Hilary

Saint Hilary of Poitiers (Hilarius Pictaviensis) was a fourth-century bishop of Poitiers in Roman Gaul and one of the principal Latin theologians of the patristic age, later numbered among the Doctors of the Church. He is the figure ordinarily meant in Western hagiography by the simple name Hilary. Born into a distinguished pagan family at Poitiers in the early fourth century, he received a classical education in literature and philosophy. As an adult he converted to Christianity after studying the Scriptures, especially the opening of the Gospel of John. Contemporary and near-contemporary notices indicate that he was a married man when the Christian community of Poitiers chose him as bishop around the middle of the century; later tradition adds that a daughter named Abra (or Apra) was baptized with him. The name of his wife is not preserved in the early sources. His election as a married layman was unusual but not unique in the fourth-century West and reflected his learning and reputation.

Hilary’s episcopate coincided with the height of the Arian controversy in the Latin West. He became a leading defender of the Nicene confession against bishops and imperial officials who favored Arian or Homoian formulas. In 356 a synod at Béziers, dominated by his opponents, condemned him, and the emperor Constantius II sent him into exile in Phrygia in Asia Minor. The years of exile, from 356 until about 360, were among his most productive. There he composed his chief dogmatic work, De Trinitate, a substantial treatise in twelve books that sought to explain the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father in language usable by Latin readers. He also wrote historical and polemical pieces on the councils and on the political setting of the controversy, and he observed Eastern debate at close range, including the Council of Seleucia in 359.

Allowed to return to Gaul after the political situation changed, Hilary resumed his see and continued to oppose Arianizing prelates in the West, notably Auxentius of Milan. He worked to restore Nicene bishops and to hold the Gallic episcopate together. He died at Poitiers in 367 and was buried there; the later basilica of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand grew up in association with his tomb and cult. Besides De Trinitate, his surviving writings include a commentary on Matthew, tractates on the Psalms, and a small body of hymns. In 1851 Pope Pius IX declared him a Doctor of the Church. His feast is kept on 13 January in the General Roman Calendar (formerly 14 January). Because many details of his early life rest on later hagiography rather than on strictly contemporary documents, an exact year of birth cannot be verified, and some family particulars remain uncertain. His influence on Latin Trinitarian theology was considerable; later Western writers, including Augustine, drew on his work. In popular devotion he is invoked as patron of Poitiers and against snakes and snakebite, and on behalf of children slow to develop.