which seemed implied in the vicariate granted to his predecessor Patroclus (417). Hilarius deposed the bishop of Besançon (Chelidonus), for ignoring this primacy, and for claiming a metropolitan dignity for Besançon. An appeal was made to Rome, and Leo I. used it to extinguish the Gallican vicariate (A.D. 444). Hilarius was deprived of his rights as metropolitan to consecrate bishops, call synods, or exercise ecclesiastical oversight in the province, and the pope secured the edict of Valentinian III., so important in the history of the Gallican church, “ut episcopis Gallicanis omnibusque pro lege esset quidquid apostolicae sedis auctoritas sanxisset.” The papal claims were made imperial law, and violation of them subject to legal penalties (Novellae Valent. iii. tit. 16). Hilarius died in 449, and his name was afterwards introduced into the Roman martyrology for commemoration on the 5th of May. He enjoyed during his lifetime a high reputation for learning and eloquence as well as for piety; his extant works (Vita S. Honorati Arelatensis episcopi and Metrum in Genesin) compare favourably with any similar literary productions of that period.
A poem, De providentia, usually included among the writings of Prosper, is sometimes attributed to Hilary of Arles.
HILDA, ST, strictly Hild (614–680), was the daughter of
Hereric, a nephew of Edwin, king of Northumbria. She was
converted to Christianity before 633 by the preaching of Paulinus.
According to Bede she took the veil in 614, when Oswio was king
of Northumbria and Aidan bishop of Lindisfarne, and spent a
year in East Anglia, where her sister Hereswith had married
Æthelhere, who was to succeed his brother Anna, the reigning
king. In 648 or 649 Hilda was recalled to Northumbria by
Aidan, and lived for a year in a small monastic community north
of the Wear. She then succeeded Heiu, the foundress, as abbess
of Hartlepool, where she remained several years. From Hartlepool
Hilda moved to Whitby, where in 657 she founded the
famous double monastery which in the time of the first abbess
included among its members five future bishops, Bosa, Ætta,
Oftfor, John and Wilfrid II. as well as the poet Cædmon. Hilda
exercised great influence in Northumbria, and ecclesiastics from
all over Christian England and from Strathclyde and Dalriada
visited her monastery. In 655 after the battle of Winwæd
Oswio entrusted his daughter Ælfled to Hilda, with whom she
went to Whitby. At the synod of Whitby in 664 Hilda sided
with Colman and Cedd against Wilfrid. In spite of the defeat of
the Celtic party she remained hostile to Wilfrid until 679 at any
rate. Hilda died in 680 after a painful illness lasting for seven
years.
See Bede, Hist. eccl. (ed. C. Plummer, Oxford, 1869), iii. 24, 25, iv. 23; Eddius, Vita Wilfridi (Raine, Historians of Church of York, Rolls Series, vol. i., 1879), c. liv.
HILDBURGHAUSEN, a town of Germany, in the duchy of
Saxe-Meiningen, situated in a wide and fruitful valley on the
river Werra, 19 m. S.E. of Meiningen, on the railway Eisenach-Lichtenfels.
Pop. (1905) 7456. The principal buildings are a
ducal palace, erected 1685–1695, now used as barracks, with a
park in which there is a monument to Queen Louisa of Prussia,
the old town hall, two Evangelical and a Roman Catholic church
and a theatre. A technical college occupies the premises in
which Meyer’s Bibliographisches Institut carried on business
from 1828, when it removed hither from Gotha, until 1874, when
it was transferred to Leipzig. A monument has been erected to
those citizens who died in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.
The manufactures include linen fabrics, cloth, toys, buttons,
optical instruments, agricultural machines, knives, mineral
waters, condensed soups and condensed milk. Hildburghausen
(in records Hilpershusia and Villa Hilperti) belonged in the 13th
century to the counts of Henneberg, from whom it passed to the
landgraves of Thuringia and then to the dukes of Saxony. In
1683 it became the capital of a principality which in 1826 was
united to Saxe-Meiningen.
See R. A. Human, Chronik der Stadt Hildburghausen (Hildburghausen, 1888).
HILDEBERT, Hydalbert, Gildebert or Aldebert (c.
