St. Hilary of Poitiers

• St. Hilary, “the Athanasius of the West,” was a contemporary of the great Patriarch of Alexandria (ca. 300-370).
• St. Hilary was born and died in Poitiers, France. His distinguished pagan family gave him an education in philosophy and classics.
• As a young man, he was converted to Christianity by reading the Bible. He was brought up in the literary circles of Aquitania, Hilary became adept both in the Greek and Latin tongues, and his mind was steeped in Neo-Platonism before it was turned to the study of the Gospel. Dissatisfied with paganism, he turned to Moses and the Prophets, and thence to the prologue of the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles of St. Paul.
• He married and had one daughter, Abra.
• Elected bishop of Poitiers by popular acclaim (353), he began to defend the doctrine of the Trinity declared at Nicaea in 325 against the Arians.
• At the Council of Beziers (356), he refused to condemn St. Athanasius and was exiled to Phrygia by the emperor.
• In September 359, he attended the Council of Seleucia, where he upheld the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, and the Council of Rimini, where the Emperor Constantius forced the Orthodox bishops to subscribe to the so-called Arian Creed of Rimini
• Considered a troublemaker and a disseminator of discord in the East, St. Hilary was sent back to Gaul without being asked to sign the Arian profession of faith, and without having his banishment annulled. Sulpicius Severus (Chron. II 45) wrote that St. Hilary’s return home did not imply a reinstatement to his Episcopal see.
• He then worked vigorously on behalf of the unity of the Trinity, first in Gaul, then in Italy.
• In Milan in 364, he was involved together with Eusebius

of Vercelli in an attempt to dislodge the Arian bishop Auxentius from that see. The attempt failed and St. Hilary was ordered back to Gaul.

• After his conversion, Hilary became a diligent student of later Christian writers; his Christology follows the lines which had been marked out by St. Athanasius and were afterwards revived by the Cappadocians.
• Hilary’s writings were important in the development of Latin theology.
• In his Commentary on St. Matthew and Homilies on the Psalms, he followed Origen’s allegorical method.
• His twelve books On the Trinity; the first three written before 356, the last nine during the exile in Phrygia. They are not only the first approach to a comprehensive treatment of the subject in the Latin tongue, but are full of interesting matter and valid argument.
• In Book Two On the Trinity he wrote: All existence originates from the Father. In Christ and through Christ God is the source of everything. In contrast to everything else, He is completely self- existent. He doesn’t receive His being from the outside, but possesses it from and in Himself. He is infinite, for nothing can contain Him and He contains everything. He is eternally unrestricted by space, for He can’t be limited. He is eternally prior to time, for time is His creation. Imagine what you think might be God’s farthest limit, and you will find him present there…Words will fail you but His being will not be restrained.
• St. Hilary’s controversial work, the De Synodis (On the Synods), written in Phrygia, explains why the eastern clergy were dissatisfied with the expression homoousios (of the same esssence) in the Nicene Creed and provides citations and explanations of the eastern professions of faith. It is an appeal to the Semi-Arians.
• Two addresses to the Emperor Constantine, pleading for a just treatment towards supporters of the Creed of Nicaea,

and an address to the bishops of Gaul in reference to the Emperor’s attitude.

• He composed five historical works; as well as hymns, three of which have come down to us.