and her father, as is said at the end, after she escaped from his hands, no one ever saw; I do not see, whence so distinct a notice of persons and actions could flow into the common people, and at length be handed down in writing; unless from the mouth of Benignus the Hermit, who foretold the virgin to be born, and divinely admonished of her peril gave her the counsel of fleeing. But neither could he know, the things which after his departure were secretly done between father and daughter, if he did not learn these too divinely: and then it would be more wonderful that concerning her death and the place and manner of her burial something likewise was not taught. Hence it comes that I fear, lest only this certain tradition retained, that to that cave, the sea perhaps opening a way, Cæsarea having entered, the fury of her pursuing father being eluded, led there a life more known to God than to men: but the other circumstances from verisimilitude human invention added, and perhaps the very names of the parents and the hermit a like liberty devised. Let the judgment be with the reader, I under caution of this kind render back the deposit, such as was committed to me, wishing nothing detracted from it or added by me: and only, to justify my doubt, subjoining a briefer narration of the same Saint, sent by the Bishop of Castro: which seems to have so much the more likeness, the more it abstains from explaining those things, which whether they could humanly be known we with the greatest right doubt.
LIFE
From an older Italian MS.
Cæsarea the Virgin Martyr in Calabria (S.)
FROM THE ITALIAN MS.
[1] S. Cæsarea the Virgin was born of parents at once honorable and opulent, at the town of Francavilla a of the extreme of Italy, She is born at Francavilla in Calabria. where the sea stretching itself between the Ionian and Adriatic, from Otranto, the chief city of the Salentines, is now called the Land of Otranto. Her father was named Aloysius b, but her mother Lucretia, when they had passed a whole decade together in a barren bed, that they might be blessed with offspring, profusely liberal toward the needy, communicated their vows frequently and with ardent prayer to God and the Heavenly ones. By whom heard by no obscure indication, they first preconceived a firm hope of certainly obtaining offspring. For a certain Hermit of holy life, called Joseph c Benignus, from his nearby solitude, as it happens, going at times into the town, bade Lucretia be of good cheer; and (since he himself, as inhabiting an oratory consecrated to the Mother of God, was wholly given to her worship) to place a not common hope in the patronage of the most merciful mother of God. from a barren mother obtained by the patronage of the Mother of God But confirmed by exhortation of this kind the most pious woman, much more frequently and more fervently than she was wont, became a suppliant to the great Queen of heaven for that end. And when on a certain sabbath day with surer hope of her vow she mingled tears with prayers; entering to her supplicating in this manner the aforesaid Hermit said: At length, Lucretia, I call thee happy, because thy prayers have been heard in heaven: thou shalt bear a daughter, and shalt call her by that name, which for the time and on the spot thy mind shall suggest. But she, grateful at the unexpected voice of the man and the most auspicious tidings, about to give testimony of a glad mind, raising her hands to heaven fixed a kiss on the earth: and relating the matter with joy to her husband and attesting it to her neighbors, made it openly known, that the offspring, which whether male or female she should bear, she would consecrate to the Virgin Mother of God. She determined besides to retain the custom of the sabbath fast undertaken in her honor, and to remain in the office of liberality hitherto exercised toward the needy. and piously educated, she refuses to marry:
[2] The solemn time of childbirth therefore being passed from the conception, when amid the gravest pains Lucretia was in labor, recalling to mind the things which she had heard Benignus before foretelling: I shall, she suddenly said, bear a female, and I will that she be called Cæsarea. And suddenly freed from all pain, she most happily brought forth such a child as she had said. S. Cæsarea therefore, born about midnight, d on the eighth day of December, after she had been
duly washed in the laver of Baptism, delivered to a certain nurse Catharine Felix, a pious woman and loving God, to be educated, increased in age by years, and in her propensity toward the cultivation of virtue by no obscure indications after the example of her mother. Then letters, when by an age capable of them it was allowed, by her parent's care she learned with a certain upright and erudite Priest of the town of Francavilla: and in the fifteenth year of her age sought by some for marriage, that she might be free from a bond of this kind, she pretended the lower years of age not sufficiently mature and that she was asked to be the spouse of the chaster Christ: and asked how she knew that she was asked as spouse by Christ, she answered that her mind dictated this to her.
[3] [the last admonitions being received from her dying mother concerning the worship of the Mother of God,] There was meanwhile the last day for her mother Lucretia, and the journey of eternity to be undertaken, for which fortified with the Sacraments she had prepared herself: wherefore her daughter being called to her about to instruct her with last admonitions: By the pains, she said, which I bore bringing thee forth, I ask, ever worship the Virgin Mother of God as a mother, and the sabbath fast every week consecrate to her. Each thing S. Cæsarea, for the love of each mother, undertook to do. Lucretia moreover admonished her husband, that, if it were his mind to bind himself by the bond of another marriage, he should choose a wife, in whom looking not to beauty but to probity he should have one like to herself. Benignus at last being summoned she singularly commended Cæsarea, and asked that, continual prayers being poured forth for her to God, he would have her in his protection. Aloysius meanwhile, his mother being dead after these things, when he reckoned with himself, both that by some fate his only daughter could be snatched from him, and then, if she had not left offspring, that there would be lacking one whom of his family he might write heir of his opulence, her and Christ with a set fast and affliction of the body she venerates: more keenly began to spur S. Cæsarea to enter marriage. But she to her parent often thus importunate, said that no other loves or spouse than Christ pleased her: and avoiding the company of men, she dearly loved domestic solitude. She poured out much of her wealth on the poor, she worshipped the Mother of God by continual recitation of psalms, before her image which she had at home wont to magnify the sacred praises of the Virgin: to Christ who suffered for her she consecrated the day of Friday every week with a fast: and then repeating by pious meditation the torments which He had borne for our race, she repaid to the same tears from her eyes, and the blood profusely shed from His beaten body. taught divinely by the Hermit of her father's lustful mind toward her,
[4] But Aloysius, since he burned with desire of a second marriage, and distrusted that he could easily find such as the dying Lucretia had commended: turned his mind kindled with incestuous lust to the love of his own offspring: about to wring those out even by force if he did not obtain them by voluntary consent. Wherefore he commanded, that after the manner of maidens of her age she should adorn herself, and then toward evening should present herself to him, as if about to receive certain commands of his, not against custom unwelcome. The daughter, always prompt at her father's nod, had begun to obey, suspecting nothing in him of so detestable a crime: but God, who preserves the upright in perils, an Angel being sent from heaven to Benignus commanded that as quickly as possible he should go to the virgin, and explain, how great, if she remained in her father's house, a peril of her chastity to be snatched by her father she would undergo. He flies therefore forthwith to the virgin's house, and finding her in a chamber feeding her mind with the reading of some sacred book, thus addresses her: Cæsarea, a messenger sent from heaven has opened to me the mind of thy parent devising nothing good toward thee: the lustful one lies in wait for thy chastity; nor canst thou be safe so long as thou remainest within these walls: by swift flight seek another seat, and in it place thy safety: certainly thou shalt be in the custody of Him, who bids me say these things. S. Cæsarea to these things, I have indeed thanks, she said, both to God and to thee, Benignus, that ye indicate the peril in which ignorant I am engaged: but alone and unknown to what place shall I betake myself? To Him, said he, to whom heaven shall direct thee: only dare, and with God as guide and protector thou shalt go. To him saying these things her parent came upon them, and he (lest he should betray anything of those things for which he had come) as if for the cause of asking alms he had been present, having prayed well for both, and alleging the inclination of the day toward evening, betook himself to the hermitage. she repudiates his love;
[5] Aloysius then the house being shut summoning Cæsarea to him, and fixing his lustful eyes on her adornment and beauty, in his mind also figuring in her the deceased wife, explained his incestuous mind in words of this kind: Dearest daughter, although, if thou allowest, hereafter to be called rather by the sweeter name of spouse to me, I have exchanged my paternal love toward thee with the marital: it is my mind secretly from all to lead thee into the bed of Lucretia thy mother, and by a marriage secret to me, that I may say all in a few words, to couple thee: thou henceforth call me Aloysius thy husband and spouse, but I will hold thee in the place of spouse and wife: come, while it can be done, let us make the loves of each of us common to us. Cæsarea with an intrepid answer to these things, Is it so indeed, wretched, she said, father, dost thou cast thyself down to so great a crime? dost thou not see, even by designing it in thought alone, how great a punishment with the severe God thou establishest for thyself? That thou mayest find satiety of infamous lust, is it to be sought in thy daughter? See into whose and how chaste ears thou pourest these things: she is thy daughter, and she who will never commit that, contaminated with so infamous a crime, she should irritate God against herself: accordingly bend thy mind to better things, and think what fires for a crime of this kind burn among the infernal. Cæsarea after these things sighing and weeping the father terrified with threats: Nothing, he said, do these tears of thine move me: to the love of him who so greatly loves thee, thou oughtest to repay love; and unless thou doest it, I prepare forthwith the force which I can.
[6] But here gathering her mind Cæsarea, and flight being taken began seriously to think of flight: and that she might make it secure, simulating consent to her parent's demands, Go, she said, into thy chamber therefore and thy bed, father; and there await me, until I put some little delay in washing my feet. Here that she might deceive her parent, she quickly cast two doves, their wings bound not tightly, into a basin filled with water; which by the noise and clapping of their wings, that they might express as it were her washing herself, she believed would make a deception for her father, meanwhile while she prepared all things for flight: but the substituted sound coming briefly to his ears, when it had roused him angry from the bed, Cæsarea meanwhile, the bolt being dexterously drawn from the door of the house, through the darkness took to flight. Whom he after he had in vain tracked in the house, judging at last that she had fled to some of the kindred somewhere, ran about the houses of each; and not even there finding her whom he sought, returning home he seized a sword; and with it, wherever he should catch her, threatening death to the fugitive, by her pursuer about to be killed he fell upon a demon falsely feigning the human appearance of a citizen of Francavilla. This one to him inquiring, whether he had seen any maiden, who was his daughter, having a journey this way and with whom? He says he had seen, and led by some noble suitor, as it appeared, she had proceeded further: whom he had also heard saying; Come Cæsarea, even with thy father unwilling let us proceed where we have begun. The father kindled by these things with graver wrath, when not having advanced much thence in his course to overtake the fugitives, inquired of another similarly demon meeting him what of the first, understood that he was near to her whom he sought; for it was not long, since she hastening had gone before that way: if he should hasten a little, certainly he would overtake her.
[7] Accelerating therefore his step, not much after he had the fugitive in sight: and at the promontory of Castro, which citadel on the Otranto shore overhangs the sea, crying with a great and menacing voice, he commanded her hastening further to stop. But Cæsarea e since she saw herself about to be soon in the hands of her angry father, nor had any protection of the peril placed in a man, turned her vows and prayers to God: by whom forthwith in the appearance of an armed youth a sent Angel was present. From whose sudden sight when she increased her fear: the cave in the sea shown by the Guardian Angel she enters; Be of good cheer, said he, Cæsarea: whom thou seest is thy guardian Angel; I have come armed, that I may ward off from thee the arms of thy angry father: quickly into that cleft of the rock, which shines there with copious light within, hide thyself: there thou hast a safe refuge from the twin peril both of chastity and of life. But indeed, thanks being given to God and the Virgin Mother of God, her flying thither still her father pursued: and when with drawn sword, because he thought it now opportune for a stroke, he wished to strike; suddenly surrounded by a dense cloud, he lost his daughter from his eyes. Who also from that time when she entered the cave shown by the Angel, never afterward, as also her father, came into the sight of men. Whence by the faith thence transmitted to posterity, the inhabitants held persuaded, that the parent absorbed by the waters, into which in the fervor of pursuing his daughter he had thrown himself, transcribed his unhappy soul to the infernal regions: but holy Cæsarea was there secretly buried by him who had led her thither, the Angel. where dead and venerated by the yearly concourse of the inhabitants, But at that time, and in the month of May, and on the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, on which the things related f happened, the place for the sake of worshipping the Virgin is approached by a frequent crowd of the inhabitants. And some narrate, that about that same time a burning lamp in the cave is seen by those approaching, illuminating the place with the same light as at first. It is also handed down to memory, that a certain woman, the boy deserted in the water she preserves alive for a whole year, when through the bottom of the sea retreated for the cause of seeking safety she had brought her son, suddenly surrounded by the waters flowing in again, leaving him to save herself took to flight, and the year turning at last found the boy there safe and unhurt. Many oratories dedicated to S. Cæsarea are seen in the territory of Otranto, various ones have adopted her as their tutelary Saint; among whom before the rest those who inhabit Lucugnano.
ANNOTATA.
ANOTHER BRIEFER LIFE
From a more recent Italian MS.
Cæsarea the Virgin Martyr in Calabria (S.)
Francavilla on the Gallipoli shore In the Salentine fields, whose head and metropolis is the most ancient city of Lecce, is Francavilla: in which humbly born S. Cæsarea led her life under the education of an inhuman father, as a rose among thorns or a lily of the valleys. For burning with impure love, and unable by any exhortations of the most chaste Virgin to be drawn back from his incestuous purpose, what he could not from her willing, he wished to extort from her unwilling. She fled therefore from her father's house, through the fields seemingly almost to fly, until she came to the shore of the sea, to which from that time by the people of Gallipoli was given the name of S. Cæsarea, by whom yet was destroyed the village, which the inhabitants had built, delighted by the fertility of that very sea, and the pleasantness of its bays and islands. thence fleeing to the Castro country, Hence her course being checked thirty miles of land journey toward the other shore of the sea having traversed, she came to Vitigliano, a town of the diocese of Castro, to which at thirty paces a mountain adjoins, which opened a way for her about to pass through, capable of one cart, even to the other side, by the space of a whole mile. This she entering, and on the very entrance bending her knees to give thanks to God, impressed their traces on the rock, and at the side the whole image of her body slightly hollowed out, and that in three places where she successively prayed. Then through the open plain again two other miles running, [on the rocky mountain opening itself to her she imprints the lineaments of her body,] when she had nothing further whither to tend except the sea, she cast herself into the very waves: by which restored to land, she found a refuge within a mountain, opening itself to her, whose entrance soon a bituminous smoke occupied and shut. Nor yet so believing herself sufficiently safe Cæsarea from the fury of her father pertinaciously pursuing; she demanded of heaven, that it should animadvert upon the wicked one before he should come thither: which also she obtained. For still distant half a mile, and the cave being entered, he cast himself into the sea mad, in that place where even today turbid and sulphurous waters smoke, fit rather for killing than for curing bodies. The cave into which Cæsarea hid herself is under that mountain, which they call Saracen, having of height and breadth about twenty palms. Thither for twenty paces the sea insinuates itself, then the ground is raised higher, protecting the place, which there is small, and having only thirty palms in circuit, and gushing with waters sulphurous indeed, yet not foul-smelling, but (which thou wouldst wonder) breathing a sweet odor, salutary for every kind of disease. But so far does the cave recede within that no end is seen, but it is believed to reach even to Francavilla. The heroic constancy of the Virgin Cæsarea for preserving chastity was soon divulged: and therefore the place itself, conscious of so great a thing, began to be visited as holy from all Iapygia, her fellow-countrymen ascending the mountain, and with a tearful voice calling out to Cæsarea; who seemed to themselves to see a light proceeding from the cave, thence to proceed with a light to the neighboring church she is seen. and beholding it to be filled with interior consolation. Without delay, a church was erected nearby, where above the high altar even now is seen the effigy of the Saint expressed, in imitation of that, which we said is seen impressed on the mountain. The care of that church certain religious had for some time; but they were at last compelled to leave it, on account of the frequent incursions of the Turks. Meanwhile by many and often S. Cæsarea has been seen, to proceed from the cave toward the church, as if for the cause of praying, attended on this side and that by two beautiful youths, bearing a kindled torch. Of her body no notice is had; yet she is believed to have died on the very day on which the Redeemer ascended to the heavens, when solemnly her memory is recalled.