01 — Foundations
The world into which St. Hilary of Poitiers (c. 310–367) was born and the path by which he came to the faith and the episcopate: fourth-century Latin Gaul, the eastward-bred Arian controversy arriving in the West under the shadow of the emperor Constantius II, Hilary’s conversion through Scripture as he himself narrates it in the opening of De Trinitate, and his election as a married bishop of Poitiers drawn almost at once into the Nicene struggle.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; Church Father)
Hilary stands at the head of Latin Nicene theology, but he reached it from an unlikely starting point: a cultivated pagan household in Aquitaine and a personal search for the true God that ended, by his own account, in the Scriptures — in the divine name of Exodus 3:14 and the Prologue of John. This section sets the stage. The first file traces fourth-century Gaul and the arrival of the Arian crisis in the West, and recounts Hilary’s conversion as he tells it in the preface to De Trinitate. The second covers his election as bishop of Poitiers — a married man raised to the episcopate before the later Western discipline of clerical celibacy — and his entry into the conflict as Constantius II pressed the Western sees, through the synods of Arles (353) and Milan (355), to abandon Athanasius and Nicaea.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Gaul and the Arian Crisis | Fourth-century Latin Gaul; the Arian controversy reaching the West as an Eastern importation under Constantius II; the spectrum of anti-Nicene parties; Hilary’s pagan upbringing and his conversion through Scripture (De Trinitate Book 1 — Exodus 3:14 and the Prologue of John). |
| Bishop of Poitiers | His election as bishop c. early 350s; the married episcopate of the early West and the tradition of his daughter Abra; his entry into the Nicene struggle as the synods of Arles (353) and Milan (355) pressed the Western sees, leading to his break with Saturninus of Arles. |
See Also
- Condemnation and Exile to Phrygia — where the struggle begun here leads: Béziers and exile
- The Twelve Books on the Trinity — the great work whose programmatic preface is the conversion narrative introduced here
- The Church Fathers — Hilary among the fourth-century Fathers
- The Nicene Creed — the confession the Western sees were pressed to abandon
- The Pre-Schism Church — the undivided Church of Hilary’s age
References
- Hilary of Poitiers. On the Trinity (De Trinitate). Trans. E. W. Watson et al., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 9. New York: Christian Literature Company, 1899. (Book 1, the conversion preface.)
- Hilary of Poitiers. The Trinity. Trans. Stephen McKenna. Fathers of the Church 25. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1954.
- Beckwith, Carl L. Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity: From De Fide to De Trinitate. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
- Hanson, R. P. C. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988.
- Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.