Saint Hilary of Poitiers

Saint Hilary of Poitiers was the bishop of his native city in Gaul and one of the great Fathers of the Church in the West. In the controversy with the Arians, who did not acknowledge the true divinity of the Son of God, he defended the faith of the Council of Nicaea and paid for it with exile. The Church venerates him as a Doctor of the Church and commemorates him on January 13.

We have no reliable information about most of his life. He was born in Poitiers at the beginning of the fourth century, probably around the year 310. He came from a wealthy, presumably pagan family and received a thorough literary education. He himself tells of a search for the truth that led him step by step to know God the Creator and the God who became man. He was baptized around 345 as an adult; by then he already had a wife and a daughter.

Around 353 or 354 he was elected bishop of Poitiers. In the years that followed he wrote a commentary on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the oldest surviving Latin commentary on this Gospel. In 356 he took part in the synod of Béziers, which he himself called the synod of false apostles, because bishops who favored Arianism prevailed there. At their request Emperor Constantius sentenced Hilary to exile, and in the summer of that same year the bishop had to leave Gaul.

He spent four years in Phrygia, in present-day Turkey. There he began to write his most important work, On the Trinity. In it he showed from Sacred Scripture that the Son is true God, equal to the Father, and he took as his starting point the formula of baptism: in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Unyielding toward the radical Arians, he sought an understanding with those who held the Son to be like the Father in essence, and he tried to lead them to the fullness of faith. He is called the Athanasius of the West.

In 360 or 361 he returned to Poitiers and at once resumed his pastoral work. A synod held in Paris at that time adopted the language of the Council of Nicaea, which ancient authors attributed in large part to Hilary’s fortitude and gentleness. Under his guidance Saint Martin, the future bishop of Tours, founded at Ligugé near Poitiers a monastery that still exists today. In the last years of his life Hilary commented on fifty-eight psalms, seeing in all of them the mystery of Christ and of the Church. He also composed hymns.

He died in Poitiers. The year most often given is 367, sometimes 368. Hilary has been venerated as a saint since antiquity, without a formal canonization; the ancient Hieronymian Martyrology already lists him on January 13. In 1851 Blessed Pius IX proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church.

Benedict XVI devoted a catechesis to him on October 10, 2007. In it he recalled that Hilary’s theology grows out of baptismal faith and that his reflection turns into prayer. Hilary wrote that God does not know how to be anything other than love, or anyone other than Father. He ended his work on the Trinity with the plea that he might always remain faithful to what he had professed at his baptism.