1055–1133), French writer and ecclesiastic, was born of poor
parents at Lavardin, near Vendôme, and was intended for the
church. He was probably a pupil of Berengarius of Tours, and
became master (scholasticus) of the school at Le Mans; in 1091
he was made archdeacon and in 1096 bishop of Le Mans. He
had to face the hostility of a section of his clergy and also of the
English king, William II., who captured Le Mans and carried the
bishop with him to England for about a year. Hildebert then
travelled to Rome and sought permission to resign his bishopric,
which Pope Paschal II. refused. In 1116 his diocese was thrown
into great confusion owing to the preaching of Henry of
Lausanne, who was denouncing the higher clergy, especially the
bishop. Hildebert compelled him to leave the neighbourhood of
Le Mans, but the effects of his preaching remained. In 1125
Hildebert was translated very unwillingly to the archbishopric of
Tours, and there he came into conflict with the French king
Louis VI. about the rights of ecclesiastical patronage and with
the bishop of Dol about the authority of his see in Brittany. He
presided over the synod of Nantes, and died at Tours probably on
the 18th of December 1133. Hildebert, who built part of the
cathedral at Le Mans, has received from some writers the title of
saint, but there appears to be no authority for this. He was not
a man of very strict life; his contemporaries, however, had a
very high opinion of him and he was called egregius versificator.
The extant writings of Hildebert consist of letters, poems, a few sermons, two lives and one or two treatises. An edition of his works prepared by the Maurist, Antoine Beaugendre, and entitled Venerabilis Hildeberti, primo Cenomannensis episcopi, deinde Turonensis archiepiscopi, opera tam edita quam inedita, was published in Paris in 1708 and was reprinted with additions by J. J. Bourassé in 1854. These editions, however, are very faulty. They credit Hildebert with numerous writings which are the work of others, while some genuine writings are omitted. The revelation of this fact has affected Hildebert’s position in the history of medieval thought. His standing as a philosopher rested upon his supposed authorship of the important Tractatus theologicus; but this is now regarded as the work of Hugh of St Victor, and consequently Hildebert can hardly be counted among the philosophers. His genuine writings include many letters. These Epistolae enjoyed great popularity in the 12th and 13th centuries, and were frequently used as classics in the schools of France and Italy. Those which concern the struggle between the emperor Henry V. and Pope Paschal II. have been edited by E. Sackur and printed in the Monumenta Germaniae historica. Libelli de lite ii. (1893). His poems, which deal with various subjects, are disfigured by many defects of style and metre, but they too were very popular. Hildebert attained celebrity also as a preacher both in French and Latin, but only a few of his sermons are in existence, most of the 144 attributed to him by his editors being the work of Peter Lombard and others. The Vitae written by Hildebert are the lives of Hugo, abbot of Cluny, and of St Radegunda. Undoubtedly genuine is also his Liber de querimonia et conflictu carnis et spiritus seu animae. Hildebert was an excellent Latin scholar, being acquainted with Cicero, Ovid and other authors, and his spirit is rather that of a pagan than of a Christian writer.
See B. Hauréau, Les Mélanges poétiques d’Hildebert de Lavardin (Paris, 1882), and Notices et extraits de quelques manuscrits latins de la Bibliothèque nationale (Paris, 1890–1893); Comte P. de Déservillers, Un Évêque au XII e siècle, Hildebert et son temps (Paris, 1876); E. A. Freeman, The Reign of Rufus, vol. ii. (Oxford, 1882); tome xi. of the Histoire littéraire de la France, and H. Böhmer in Band viii. of Herzog-Hauck’s Realencyklopädie (1900). The most important work, however, to be consulted is L. Dieudonné’s Hildebert de Lavardin, évêque du Mans, archévêque de Tours. Sa vie, ses lettres (Paris, 1898).
HILDEBRAND, LAY OF (Das Hildebrandslied), a unique
example of Old German alliterative poetry, written about the
year 800 on the first and last pages of a theological manuscript,
by two monks of the monastery of Fulda. The fragment, or
rather fragments, only extend to sixty-eight lines, and the
conclusion of the poem is wanting. The theory propounded by
Karl Lachmann, that the poem had been written in its present
form from memory, has been discredited by later philological
investigation; it is clearly a transcript of an older original,
