St. Caesarius of Terracina

Caesarius is remembered as a Christian deacon from Africa who suffered at Terracina in Italy. The traditional narrative followed by Butler connects his arrest with his public opposition to a pagan ceremony involving the death of a young man.

That account joins a priest named Lucian to his martyrdom and describes the two being cast into the sea. Butler does not present the later acts without reservation: he expressly judges their authority to be slight. The precise episodes of the trial must therefore be read with that qualification.

The saint’s older remembrance is witnessed by the liturgical and ecclesiastical sources Butler identifies. St. Gregory the Great mentions a Roman church bearing his name, and Caesarius appears in early sacramentary and martyrology traditions. These witnesses preserve his public veneration without establishing every detail of the later narrative.