Saint Hilary of Arles

The holy Archbishop, feeling his strength greatly failing, had his holy disciple return once more, so that he might assist him at his death and render him the final duties of burial. Hilary did so with the love and tenderness seen in the funeral oration he pronounced over his holy friend. Fearing he would be elected to the place of the deceased, who had manifested this desire, Hilary left immediately for his dear solitude; but Castus, governor of the city, having discovered his plan, had him arrested; the Saint soon found himself surrounded by the militia, the people, and the clergy; everyone exhorted him to yield: all he could do was protest that he would only accept the prelacy if God manifested His will to him by some sign. At that very hour, a dove appeared, white as snow, and came to rest in the midst of this numerous assembly, upon the head of Hilary, and it could not be made to leave until the Saint had acquiesced to his election. He was only twenty-nine years old; but his youth served only to make his virtues more amiable and more brilliant.

One must not imagine that this holy religious relaxed any of the rigors of the cloister upon being raised to the dignity of archbishop; he always practiced the same austerities, and knew very well how to combine the monastic life with the prelacy. His food, his clothing, and his sleeping arrangements remained the same as before; and, for having become a greater prelate, he was no less a religious, nor less mortified. The revenues of his church did not make him any richer: for he distributed them with such liberality that he soon found himself reduced to using chalices and patens of glass. His charity for the poor even went so far as to work with his own hands, in order to have something to give them, even though he was of illustrious birth and the eminent functions of his office seemed to exempt him from it.

The Saints themselves commit faults; and is not holiness most often innocence recovered through penance? An excess of zeal led Saint Hilary to overstep the bounds of propriety with regard to the Sovereign Pontiff Saint Leo the Great; bu t he recognized his saint Léon le Grand Pope who maintained close correspondence with Constantine and the Gallic bishops. fault, repented of it, and gave satisfaction to the Sovereign Pontiff. To this end, he sent to Rome the three most prominent priests of his clergy, Ravenna, Nectarius, and Constance; and he lived, thereafter, with Saint Leo in the best of understanding; this great Pope, in a letter he wrote some time after the death of the Archbishop of Arles, calls him *Hilary of holy memory*.

The talent Saint Hilary had for preaching was singularly remarkable. When he spoke to the learned of the world, he expressed himself with that grace, elegance, and tone of nobility that characterize great orators; but if he had to instruct unlettered people, he changed his manner and proportioned his discourses to the capacity of the most ignorant. What was most admirable is that, in the most familiar instructions, he knew how to combine a simple and artless style with the majesty of the Gospel. He preached the truth without disguise and without ever flattering the great. We shall cite an example of this. He had often warned in private a judge of the province, who administered justice with criminal partiality: his warnings had produced no effect. One day while he was preaching, the magistrate, followed by his officers, entered the church. Scarcely had he caught sight of him than he interrupted his discourse. His audience appearing astonished, he said that a man who had so often neglected the advice given to him for the salvation of his soul did not deserve to be nourished with the divine word alongside the faithful people. The judge, struck by this reflection, blushed and looked into himself. The Saint then resumed the thread of his discourse. Having noticed, another day, that several people were leaving the church after the reading of the Gospel and precisely at the moment when he was preaching, he made them return, saying to them: "It will not be so easy for you to leave the dark dungeons of hell, if you have the misfortune to fall into them."

His eloquence was enhanced by the brilliance of his miracles and his virtues. By the mere imposition of his hands, he restored sight to a blind man; he delivered a possessed person; he obtained from heaven the healing of one of his deacons who had had a foot crushed by a block of marble.

He had the greatest tenderness for sinners when he administered penance, which was usually done on Sunday after the office and public instructions; many came to receive from him the remedy for the maladies of their soul. He excited by his tears those of the penitents. One could not hear him or even look at him without having one's heart broken with contrition, and one's spirit frightened by the judgments of God, by the terrible day of his wrath, and by eternal damnation; one became disgusted with the present life and resolved to live no longer but for heaven. The Saint easily inspired these sentiments in others, having them himself. His great maxim being to relate everything to God, he considered Him as his sovereign judge, and examined each day, in His presence, the state of his soul: thus he watched with great attention over everything he thought and everything he did.

