Saint Hilary of Poitiers (315-367)

"The Athanasius of the West"

Hilary holds in the West the place that Athanasius holds in the East: that of the bishop who, almost alone at first, stands firm for the divinity of Christ when the political powers and part of the episcopate lean toward Arianism. The parallel is so striking that tradition nicknamed him "the Athanasius of the West"^[5]. Like Athanasius, he was exiled by an emperor for refusing to betray Nicaea; like him, he turned his banishment into a chair of theology; like him, he became a Doctor of the Church.

But Hilary has his own greatness: he is the first Latin to express in the language of Rome the Trinitarian subtleties worked out in Greek. Before him, the West lacked the vocabulary to speak the mystery of God, one in three Persons; after him, it has it. That is why he may be regarded as one of the founders of Latin Trinitarian theology, opening the way that would lead to Saint Augustine.

The "Hammer of the Arians"

The other title tradition gave him speaks of his fighting temperament: Malleus Arianorum, "the Hammer of the Arians"^[6]. Hilary is no armchair theologian: he confronts Arian bishops in synods, writes to the emperor to his face, publicly denounces the Arian bishop of Milan, and goes so far as to call Constantius II the Antichrist in an incendiary pamphlet^[7].

Saint Augustine himself will cite him as an authority, calling him an "eminent doctor of the Churches"^[8]. And when, thirteen centuries later, Pope Pius IX proclaims him Doctor of the Church, it is precisely for this work: having given the West the intellectual weapons against the heresy that denied the divinity of the Son.

The sources of his life

We know Hilary first through himself. In the first book of the De Trinitate, he gives an autobiographical account of his conversion — a rare and precious page, in which a Father of the Church recounts the journey of his own mind toward God^[9]. His treatises, his letters to the emperor and his polemical pamphlets also provide a mine of information on the synods and exiles of the fourth century.

To these direct sources are added ancient testimonies: Saint Jerome, who mentions him in his catalogue of ecclesiastical writers and attests his Book of Hymns^[10]; Sulpicius Severus, whose Life of Saint Martin sheds light on Hilary's ties with his famous disciple^[11]; and the poet Venantius Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers in the sixth century, who composed a Life of Hilary. Hilary's biography is thus better attested than that of many saints of his time, even if a few details — such as the existence of his daughter — belong to a later tradition.

Poitiers, a city of Roman Aquitaine

Hilary was born at Poitiers, ancient Pictavium, in the heart of Roman Aquitaine, at the beginning of the fourth century — about 310-315^[12]. His family was noble and, most probably, pagan: he received the polished education of a young Gallo-Roman aristocrat, steeped in classical letters, rhetoric and philosophy. Far from being an obstacle, this secular culture became the instrument of his quest: it was as a cultivated man, accustomed to reasoning, that he set out in search of the true God.

The search for the true God (De Trinitate I)

At the opening of the De Trinitate, Hilary tells how he came to the faith. The account begins with a dissatisfaction: he refuses to believe that man was born only to eat, drink and sleep like a beast.

"Nature itself has taught them that it is unworthy of man to believe he was born only for the satisfaction of his gluttony and sloth." — Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, I, 2^[13]

This disquiet drives him to seek not only to act well, but to know the one who gives meaning to all things:

"My soul burned with the desire, not only to do what neglect brings shame and suffering, but to know that God and Father who had given this greatness to our nature." — Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, I, 3^[14]

"I am who am": discovering the living God

Hilary examines and sets aside the pagan conceptions of divinity, until Scripture reveals to him a God equal to his expectation. He is seized by God's word to Moses at the burning bush — "I am who am" (Exodus 3:14) — in which he recognises the very definition of Being:

"I confess that I was seized with admiration to find there so exact a statement about God, expressing, concerning the incomprehensible knowledge of the divine nature, what surpasses all understanding." — Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, I, 5^[15]

He then discovers a God infinite and everywhere present, whom nothing contains and who contains all things:

"There is no place without God, and there is no place that is not in God. He is in heaven, He is in the depths, He is beyond the seas." — Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, I, 6^[16]

Baptism and regeneration

The quest ends with the reading of the Prologue of Saint John. There Hilary learns that the Word was God, that He became flesh, and that those who receive Him become children of God^[17]. This revelation leads him to baptism, received as an adult, probably about 345. His whole theology will bear the mark of this experience: for Hilary, knowing God is not an intellectual curiosity — it is entering into the very life of God through baptismal regeneration, to which he will pray for the grace to remain faithful until death^[18].

A pastor taken from his city

A few years after his baptism, about 350, Hilary was chosen Bishop of Poitiers^[19]. The speed of this election — from recent convert to the episcopal office — testifies to the esteem his learning and holiness already commanded. He is the first bishop of Poitiers about whom we possess reliable information. As pastor, he set to work at once: his first great writing, the Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, composed about 353-356, is the oldest Latin commentary we possess on this Gospel^[20].

A married bishop, father of Abra?

