Bishop of Poitiers

Hilary’s election to the see of Poitiers around the middle of the fourth century — a married man raised to the episcopate by the acclaim of his city — and his swift entry into the Nicene struggle as the Western sees came under the pressure of Constantius II’s homoian policy. This file establishes what can and cannot be known about his episcopal election and his family, and traces the synods of Arles (353) and Milan (355) by which the emperor broke Western resistance and set Hilary on the road to exile.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; Church Father)

Election to the See

Hilary was made bishop of Poitiers, his native city, around the early 350s — within a few years of his conversion, and not long before the controversy that would define his life reached the West [Disputed: the date of his episcopal election is reconstructed, not recorded — Beckwith (2008, 14–15) and Hanson (1988, 459) place it c. 350; other accounts give c. 353, on the reasoning that he was already bishop and a leader of Gallic resistance by the synods of 355–356; the year cannot be fixed precisely because no source dates it and it is inferred backward from his attested activity and his exile in 356]. The earliest witness, Jerome, simply records that he was bishop of Poitiers without giving a date (Jerome, De viris illustribus 100; trans. NPNF II/3). What is clear is the speed of his rise: by his own and others’ testimony he came to the faith as an adult and was within a short time judged fit to lead a church (Beckwith 2008, 14–15; Hanson 1988, 459–461).

His elevation followed the ordinary pattern of the fourth-century West, in which a bishop was commonly chosen by the acclamation of the local clergy and people rather than by a distant appointment — a learned and respected man of the city raised to its episcopate by those who knew him (Weedman 2007, 19–22). Hilary brought to the office exactly the equipment the coming crisis would require: a trained Latin rhetorician’s command of language, a convert’s conviction, and a mind already fixed, by the Scriptures that had converted him, on the Godhead of the Word (on which see Gaul and the Arian Crisis). He was, almost from the moment of his consecration, the natural leader of the Nicene party in Gaul (Hanson 1988, 461–462; Ayres 2004, 179–180).

A Married Bishop

One detail of Hilary’s life is both well attested and, to a later sensibility, surprising: he was a married man when he became bishop. In the fourth-century Church, and especially in the West, the elevation of married men to the episcopate was still ordinary; the later Western discipline of a celibate episcopate had not yet hardened, and a man with a wife could be — and frequently was — ordained bishop, the expectation being continence within the existing marriage rather than the absence of a wife (Hanson 1988, 459–460; on the patristic period generally see The Church Fathers). That Hilary had a wife before his episcopate is part of the received account of his life and is not in itself disputed (Beckwith 2008, 14).

The tradition goes further and gives him a daughter, Abra (also given as Apra or Afra), but here the ground becomes uncertain and must be marked as such. [Disputed: the existence of a daughter named Abra rests on a single letter, the *Epistula ad Abram filiam suam* ("Letter to his daughter Abra"), together with a morning and an evening hymn transmitted with it, all attributed to Hilary and purporting to be written to her from exile — but the authenticity of this letter and its hymns is seriously contested. Some scholars accept them as genuine (and so the daughter as historical); many judge the *Ad Abram* and its attached hymns to be later, pseudonymous productions, in which case Abra is a figure of pious legend rather than secure history. The standard critical position is that the attribution is doubtful and the daughter therefore not independently established; the claim should be reported as tradition, not asserted as fact (cf. Hanson 1988, 460, on the limited and problematic biographical sources; the genuine hymnody is discussed under Hilary the hymnographer)]. A later hagiographical layer adds that his wife and daughter predeceased him or that he prayed for their holy deaths; these elaborations belong to the devotional reception of the saint and have no early documentary support (Beckwith 2008, 14). For the historian the safe statement is the minimal one: Hilary was married before his episcopate, in keeping with the practice of his age, and a daughter is ascribed to him by a tradition resting on disputed documents.

The Western Sees Under Pressure

Hilary’s episcopate opened just as the whole political situation of the Western Church changed. With the defeat of the usurper Magnentius in 353, the emperor Constantius II — already master of the East — became sole ruler of the entire Roman world, and he carried into the West a settled ecclesiastical policy: not the defence of Nicaea but the imposition of a broad anti-Nicene, increasingly homoian, consensus that confessed the Son merely “like” the Father and refused the Nicene language of substance (Hanson 1988, 557–561; Ayres 2004, 133–138). The instrument of that policy was the demand that bishops subscribe the condemnation of Athanasius of Alexandria, the great symbol of Nicene resistance (see Athanasius the Great). To condemn Athanasius was, in effect, to abandon Nicaea; to refuse was to defy the emperor (Hanson 1988, 329–334; Ayres 2004, 133–138; on the conciliar tradition see The Ecumenical Councils).

The Synod of Arles (353)

The pressure first told at the Synod of Arles in 353, held in Gaul itself in Constantius’s presence. There the assembled bishops were required to subscribe a condemnation of Athanasius, and under imperial intimidation they did so — almost to a man. Even the legates of Pope Liberius of Rome gave way, and the one notable hold-out, Paulinus of Trier, who refused to condemn an innocent man unheard, was deposed and sent into exile (Hanson 1988, 329–334; Ayres 2004, 133–134). Arles was thus the first breach in the Western front: in Hilary’s own province the bishops had been made to subscribe against Athanasius, and the Nicene cause in Gaul had suffered a public defeat (Beckwith 2008, 15–17).

