HE was a physician, and brother to St. Gregory Nazianzen. When the
latter repaired to Caesarea, in Palestine, where the sacred studies
flourished, Caesarius went to Alexandria, and with incredible success ran
through the circle of the sciences, among which oratory, philosophy, and
especially medicine, fixed his attention. In this last he became the
first man of his age. He perfected himself in this profession at
Constantinople, but excused himself from settling there, as the city and
the emperor Constantius earnestly requested him to do. He was afterwards
recalled thither, singularly honored by Julian the Apostate, nominated
his first physician, and excepted in several edicts which that prince
published against the Christians. He resisted strenuously the
insinuating discourses and artifices with which that prince endeavored
to seduce him, and was prevailed upon by the remonstrances of his father
and brother to resign his places at court, and prefer a retreat,
whatever solicitations Julian could use to detain him. Jovian honorably
restored him, and Valens, moreover, created him treasurer of his own
private purse, and of Bithynia. A narrow escape in an earthquake at
Nice, in Bithynia, in 368, worked so powerfully on his mind, that he
renounced the world, and died shortly after, in the beginning of the
year 369, leaving the poor his heirs. The Greeks honor his memory on the
9th of March, as Nicephorus testifies, (Hist. l. 11, c. 19,) and as
appears from the Menaea: in the Roman Martyrology he is named on the 25th
of February.