Like many bishops of antiquity, Hilary had been married before his ordination. Tradition attributes to him a daughter, Abra (or Apra), who is said to have consecrated herself to God. The story that Hilary addressed to her a letter and a hymn to turn her away from earthly marriage in favour of the one heavenly Bridegroom is touching but uncertain: Abra's existence is attested only by late hagiographical sources, and the letter attributed to him is held by historians to be a medieval forgery^[21]. This tradition should therefore be mentioned with caution, not stated as established fact.

The Arian crisis reaches the West

The true drama of Hilary's episcopate is the spread of Arianism in the West. Thirty years after the Council of Nicaea (325), which had proclaimed the Son homoousios — consubstantial with the Father — the Emperor Constantius II, master of the whole Empire, supported Arian and semi-Arian bishops and sought to impose their formulas on the West. Many Gallic bishops yielded. Hilary resisted: he broke communion with the compromised bishops and took the lead in defending Nicaea in Gaul^[22].

The synod of Béziers (356)

In 356, Constantius II convened a synod at Béziers to break the Nicene resistance. Arian bishops dominated it. Hilary refused to subscribe to the condemnation of Athanasius of Alexandria and openly denounced the heresy. He was refused a hearing; the synod denounced him to the emperor, who pronounced a sentence of exile against him^[23].

Exiled to Phrygia by Constantius II

In the summer of 356, Hilary was torn from his see and deported to Phrygia, a province of Asia Minor at the other end of the Empire^[24][25]. The emperor thus hoped to silence the most troublesome of Western bishops. The opposite happened. Far from his city, Hilary discovered Greek theology at close quarters, with the debates stirring the East; he learned, studied, wrote. His exile became the school from which he drew what would definitively arm the Latin faith.

It was in exile that he wrote most of the De Trinitate and composed the De Synodis, in which he analyses for his Western brethren the professions of faith of the Eastern bishops gathered at Ancyra, Antioch and Sirmium, seeking to distinguish what in their formulas is merely a difference of words from what touches the substance of the faith^[26].

The bishop who "disturbs" the East: the return (about 360)

The paradox is striking: exiled to be silenced, Hilary became in the East such a defender of Nicaea that the Arians preferred to be rid of him. As historians sum it up, the imperial court judged that he did more harm in the East than he could do in Gaul and sent him back to Poitiers about 360^[27]. Hilary returned in triumph. Sulpicius Severus would write that, through his blessing, "our Gauls were delivered from the plague of heresy"^[28].

On his return, he at once resumed the fight. Under his influence, the Council of Paris (361) excommunicated the Arian bishop Saturninus of Arles and reaffirmed the Nicene faith^[29]. Gaul, momentarily shaken, rallied behind its bishop.

The affair of Auxentius of Milan (364-365)

Hilary's last great battle was fought at Milan, against the Arian bishop Auxentius. In 364, Hilary went to the imperial city to unmask Auxentius's heresy and demanded a public debate arbitrated by the emperor. But Auxentius schemed, Emperor Valentinian I decided in his favour, and Hilary was asked to leave Milan. He retaliated with the Against Auxentius (Contra Auxentium), denouncing the bishop as a wolf disguised as a shepherd^[30]. It is an occasion to measure Hilary's intransigence: for him, no political peace was worth sacrificing the truth about Christ.

The De Trinitate: the Nicene faith in Latin

Hilary's masterpiece is the De Trinitate ("On the Trinity"), in twelve books — first entitled On Faith (De Fide). He had probably begun the first books before his exile, and completed the whole in Phrygia, about 359-360^[31]. It is the first great Trinitarian synthesis in the Latin language: for the first time, a Western writer managed to express in Latin the distinctions worked out by the Greek Fathers concerning the Father, the Son and the Spirit^[32].

In it Hilary defends the full and entire divinity of the Son, "true God born of true God", consubstantial with the Father, against the Arianism that made Christ a creature. But for him it is never pure speculation. As Benedict XVI stressed, the De Trinitate is from beginning to end a prayer as much as a treatise:

"Reflection becomes prayer and prayer becomes reflection. The whole book is a dialogue with God." — Benedict XVI, General Audience of 10 October 2007^[33]

The De Synodis: building bridges with the East

The De Synodis (358), written in exile, is one of the most intelligent texts of the Arian crisis. Rather than condemning the Eastern bishops wholesale, Hilary examines their professions of faith one by one, and shows that some of the semi-Arians were in reality close to Nicaea, separated above all by vocabulary^[34]. He thus works to reconcile East and West in one faith, anticipating the definitive victory of Nicaea at the Council of Constantinople (381). This concern for unity in truth — yielding nothing on substance, yet not demonising brethren of good faith — makes Hilary a model of ecclesial discernment.

The Against Constantius: the emperor Antichrist

When the emperor imposes his will on the Church, Hilary does not tremble. In the Liber contra Constantium ("Against Constantius"), he directly attacks Constantius II, accusing him of persecuting the Church under the mask of peace and calling him the Antichrist^[35]. The tone is of extreme boldness for a bishop addressing the master of the world. In it Hilary formulates a principle that would run through all Christian history: fidelity to Christ comes before obedience to the prince when the latter demands betrayal of the faith.