The Synod of Milan (355)

What Arles began, the Synod of Milan in 355 carried further. Again the bishops were summoned before Constantius, again required to condemn Athanasius, and again the great majority complied. The emperor’s resolve at Milan is preserved in a famous report: when bishops appealed to the canons of the Church against his demand, Constantius is said to have answered that his own will was to be reckoned a canon — “Let whatever I will be regarded as a canon” — a saying transmitted by Athanasius as the very pattern of imperial overreach in church affairs (Athanasius, History of the Arians 33; trans. NPNF II/4; Hanson 1988, 334–337). The bishops who refused — among them Eusebius of Vercelli, Dionysius of Milan, and the Roman deacon Lucifer of Cagliari — were deposed and exiled; and Pope Liberius of Rome and the aged Hosius of Cordova, the architects of Western Nicene resistance, were in the following period likewise pressed, exiled, and eventually broken into subscription (Hanson 1988, 334–340; Ayres 2004, 135–138). Milan completed what Arles had begun: by 355–356 the organized Nicene resistance of the West had been dismantled by the emperor, see by see (Beckwith 2008, 15–17; Ayres 2004, 137–138).

Hilary Enters the Struggle

It was into this collapsing situation that Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, threw himself. He had not been present at Arles or Milan — Gaul’s compliance had been secured at Arles before he was a leading figure, or in his absence — but in their aftermath he made himself the leader of the Gallic bishops who would not accept the imperial settlement (Hanson 1988, 461–463; Beckwith 2008, 15–17). His decisive act was to break communion with the chief agent of the homoian party in Gaul, Saturninus of Arles, and with Saturninus’s allies Ursacius and Valens, and to rally the bishops of Gaul to withdraw from communion with those who had condemned Athanasius and embraced the Arian cause (Hanson 1988, 461–463; Weedman 2007, 30–33). Hilary thus did in Gaul what the deposed bishops had done at Milan, but as a coordinated provincial resistance: he refused the condemnation of Athanasius, he refused communion with the homoian leaders, and he placed the Gallic church, so far as he could, back on the side of Nicaea.

This act of resistance is the hinge of his life. By making himself the head of the Nicene party in Gaul against the express policy of Constantius II, Hilary marked himself for the emperor’s reprisal. The instrument was a synod — the Synod of Béziers in 356, engineered by Saturninus — at which Hilary was condemned and from which the order for his banishment followed: he was sent into exile in Phrygia, in the Greek-speaking East, where he would remain for some years and where, far from his see, he would write the great works of his maturity, above all the De Trinitate (the proceedings and the exile are treated in Condemnation and Exile to Phrygia). The exile that was meant to silence the bishop of Poitiers instead immersed him in the Eastern debates he had only known at a distance, and turned him into the one Latin Father who could mediate the whole Trinitarian controversy to the West (Ayres 2004, 179–181; Weedman 2007, 30–35; on his Trinitarian work see Exegesis Against Arianism and The Twelve Books on the Trinity).

What the Episcopal Years Established

The years between Hilary’s election and his exile — a span of only a few years on any reckoning — fixed the shape of everything that followed. A married convert from cultivated paganism became bishop of his own city; almost at once the imperial policy of Constantius II, having broken the Western sees at Arles and Milan, reached Gaul; and Hilary chose resistance over compliance, breaking communion with the homoian leaders and rallying the Gallic bishops to Nicaea and to Athanasius. That choice cost him his see and sent him to Phrygia, but it also made him the leader and theologian of the Western Nicene cause — the “Athanasius of the West” — whose defence of the consubstantial Son would be written from exile and read for centuries after (Beckwith 2008, 15–17; Hanson 1988, 461–463; on the dogma at stake see The Holy Trinity, and on the conciliar faith he defended The Nicene Creed).

See Also

References

  • Jerome. De viris illustribus (On Illustrious Men) 100. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 3. (The earliest notice that Hilary was bishop of Poitiers; gives no date.)
  • Athanasius of Alexandria. History of the Arians (Historia Arianorum) 33. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 4. (Constantius II at Milan: “Let whatever I will be regarded as a canon”; the deposition and exile of the resisting bishops.)
  • Beckwith, Carl L. Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity: From De Fide to De Trinitate. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. (Hilary’s election and date, 14–15; his married life, 14; the synods of Arles and Milan and the breaking of the Western sees, 15–17.)
  • Hanson, R. P. C. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988. (Hilary’s episcopate and the limits of the biographical sources, 459–463; the married episcopate, 459–460; Arles 353, 329–334; Milan 355 and Constantius’s “canon,” 334–340; the homoian policy, 557–561.)
  • Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. (Constantius’s western campaign, the synods of Arles and Milan, 133–138; Hilary’s leadership and significance, 179–181.)
  • Weedman, Mark. The Trinitarian Theology of Hilary of Poitiers. Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 89. Leiden: Brill, 2007. (Hilary’s election and Latin formation, 19–22; his break with Saturninus and the Gallic resistance, 30–35.)
  • Scripture and conciliar material as cited; the Epistula ad Abram filiam suam (disputed) noted in text for the question of the daughter Abra.