Egypt, Sicily, Dalmatia, Cyprus

The itinerary of Hilarion’s long flight, as Jerome maps it: from Palestine back to Egypt and the desert of his dead master Antony; then westward by sea to Sicily, where he hid as a poor laborer; to Dalmatia, where he stilled a tidal wave at Epidaurus; and at last to Cyprus, where, in a remote spot in the hills, he died around 371 with his disciple Hesychius beside him. This file follows the route to its end, attends to the death on Cyprus, and notes Sozomen’s independent confirmation that Cyprus was where Hilarion’s life closed.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; father of Palestinian monasticism)

Egypt and the Desert of Antony

The first stage of the wandering, treated more fully under the motive of the flights (see The Flight from Fame), took Hilarion back to Egypt. There he sought out the desert and the very place where Antony had lived and died — for Antony was now dead (c. 356) — visiting the master’s mountain and the site of his solitude in a gesture of homage that closes the circle of the Life (Jerome, Life of Hilarion — the return to Egypt and the place of Antony; trans. White 1998; trans. NPNF 2nd ser., vol. 6). Jerome lingers on the meeting between Hilarion and the monks who had served Antony, and on the saint’s reverence for the spot, making the visit a passing of the torch in reverse — the disciple returning to honor the master at the end of his own long labor (Weingarten 2005). But Egypt could not hide him either; recognized and besieged again, he resolved to leave the eastern Mediterranean altogether.

Sicily

From Egypt Hilarion sailed west, and the next refuge was Sicily. Jerome tells how the old man, wishing to be utterly unknown, tried to pass himself off as a poor and ignorant laborer, gathering firewood and carrying it for sale to support himself, so as to attract no notice (Jerome, Life of Hilarion — the disguise in Sicily; trans. White 1998). The disguise failed, as all his disguises failed: a possessed man in a far city cried out, Jerome reports, that Hilarion the servant of God had come to Sicily and must be sought there, and so the saint was discovered and the crowds began again (Jerome, Life of Hilarion — the discovery in Sicily; trans. White 1998). The Sicilian episode is the most pointed illustration in the Life of the futility of the flight: even reduced to a woodcutter at the edge of the world, the saint’s holiness betrays him through the mouth of a demon.

Dalmatia and the Tidal Wave

Discovered in Sicily, Hilarion moved on again, this time to Dalmatia, on the eastern Adriatic coast. It was here, at Epidaurus, that Jerome sets one of the Life‘s greatest wonders. A violent earthquake struck, and the sea, drawing back, rose up in a great wall of water as if to overwhelm the town; the terrified people sought out the holy stranger and brought him to the shore, where Hilarion traced three signs of the cross upon the sand and set his hands against the advancing wave, and the sea — Jerome reports — subsided and spared the town (Jerome, Life of Hilarion — the tidal wave at Epidaurus; trans. White 1998; the wonder is treated as Jerome’s testimony in Healings and Exorcisms). Jerome adds that the people of the region still told the story in his own day, offering local memory as a kind of warrant (Weingarten 2005). The stilling of the sea, recalling Christ rebuking the waves (Mark 4:39), is reported here as the Life’s testimony and not as adjudicated event (METHODOLOGY §3.5). And again the wonder undid the disguise: the saint, made famous by it, had to flee once more.

Cyprus and the Death

The last refuge was Cyprus, and there the wandering ended. Jerome describes how Hilarion came to the island, settled first near Paphos and then, seeking deeper solitude, withdrew to a remote and rugged place in the hills of the interior, almost inaccessible, where for his last years he found something nearer the hiddenness he had sought across half the world (Jerome, Life of Hilarion — the settlement on Cyprus; trans. White 1998). Even there the sick and the possessed found their way to him, but the remoteness gave him a measure of peace, and it was on Cyprus, around the year 371, in his eightieth year by the usual reckoning, that he died [Disputed: the date of death (c. 371) and the age (about eighty) are inferences from Jerome's chronology and are approximate; "c. 371" is the standard scholarly reckoning but is not independently fixed (Weingarten 2005; see [Gaza and Alexandria](../01-foundations/gaza-and-alexandria.md))].

Jerome gives the death scene with the conventions of the holy man’s dormition: the old saint, sensing his end, makes his last dispositions and dies in peace, having nothing of his own to leave but the poor things of his cell and his sackcloth, which he bequeaths to the disciple who had served him (Jerome, Life of Hilarion — the death of Hilarion; trans. White 1998). His poverty at death — possessing nothing after a lifetime of giving all away — is Jerome’s final seal on the saint’s renunciation, the gospel poverty kept whole to the end.

Hesychius the Disciple

The disciple at Hilarion’s death was Hesychius, who had attached himself to the saint and followed him through the wanderings, and who becomes, in the Life, the crucial figure of its closing chapters. It was Hesychius who served the old man on Cyprus, Hesychius who buried him, and Hesychius who afterward — by Jerome’s account, secretly and at no small risk — recovered the body and carried it back to Palestine, to the monastery near Majuma where Hilarion’s monastic life had begun (Jerome, Life of Hilarion — Hesychius and the death and burial; treated in The Relics Translated to Palestine). Hesychius is also, the scholarship suggests, very likely the ultimate channel through which the traditions of Hilarion reached Jerome — the living memory behind the Life (Weingarten 2005; see Jerome’s Life of Hilarion).

Sozomen’s Confirmation

The Cyprus ending is one of the points where Jerome’s narrative is independently confirmed. Sozomen, drawing on the tradition of his own region, knew that Hilarion had removed to Cyprus and ended his life there, and connects the saint with the island as well as with Palestine (Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History III.14; V.10). This independent agreement on the itinerary’s end — Palestine to Cyprus, death on the island — is part of the secure historical core of Hilarion’s story (see The Historical Hilarion). The particular stages between (the Sicilian woodcutter, the Epidaurus wave) rest on Jerome alone and carry the literary character of his art; but that the great wanderer died on Cyprus, far from the Palestinian desert he had made a garden of monks, is as well attested as anything in his life — and is the fact on which the whole story of his relics turns.

See Also

References

  • Jerome. Life of Hilarion (Vita Hilarionis). Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 6. 1893; and trans. Carolinne White, Early Christian Lives. London: Penguin, 1998. (The return to Egypt and Antony’s desert; the disguise and discovery in Sicily; the tidal wave at Epidaurus in Dalmatia; the settlement and death on Cyprus c. 371; Hesychius the disciple; the poverty at death.)
  • Sozomen. The Ecclesiastical History III.14; V.10. Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd ser., vol. 2. 1890. (The independent confirmation of Hilarion’s removal to and death on Cyprus.)
  • Weingarten, Susan. The Saint’s Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome. Leiden: Brill, 2005. (The itinerary and its geography; Hesychius as the channel of tradition; the Epidaurus episode and the appeal to local memory.)
  • Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966. (The historical framework of the wanderings.)