Confessor Hilary

Hilary of Poitiers, frequently commemorated in older Western liturgical books as Saint Hilary, Confessor, was a fourth-century bishop of Poitiers in Roman Gaul and one of the principal Latin theologians of the Nicene cause. He was born in the early decades of the fourth century into a prominent pagan family of Pictavium (modern Poitiers). Contemporary evidence for the exact year of his birth does not survive. He received a classical education in rhetoric and philosophy, and as an adult he converted to Christianity after a period of intellectual searching that he later described in the opening of his treatise De Trinitate. Traditional accounts, already current by the sixth century, state that his wife and their daughter Abra were baptized with him; Abra is herself honoured as a saint in some local calendars. Hilary’s own writings confirm that he had been married, though they do not name his wife.

In the early 350s the Christian community of Poitiers elected him bishop, an unusual choice in that he was still a married layman of relatively recent conversion. Almost at once he was confronted by the Arian crisis. When the Emperor Constantius II attempted to force Western bishops to condemn Athanasius of Alexandria and to accept a creed that avoided the Nicene term homoousios, Hilary refused. A synod at Béziers in 356, dominated by Arianizing prelates, secured his exile to Phrygia. During the four years he spent in Asia Minor he mastered Greek theological literature, composed the twelve books of De Trinitate (his most important dogmatic work), wrote a commentary on Matthew, and produced a small corpus of hymns that stand among the earliest surviving Latin Christian verse. He also attended the Council of Seleucia in 359 as an observer.

Permitted to return to Gaul about 360, Hilary resumed the government of his diocese and continued to oppose Arian bishops in the West, notably Saturninus of Arles. He travelled in Italy and Gaul, wrote polemical tracts against Auxentius of Milan, and encouraged the young Martin of Tours, who spent time in the monastic community Hilary fostered near Poitiers. Later chroniclers give the date of his death as 367 or 368; he was buried at Poitiers, where a basilica—later the abbey church of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand—was erected over his tomb. His relics were subsequently translated and divided; some remain in Poitiers, others were carried to various churches in France and Italy.

Hilary’s cult is ancient. Venantius Fortunatus in the sixth century already treated him as a wonder-working saint, and medieval legend later credited him with expelling serpents and performing other miracles that have little support in fourth-century sources. In 1851 Pope Pius IX formally declared him a Doctor of the Church. His feast is observed on 13 January in the General Roman Calendar and in the Byzantine tradition. He is invoked as a patron of lawyers, of the city of Poitiers, and of Parma and La Rochelle. Modern historical study distinguishes the well-documented theologian and anti-Arian controversialist from the later hagiographical accretions, while still recognizing him as the most significant Latin voice of Nicene orthodoxy in the generation before Ambrose and Augustine.