He presided over several councils, among others those of Riez in 439, Orange in 441, Vaison in 442, and Arles in 443; he fought against heresies, especially Pelagianism, restored ecclesiastical discipline, and founded monasteries where he ensured the most perfect regularity. He himself set the example. For the first act of his episcopate had been to join the clergy of his cathedral to live in community: the last member of this congregation was dearer to him than himself; the smallest accident that befell them afflicted him; their death drew tears from him. They lived on the income of their labor: Hilary himself, the Archbishop of Arles, the Vicar of the Holy See, worked incessantly: while people spoke to him, read to him, or recited prayers to him, he made mats. He always went barefoot, even in winter, even during his frequent travels: it was thus that he went to Rome, under his modest garment, he wore a hair shirt. Nothing was too much for him when it came to the salvation of his people; he was seen, on fasting days, preaching for three hours in a row. He sold everything, even the sacred vessels, as I have already said, to ransom the poor Gauls who had fallen into the power of the Germanic tribes invading Gaul. He had illustrious friends, such as Saint Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, one of the apostles of Great Britain and a destroyer of Pelagianism; they often consulted one another on the affairs of their dioceses. Finally, consumed by zeal and austerity, Hilary fell ill; and, as one day he believed he was at the end, he seemed to see before him all the vestments of Aaron, in the manner in which they are described in Scripture: when he prepared to put them on, believing they were prepared for him, his priest, Ravennius, was called to put them on and celebrate the holy Myster ies: he Ravenne Priest and successor of Hilary to the archbishopric of Arles. recognized well, by this, that his hour had arrived, and that God was showing him his successor. He gave notice of this to his spiritual children, predicting to them that at eleven o'clock at night he would depart from this world: which happened on May 5, in the year of Our Lord 449, in the forty-eighth year of his age and the nineteenth year of his episcopate.

The whole city of Arles mourned his premature loss; everyone wanted to touch the Saint before he was buried: even the Jews attended the funeral. During the funeral service, one could hardly hear the psalms being sung and the praise of the Saint being given except in Hebrew; for the Jews alone could speak: the voices of the Christians, accustomed to praying in Latin and Greek, were stifled by grief. Such is the account of an eyewitness. His body, buried in the church of Saint-Étienne, was later transferred to that of Saint-Geniez, and from there finally to that of Saint-Honorat. In the middle of the 12th century, these holy relics were transferred to the church of Sainte-Croix.

His attribute is the dove, which is the symbol of election by inspiration or unanimity.

## WRITINGS OF SAINT HILARY.

Today we have only one authentic work by Saint Hilary, which is the *Life of Saint Honoratus*, his predecessor on the see of Arles (Volume L of Migne's *Patrologia*). His biographer also cites *Homilies on the feasts of the year; explanation of the Creed; numerous letters; verses*. A poem on Divine Providence has also been attributed to Saint Hilary of Arles, and it has been concluded from this that he was a semi-Pelagian. To arrive at this conclusion, it remains to be proven: 1st that this book is really by Saint Hilary; all scholars today admit that our Saint is not its author; 2nd that semi-Pelagianism is contained in th is book. Now, it semi-pélagianisme Heresy opposed by Boniface I and Saint Augustine. is generally agreed that it is only there for those who wish to see it there. As for the letter of Saint Prosper to Saint Augustine, which is also invoked against Hilary, what does it teach us? That Hilary thought in everything like Augustine, except on predestination: a very permissible thing. Is Saint Augustine accused of being part of the heretics known as predestinarians because he teaches that the decree of predestination to glory is absolute and antecedent? Why treat Saint Hilary as a semi-Pelagian for having rejected this system? Is one a Pelagian because one finds it more reasonable to believe that the predestination of the elect to glory is conditional, consequent, that is to say, founded on the foreknowledge of their natural merits?

Saint Hilary of Arles must not be confused with: 1st Bishop Hilary, a friend of Saint John Chrysostom, who, in that capacity, was exiled to Pontus; 2nd Hilary, Bishop of Narbonne; 3rd Hilary, deacon and envoy of Pope Liberius to the Council of Milan (335), mistreated by the Arians, and exiled by Emperor Constantius; 4th Hilary, a young layman from Syracuse, an ardent disciple of Saint Augustine.

We still possess his epitaph, in an underground chapel, under the high altar of Saint-Honorat-lès-Arles. It is engraved on a large marble slab embedded in the wall, and broken into several pieces. This inscription is in beautiful Roman characters; here it is: