Writings and Teachings
Caesarius has over 250 surviving sermons in his corpus. His sermons reveal him as a pastor dedicated to the formation of the clergy and the moral education of the laity. He preached on Christian beliefs, values and practices against pagan syncretism. He emphasizes the life of a Christian as well as the love of God, reading the scriptures, asceticism, psalmody, love for one's neighbour and the judgement that would come.
Through Pomerius’s teachings, it is logical to conclude that many of Caesarius homilies and writings were influenced greatly by St. Augustine. Caesarius' writings were known to be adapted as he reworked many other philosophers' introductions and conclusions, especially those of St. Augustine. Many of his writings and sermons, including the popular Vita Caesarii, were ordered to be written in French, German, Italian and Hispanic. Caesarius did not believe that his readings and sermons should be restricted to the clergy. He did not just address the upper and elite but instead preached to many literate and near-literate bishops, abbots, parish priests, and monks. He encouraged the clergy to read to both themselves and others. He targeted the illiterate and ask that they hire others to read to them after church in order to absorb the divine lessons. Caesarius encouraged reading divine lessons both at church and in their homes, at night and during the day, alone and with family.
More than just learning and understanding the lessons, Caesarius emphasized that a “believer who does not share what he has learned, is not achieving what God intended". Therefore, the believer is given a large responsibility as the lectio (divine reading) is God and therefore he should not be denied access to what belongs to Him. Caesarius believed that Christian People were God's new "elect" and he idealized incorporating men of places from all over the world into a believing, peaceful, and loving human community. This belief parallels with Augustinian work as St. Augustine often referred to the populus chritianus which can be translated as the Christian People. Revelation tells that God made a covenant with the populus christianus and the Christian epoch was predicted in all of the scriptures.
Scholars have remarked on two aspects of Caesarius’s teaching and activity that deserve considerable attention. The first aspect deals with Caesarius who was stated to be “the creative leader who arranged at the Council of Orange in 529 a resolution of the century of disputes about grace and ‘good works’ which followed St. Augustine’s death.
Read more about this topic: Caesarius Of Arles
Famous quotes containing the words writings and/or teachings:
“If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be “To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one’s own writings in translation.””
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)