Hilary of Poitiers

Hilary of Poitiers, known in Latin as Hilarius Pictaviensis, was a fourth-century bishop of Poitiers in Roman Gaul and one of the foremost Latin theologians of the early Church. He was born in the early fourth century at Pictavium, later called Poitiers, into a prominent pagan family. He received a classical education of high quality, including Greek, which later allowed him to read Eastern theological texts in the original. In adult life he married and became the father of a daughter, who in later tradition is named Abra. After a period of philosophical inquiry he converted to Christianity; later writers report that meditation on the prologue of the Gospel of John was decisive in turning him from pagan learning to Christian faith. He received baptism as an adult, and his household likewise became Christian.

In the middle of the fourth century the clergy and people of Poitiers chose Hilary as their bishop, although he was a married man and a relatively recent convert. His episcopate unfolded during the most intense phase of the Arian controversy in the Western Empire. Hilary became the principal defender of the Nicene confession in Gaul, resisting bishops and imperial officials who promoted Arian or homoian formulas concerning the Son. In 356 a synod at Béziers, dominated by Arian-leaning prelates, condemned him, and the emperor Constantius II banished him to Phrygia in Asia Minor. The exile lasted about four years.

While in the East, Hilary composed his major dogmatic work, De Trinitate, a treatise in twelve books that offered the Latin Church a sustained exposition of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. He also wrote De synodis, a discussion of the creeds and councils of the 350s intended to explain Eastern doctrinal debates to Western readers. He attended the Council of Seleucia in 359 and sought to influence events at the imperial court. His activity among Eastern bishops proved inconvenient to the Arian party, and he was allowed to return to Gaul around 360, shortly before or after the death of Constantius.

Back in the West, Hilary continued to oppose Arian bishops, working with Eusebius of Vercelli and other Nicene leaders. In the mid-360s he went to Milan to contest the position of Auxentius, the Arian bishop of that see, though Auxentius remained in office. Besides polemical and dogmatic writings, Hilary produced a commentary on the Gospel of Matthew and a commentary on the Psalms, and he composed Latin hymns; he is commonly counted among the earliest Christian hymn writers in the Latin language. He died at Poitiers in 367. Tradition holds that he was buried in the city, in the church that later took the name Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand.

Posterity remembered Hilary as the Athanasius of the West and as the Hammer of the Arians, titles that reflect his role in securing Nicene orthodoxy in Latin Christianity. In 1851 Pope Pius IX named him a Doctor of the Church. His feast is kept on 13 January in the General Roman Calendar. He is venerated as a patron of Poitiers and of Parma, and in popular devotion he is invoked against snakes and on behalf of children with learning difficulties. His theological vocabulary and his De Trinitate remained standard points of reference in the Latin West until they were complemented by the work of Augustine of Hippo.