Constantius with the professed purpose of settling the long-standing disputes, Hilary was by an imperial rescript banished with Rhodanus of Toulouse to Phrygia, in which exile he spent nearly four years. Thence, however, he continued to govern his diocese; while he found leisure for the preparation of two of the most important of his contributions to dogmatic and polemical theology, the De synodis or De fide Orientalium, an epistle addressed in 358 to the Semi-Arian bishops in Gaul, Germany and Britain, expounding the true views (sometimes veiled in ambiguous words) of the Oriental bishops on the Nicene controversy, and the De trinitate libri xii.,[1] composed in 359 and 360, in which, for the first time, a successful attempt was made to express in Latin the theological subtleties elaborated in the original Greek. The former of these works was not entirely approved by some members of his own party, who thought he had shown too great forbearance towards the Arians; to their criticisms he replied in the Apologetica ad reprehensores libri de synodis responsa. In 359 Hilary attended the convocation of bishops at Seleucia in Isauria, where, with the Egyptian Athanasians, he joined the Homoiousian majority against the Arianizing party headed by Acacius of Caesarea; thence he went to Constantinople, and, in a petition (Ad Constantium Augustum liber secundus) personally presented to the emperor in 360, repudiated the calumnies of his enemies and sought to vindicate his trinitarian principles. His urgent and repeated request for a public discussion with his opponents, especially with Ursacius and Valens, proved at last so inconvenient that he was sent back to his diocese, which he appears to have reached about 361, within a very short time of the accession of Julian. He was occupied for two or three years in combating Arianism within his diocese; but in 364, extending his efforts once more beyond Gaul, he impeached Auxentius, bishop of Milan, and a man high in the imperial favour, as heterodox. Summoned to appear before the emperor (Valentinian) at Milan and there maintain his charges, Hilary had the mortification of hearing the supposed heretic give satisfactory answers to all the questions proposed; nor did his (doubtless sincere) denunciation of the metropolitan as a hypocrite save himself from an ignominious expulsion from Milan. In 365 he published the Contra Arianos vel Auxentium Mediolanensem liber, in connexion with the controversy; and also (but perhaps at a somewhat earlier date) the Contra Constantium Augustum liber, in which he pronounced that lately deceased emperor to have been Antichrist, a rebel against God, “a tyrant whose sole object had been to make a gift to the devil of that world for which Christ had suffered.” Hilary is sometimes regarded as the first Latin Christian hymn-writer, but none of the compositions assigned to him is indisputable. The later years of his life were spent in comparative quiet, devoted in part to the preparation of his expositions of the Psalms (Tractatus super Psalmos), for which he was largely indebted to Origen; of his Commentarius in Evangelium Matthaei, a work on allegorical lines of no exegetical value; and of his no longer extant translation of Origen’s commentary on Job. While he thus closely followed the two great Alexandrians, Origen and Athanasius, in exegesis and Christology respectively, his work shows many traces of vigorous independent thought. He died in 367; no more exact date is trustworthy. He holds the highest rank among the Latin writers of his century. Designated already by Augustine as “the illustrious doctor of the churches,” he by his works exerted an increasing influence in later centuries; and by Pius IX. he was formally recognized as “universae ecclesiae doctor” at the synod of Bordeaux in 1851. Hilary’s day in the Roman calendar is the 13th of January.[2]
Editions.—Erasmus (Basel, 1523, 1526, 1528); P. Coustant (Benedictine, Paris, 1693); Migne (Patrol. Lat. ix., x.). The Tractatus de mysteriis, ed. J. F. Gamurrini (Rome, 1887), and the Tractatus super Psalmos, ed. A. Zingerle in the Vienna Corpus scrip. eccl. Lat. xxii. Translation by E. W. Watson in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ix.
Literature.—The life by (Venantius) Fortunatus c. 550 is almost worthless. More trustworthy are the notices in Jerome (De vir. illus. 100), Sulpicius Severus (Chron. ii. 39-45) and in Hilary’s own writings. H. Reinkens, Hilarius von Poictiers (1864); O. Bardenhewer, Patrologie; A. Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, esp. vol. iv.; F. Loofs, in Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyk. viii.
