The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Fathers & the Creeds
Hilary of Arles
died c. 449Patristic
Talked out of a public career and onto a monastic island, he was bishop of one of Gaul's great sees at twenty-nine.
Summary
- Lived died c. 449.
- Stood in The Fathers & the Creeds (AD 313–600).
- Hangs on The Fathers.
- Tradition: Patristic / Western.
The life
Hilary was born about 403 into a wealthy Gallo-Roman family and was headed for a career in public life. His kinsman Honoratus, who had founded the monastery on the island of Lérins, kept after him to give it up. Hilary resisted, then gave in, sold his property, and followed him to the island.
When Honoratus was made bishop of Arles he took Hilary with him, and when Honoratus died in 430 the people of Arles elected Hilary, he was about twenty-nine. The story is that he had already gone back to Lérins and had to be brought out.
He kept the monastery's habits in the bishop's house. He wore a rough tunic, worked with his hands, ate almost nothing, slept little, and refused to ride: he walked everywhere in his province, including long journeys in winter. He sold church plate and even the sacred vessels to ransom captives. He preached constantly and, according to his biographer, adjusted his level to whoever was in front of him, plain for the crowd, learned when the learned were present.
As metropolitan of Arles he presided over councils in Gaul, and he pressed his authority hard. In 444 he deposed Celidonius, bishop of Besançon, on the grounds that Celidonius had married a widow before ordination and had served as a civil judge who passed capital sentences. He also consecrated a replacement for Bishop Projectus, who was seriously ill, and who then recovered.
Both men appealed to Rome. Pope Leo the Great heard the cases, reinstated Celidonius, condemned the second consecration, and stripped Arles of its metropolitan rights over the Gallic provinces. He then obtained from the emperor Valentinian III a rescript in 445 declaring that nothing was to be done in Gaul against the authority of the Roman see. It is one of the sharpest early assertions of papal jurisdiction in the West, and it was made against Hilary.
Hilary submitted, sent envoys, and was reconciled. When he died in 449, at about forty-six, worn out, Leo, who had beaten him, spoke of him as Hilary of holy memory.
He left a life of Honoratus, preached as a sermon on the anniversary of his death, and a letter on the eclipse of 418.
Sources: Honoratus of Marseilles, The Life of Hilary of Arles; Leo the Great, Letter 10; the rescript of Valentinian III (445); The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), s.v. "St. Hilary of Arles".
What was happening while he lived8 moments · AD 313–600
- 380Nicene Christianity becomes the empire's official religionThe Edict of Thessalonica, issued by Theodosius I, commanded all his subjects to hold the faith of Nicaea. Legal protection had become legal privilege, and pressure on everyone else.
- 381The Council of ConstantinopleAround a hundred and fifty bishops confirmed Nicaea and expanded its article on the Holy Spirit, who "proceeds from the Father" and "together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified." This 381 text is the creed most churches actually recite as the Nicene Creed.
- 386Augustine converts in a Milan gardenA thirty-one-year-old professor of rhetoric, weeping under a fig tree, heard a child's voice chanting "take up and read," opened Paul's letter to the Romans, and stopped running. His mother Monica had prayed for him for years; Bishop Ambrose's preaching had already broken his objections.
- c. 397–400Augustine writes the *Confessions*He told his whole story, theft, ambition, a long affair, a slow surrender, as one long prayer addressed to God. Nothing quite like it had been written before, and it invented the spiritual autobiography.
- c. 405Jerome finishes translating the Old Testament from HebrewCommissioned by Bishop Damasus in 382, Jerome worked for decades in Bethlehem, learning Hebrew so he could go behind the Greek to the original. His Latin Bible, later called the Vulgate, was the Bible of the West for a thousand years.
- 410Rome is sacked; Augustine begins *The City of God*Alaric's Goths took the eternal city, and pagans blamed the Christians for abandoning the old gods. Augustine answered across thirteen years (413–426) with a book about two cities, one built on love of self, one on love of God, and only one of them permanent.
- 431The Council of EphesusBishop Nestorius objected to calling Mary *Theotokos*, "God-bearer," and Cyril of Alexandria pressed the point that the title is a claim about the child, not the mother: the one she bore was God. The council agreed, though the politics around it were ugly.
- 451The Council of ChalcedonSome five hundred bishops set the boundary lines that have held ever since: Jesus is one person in two natures, truly God and truly man, "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." It fenced the mystery rather than explaining it.
In their own words
“Peter makes a point of mentioning that this is his second letter, so that the recipients will not doubt its authenticity.”
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTARY ON 2 PETER · on 2 Peter 3:1
“Beloved, this is now my second letter to you. Both of them are reminders to stir you to wholesome thinking”
“People were talking this way as if the flood had never occurred and as if fire had never come down from heaven in the past.”
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTARY ON 2 PETER · on 2 Peter 3:4
““Where is the promise of His coming?” they will ask. “Ever since our fathers fell asleep, everything continues as it has from the beginning of creation.””
“Error has three causes—darkness, loneliness and ignorance. The Gentile sheep were wandering among idols because of their foolish ignorance, and they found themselves lost in the darkness of sin and in the loneliness of a strange nation. Peter goes on to add that now they …”
INTRODUCTORY COMMENTARY ON 1 PETER · on 1 Peter 2:25
“For “you were like sheep going astray,” but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”
Go further
Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.
Search Hilary of Arles at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites
Why this one hangs here
Gave away his wealth, walked everywhere on foot, and clashed with Rome over who ran the churches of Gaul.
Hangs on The Fathers: The men who carried the faith out of the apostles' hands, and wrote down what they had received.
Standing beside himThe Fathers & the Creeds · 130 on this stretch of wall
Exiled five separate times for refusing to say the Son was anything less than God, they called it Athanasius against the world.
Made a Roman emperor stand outside the church door until he repented of a massacre.
Heard 'sell what you have' read aloud in church, walked into the Egyptian desert, and started monasticism.
A brilliant, restless sinner whose mother prayed for him thirty years; his Confessions still read like a man talking straight to God.
Built an entire town for the sick and the poor outside his city, and wrote the rule Eastern monks still live by.
Preached five sermons in a tiny borrowed chapel that settled how the whole church speaks about the Trinity.