05 — Against Constantius
The bishop against the Arian state: Hilary’s denunciation of the emperor Constantius II in the Contra Constantium — a text that turns from his earlier deferential petitions into a ferocious indictment of an emperor who, he charges, persecutes the Church the more dangerously because he flatters rather than scourges — and his later, losing battle against Auxentius, the Arian bishop of Milan.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (pre-Schism West; Church Father)
If De Synodis shows Hilary the conciliator, this section shows Hilary the fighter. Returned from exile, he wrote the Contra Constantium, one of the boldest assertions in the early Church of the Church’s freedom from imperial doctrinal coercion: the same emperor he had once petitioned with deference he now named a persecutor worse than Nero or Decius, an Antichrist who corrupts the faith with patronage. The first file treats that text and the church-state question it raises. The second follows Hilary to Milan in the mid-360s, where he tried and failed to have the Arian bishop Auxentius deposed — a defeat that prefigured Ambrose’s later recovery of Milan for Nicaea.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Emperor and the Church | Contra Constantium (c. 360) — the shift from the deferential Ad Constantium to ferocious denunciation; the charge that a flattering persecutor is worse than an open one; the Antichrist accusation; and the seed of a Western doctrine of the Church’s freedom from imperial coercion. |
| Auxentius of Milan | The mid-360s confrontation under Valentinian I; the Contra Auxentium; Hilary’s failed attempt to depose the Arian bishop of Milan, expelled when the emperor backed Auxentius — a prelude to Ambrose. |
See Also
- Condemnation and Exile to Phrygia — the exile under the same Constantius
- The Return and the Council of Paris — the Gallic rally of the returned bishop
- The Nicene Legacy in Gaul — the Western Nicene cause Hilary served
- The Pre-Schism Church — the imperial Church of the fourth century
- The Nicene Creed — the faith Constantius sought to overturn
References
- Hilary of Poitiers. Against Constantius (Contra Constantium), To Constantius (Ad Constantium I–II), and Against Auxentius (Contra Auxentium). Trans. E. W. Watson et al., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 9. New York: Christian Literature Company, 1899.
- Hilary of Poitiers. Contre Constance. Ed. and trans. André Rocher, Sources Chrétiennes 334. Paris: Cerf, 1987.
- Hanson, R. P. C. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988.
- Williams, Daniel H. Ambrose of Milan and the End of the Nicene-Arian Conflicts. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
- Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.