The commentator of Scripture

Hilary was also a great exegete. Besides his Commentary on Matthew — the first in Latin — he left vast Treatises on the Psalms (Tractatus super Psalmos), reading each psalm as a word of Christ and of the Church, in the great spiritual tradition inaugurated by Origen^[36]. For Hilary, all Scripture speaks of Christ: exegesis is not a scholarly exercise, but a way of contemplating the Word through the inspired pages.

"God knows how to be nothing but love"

Hilary's theology always issues in adoration. At the heart of the De Trinitate, he contemplates the Father not as an abstract principle, but as Love:

"God knows how to be nothing other than love, He knows how to be nothing other than the Father." — Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity (quoted by Benedict XVI)^[37]

And he meditates on the eternal generation of the Son, who receives from the Father all that the Father is:

"He who comes from perfection is perfect, for He who has all has given all to Him." — Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity (quoted by Benedict XVI)^[38]

A prayer of fidelity

The whole treatise ends with a prayer, in which Hilary asks for the only grace that matters in his eyes: to remain faithful to the end to the faith received at baptism.

"Grant, O Lord, that I may always remain faithful to what I professed in the creed of my regeneration." — Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity, ending (quoted by Benedict XVI)^[39]

This prayer says everything about the man: a convert who never forgot the grace of his baptism, and who sacrificed everything — his see, his homeland, his peace — rather than betray the faith he had professed in it.

The first Latin hymnographer

Hilary is also the father of Latin hymnody. Saint Jerome attests that he composed a Book of Hymns (Liber hymnorum)^[40]. Bringing back from the East the use of the singing of the faithful, Hilary inaugurates in the West a tradition that Saint Ambrose of Milan will soon bring to its peak. For Hilary, the hymn is no ornament: it is doctrine sung, the Nicene faith placed on the lips and in the hearts of the Christian people. Thus the man who had fought Arianism in the synods also fought it through song — by putting the true faith on the lips of the faithful.

One of the finest fruits of Hilary's life is his meeting with Martin, the future Saint Martin of Tours. A former soldier in search of God, Martin became Hilary's disciple at Poitiers. It was under the bishop's authority and with his encouragement that Martin founded, at Ligugé near Poitiers, one of the first monasteries of Gaul^[41]. Sulpicius Severus, Martin's biographer, shows how Hilary's spiritual radiance prepared his disciple's extraordinary mission of evangelisation.

This bond reveals another dimension of Hilary: not only doctor and champion, but a spiritual father able to discern and form a saint. Through Martin, Hilary's influence extends to all monasticism and to the whole evangelisation of the Gallic countryside.

A death about 367

After so many battles, Hilary died at Poitiers, about 367 (some sources give 368)^[42][43]. He passed away in his recovered episcopal city, having seen the Nicene faith regain the upper hand in Gaul. He did not live to see Nicaea's definitive triumph at the Council of Constantinople (381), but he prepared it in the West, as Athanasius prepared it in the East.

An ancient cult

Hilary's cult is immediate and lasting. Poitiers dedicated to him a great church — the present collegiate church of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand, a UNESCO World Heritage site. His feast is fixed on 13 January (14 January in the old Roman calendar), a date that even gave its name, in England, to the "Hilary term" of the universities and law courts^[44].

Doctor of the Church (1851)

On 13 May 1851, Pope Pius IX solemnly proclaimed Hilary Doctor of the Universal Church (universae ecclesiae doctor), on the occasion of a provincial council held at Bordeaux^[45]. The Church thus recognised, fifteen centuries after his death, the value of his teaching: having given the West, in its own language, the science of the Trinity, and having defended the divinity of Christ at the price of exile.

Sixteen centuries later, Saint Hilary remains astonishingly relevant. He shows first that a rightly ordered intelligence leads to God: his conversion account is that of a cultivated man who refused to live without seeking the meaning of existence, and whom that very intellectual honesty led all the way to faith. Hilary did not have to renounce his reason to believe; he fulfilled it.

He then recalls that fidelity has a price. When emperor, public opinion and part of the episcopate leaned toward error, Hilary chose exile over the signature expected of him. Malleus Arianorum: he did not yield an inch on the divinity of Christ, even alone, even banished.

Finally, he teaches that theology is prayer. His De Trinitate is no cold treatise: it is a dialogue with God, in which thinking the mystery and adoring it are one. That is perhaps his most precious legacy to an age that too often separates knowledge and faith.

"Grant, O Lord, that I may always remain faithful to what I professed in the creed of my regeneration." — This prayer of Hilary says it all: he was a man who never forgot the grace of his baptism, and who gave everything rather than betray any of it.

• Saint Athanasius of Alexandria — the Eastern hero of the Nicene faith of whom Hilary is "the Athanasius of the West".
• Arianism — the heresy that denied the divinity of the Son, fought by Hilary all his life.
• The Council of Nicaea (325) — the council whose faith Hilary defends in the De Trinitate.
• Saint Martin of Tours — Hilary's disciple, founder of Ligugé and apostle of Gaul.
• Saint Augustine of Hippo — the great Latin doctor who cites Hilary as an authority.
• The Doctors of the Church through history — the category of Doctors to which Hilary has belonged since 1851.