Saints
“The Athanasius of the West”
Bishop of Poitiers · Confessor against Arianism
A pagan philosopher who read his way to Christ through the Scriptures, became bishop of his own city, and was exiled to Asia Minor for refusing to condemn St Athanasius. In exile he learned the Greek theology of the Trinity and brought it back to the Latin West.
His life
Hilary was born at Poitiers in Gaul about the year 310, into a pagan family of standing, and was educated in philosophy. He has left an account of how the reading of the Scriptures, and above all the opening of the Gospel of St John, brought him to faith. He was baptized as a grown man and not long after, though married and a layman, was chosen bishop of the city.
When the emperor Constantius pressed the bishops of the West to condemn St Athanasius, Hilary refused, and was banished to Phrygia about the year 356. The exile proved a gift: in the East he read the Greek Fathers in their own tongue and came to understand the Arian controversy from the inside.
There he wrote On the Trinity, twelve books setting out the consubstantiality of the Son in Latin for the first time with the full weight of the Greek argument behind it. His commentary on St Matthew, written earlier, is the oldest surviving Latin commentary on that Gospel.
He returned to Gaul and reposed at Poitiers about the year 367. For his stand and his teaching the West called him the Athanasius of the West, and the Orthodox Church keeps his memory on the fourteenth of January.
Holy St. Hilary of Poitiers, pray to God for us.