HILARIUS, or Hilarus (Hilary), bishop of Rome from
461 to 468, is known to have been a deacon and to have acted
as legate of Leo the Great at the “robber” synod of Ephesus
in 449. There he so vigorously defended the conduct of Flavian
in deposing Eutyches that he was thrown into prison, whence
he had great difficulty in making his escape to Rome. He was
chosen to succeed Leo on the 19th of November 461. In 465
he held at Rome a council which put a stop to some abuses,
particularly to that of bishops appointing their own successors.
His pontificate was also marked by a successful encroachment
of the papal authority on the metropolitan rights of the French
and Spanish hierarchy, and by a resistance to the toleration
edict of Anthemius, which ultimately caused it to be recalled.
Hilarius died on the 17th of November 467, and was succeeded
by Simplicius.
HILARIUS (fl. 1125), a Latin poet who is supposed to have
been an Englishman. He was one of the pupils of Abelard at his
oratory of Paraclete, and addressed to him a copy of verses
with its refrain in the vulgar tongue, “Tort avers vos li mestre,”
Abelard having threatened to discontinue his teaching because
of certain reports made by his servant about the conduct of the
scholars. Later Hilarius made his way to Angers. His poems
are contained in MS. supp. lat. 1008 of the Bibliothèque Nationale,
Paris, purchased in 1837 at the sale of M. de Rosny. Quotations
from this MS. had appeared before, but in 1838 it was edited by
Champollion Figeac as Hilarii versus et ludi. His works consist
chiefly of light verses of the goliardic type. There are verses
addressed to an English nun named Eva, lines to Rosa, “Ave
splendor puellarum, generosa domina,” and another poem
describes the beauties of the priory of Chaloutre la Petite, in the
diocese of Sens, of which the writer was then an inmate. One
copy of satirical verses seems to aim at the pope himself. He
also wrote three miracle plays in rhymed Latin with an admixture
of French. Two of them, Suscitatio Lazari and Historia
de Daniel repraesentanda, are of purely liturgical type. At the
end of Lazarus is a stage direction to the effect that if the performance
has been given at matins, Lazarus should proceed with
the Te Deum, if at vespers, with the Magnificat. The third,
Ludus super iconia Sancti Nicholai, is founded on a sufficiently
foolish legend. Petit de Julleville sees in the play a satiric
intention and a veiled incredulity that put the piece outside
the category of liturgical drama.
A rhymed Latin account of a dispute in which the nuns of Ronceray at Angers were concerned, contained in a cartulary of Ronceray, is also ascribed to the poet, who there calls himself Hilarius Canonicus. The poem is printed in the Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes (vol. xxxvii. 1876), and is dated by P. Marchegay from 1121. See also a notice in Hist. litt. de la France (xii. 251-254), supplemented (in xx. 627-630), s.v. Jean Bodel, by Paulin Paris; also Wright, Biographia Britannica literaria, Anglo-Norman Period (1846); and Petit de Julleville, Les Mystères (vol. i. 1880).
HILARIUS (Hilary), ST (c. 403–449), bishop of Arles, was
born about 403. In early youth he entered the abbey of Lérins,
then presided over by his kinsman Honoratus (St Honoré), and
succeeded Honoratus in the bishopric of Arles in 429. Following
the example of St Augustine, he is said to have organized his
cathedral clergy into a “congregation,” devoting a great part of
their time to social exercises of ascetic religion. He held the
rank of metropolitan of Vienne and Narbonne, and attempted
to realize the sort of primacy over the church of south Gaul
- ↑ Hilary’s own title was De fide contra Arianos. It really deals less with the doctrine of the Trinity than with that of the Incarnation. That it is not an easy work to read is due partly to the nature of the subject, partly to the fact that it was issued in detached portions.
- ↑ “Hilary” was the name of one of the four terms of the English legal year. These terms were abolished by the Judicature Act, 1873, s. 26, and “sittings” substituted. It is now the name of the sitting of the Supreme Court of Judicature which commences on the 11th of January and terminates on the Wednesday before Easter. In the Inns of Court, Hilary is one of the four dining terms; it begins on the 11th of January and ends on the 1st of February. It is also the name of one of the terms at the universities of Oxford (more usually “Lent term”) and Dublin.
