Sermons, Volume 2 (81-186)

This volume contains one hundred and ten sermons attributed to St. Caesarius bishop of Arles for forty years (502-542). He is reputed to have been an outstanding spiritual leader presiding at some important synods in Gaul and perhaps second only to St. Augustine a most diligent and effective preacher. This reputation most probably accounts for the large number of sermons attributed to him. In 1937 Dom Germain Morin, O.S.B., after some fifty years of exacting research published the Caesarean corpus of sermons. His studies led him to question in varying degrees the Caesarean authorship of fifty-four sermons in this volume which are therefore marked with an asterisk. In 1971 Marie-Jos Delage published the results of a more recent study on the Caesarean sermons. The work of Delage indicates that Caesarius must have had access to a good collection of homilies from which he borrowed freely and frequently without ever mentioning the source. At the time of Caesarius this was not an unusual practice. The most frequently used author, as one might suspect, is St. Augustine. This usage ranges from using a complete sermon to which are added a simple introduction and appropriate conclusion, to quotations chosen from the several Augustinian sermons. Other authors used by Caesarius are: Origen (in Latin translation), Ambrose, Eusebius, Quodvultdeus and Cyprian. A fairly detailed summary of the sources for the sermons in this volume is to be found in the Appendix to volume 66 of The Fathers of the Church, pp. 229-234.