Hilarius

Pope Hilarius (also called Hilary) was Bishop of Rome from 461 until his death in 468. The Liber Pontificalis describes him as a Sardinian by birth (natione Sardus); no reliable source records a more precise birthplace or a year of birth. He belonged to the Roman clergy under Pope Leo I and served as a deacon, and later as archdeacon, of the Roman church. In 449 Leo sent him as a papal legate, together with Bishop Julius of Puteoli, to the council held at Ephesus. That assembly, subsequently repudiated in the West as the Latrocinium or Robber Council, was dominated by Dioscorus of Alexandria. It restored the monk Eutyches and deposed Flavian of Constantinople. Hilarius refused to subscribe to the council’s decisions. Contemporary notices, including his own later account, relate that he took refuge in a shrine of Saint John the Evangelist and succeeded in leaving Ephesus and returning to Rome to report to Leo.

After Leo’s death in November 461 the Roman church elected Hilarius as his successor; he was consecrated on 19 November 461. His pontificate continued Leo’s defence of the Christological settlement associated with the Council of Chalcedon and the claim of the Roman see to appellate and disciplinary authority in the Western provinces. He corresponded with bishops in Gaul and Spain and convened synods at Rome. In Gaul he intervened in a dispute over metropolitan rights between Leontius of Arles and Mamertus of Vienne, especially after Mamertus consecrated a bishop for Die, a church regarded as belonging to the province of Arles. Hilarius rebuked the irregular consecration, sought to regulate provincial synods and the use of the pallium, and insisted that major causes be referred to the apostolic see. In the Iberian peninsula he dealt with disorders in the province of Tarraconensis, including irregular ordinations associated with Silvanus of Calagurris (Calahorra), and he upheld the metropolitan position of Tarragona while requiring observance of the canons. A Roman synod held during his pontificate, often dated to 465, addressed Spanish episcopal cases.

Hilarius was also a builder and restorer of churches in Rome. In thanksgiving for his escape from Ephesus he constructed an oratory of Saint John the Evangelist at the Lateran baptistery, with an inscription honouring that saint as his liberator; the Liber Pontificalis also credits him with an oratory of Saint John the Baptist at the same baptistery. At the Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls he added oratories (the papal biography names dedications connected with Saint Stephen, Saint Sixtus, and Saint Hippolytus) and is said to have established a monastery, baths, and a library in the vicinity. He is further associated with work at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme and with gifts of liturgical vessels and furnishings to several Roman basilicas. These notices come chiefly from the Liber Pontificalis and should be read as the Roman church’s own later summary of his patronage rather than as an independent archaeological inventory.

He died in Rome in 468, on 29 February according to the traditional computation of his reign in the Liber Pontificalis, and was buried at San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, in a place he had prepared near the shrine of the martyr Lawrence. He was succeeded by Pope Simplicius. Hilarius has been venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church; in the Roman Martyrology his feast is kept on 17 November. Nothing reliable is known of his family, of any marriage, or of any career outside the Roman clergy. The principal sources remain the Liber Pontificalis, his surviving letters and decretals concerning Gaul and Spain, and the reports connected with the council of 449.