From the law courts to the cloister
The sources present Castor first as a man of the world: born at Nimes, schooled at Arles, and established in the legal profession after the death of his father. By one account he successfully argued a case for a wealthy widow, securing an imperial rescript, and on his return married the widow's daughter.
The turn to monastic life is recorded as a shared decision. Following the death of his mother-in-law, Castor and his wife by mutual consent withdrew from married life; she entered a convent, while he gave himself to the founding and ordering of a monastery. This pattern — a married couple renouncing the world together by common agreement — is the detail by which Castor is best remembered in the calendar.
The monastery of Manauque and John Cassian
In Provence Castor founded a monastery at Manauque (also given as Monanque, and associated with the name Saint-Faustin), which he set under the monastic rule of John Cassian. Tradition relates that he was reluctant to take up the office of abbot and accepted it only in obedience to the dying first superior.
Castor's name is permanently bound to the literature of early monasticism through his request to Cassian. Around the year 420, as Bishop of Apt in Gallia Narbonensis, he asked Cassian to set down the customs of the monks of Egypt and Palestine for the guidance of his own foundation. Cassian answered with the 'Institutes of the Coenobia' (De institutis coenobiorum), and by tradition the 'Conferences of the Desert Fathers' as well — works intended to bring the Egyptian model of monastic life, with its insistence on manual labor and disciplined community, into the monasteries of southern Gaul.
Episcopate and legacy
Castor was made Bishop of Apt, and a contemporary trace of his episcopate survives in a letter of Pope Boniface I dated 13 June 419, in which his name appears. He died on 21 September of an uncertain year within the reign of Honorius, who died in 423; his commemoration is kept on 2 September.
Castor is a pre-schism saint of the undivided Church, venerated in both the Christian East and West. As one who reposed before the Council of Chalcedon, he is honored as an Orthodox saint while also being remembered in the Latin tradition from which the surviving biographical record derives.
Relics & Shrines
The relics of Saint Castor are preserved in the Cathedral of Apt, of which he is counted among the patrons. Among its reliquaries are busts and chests honoring Saint Anne, Saint Auspice, and Saint Castor (the present examples being nineteenth-century replicas).
