St Hilarion the Great

Arian bishop of Jerusalem. (Hitartivs (4).]

(1), a hermit of Palestine in the 4th century (died 371), Jerome wrote his life in 390, quoting Epiphanius, who was Hilarion's disciple. Jerome certainly considered his Lives of the Hermits as historical ( Vit. Malchi,i.); but the marvels of the Life of Hilarion have induced some to believe {t to be a mere romance (Israel in Hilgenfeld's Zeitschrift for 1880, p. 128, but see Zéckler's Jerome, 179). No attempt is made in this article to separate fact from fiction. The Life of Hilarion in any case shews the ideal on which monasticism was nourished in the 4th century.

Hilarion was born at Thabatha, five miles south of Gaza, about the year 300. His parents were heathen, and they sent him for his education to Alexandria. There he shewed great talents, and proficiency in rhetoric, which at that time comprehended nearly the whole of a liberal education. He was also of a disposition which made him beloved by all. He became a Christian, and, turning from the frivolous pleasures of the circus and the theatre, he spent all his leisure in frequenting the assemblies of the church, Hearing of the monastic retreat of Antony, he became his disciple for a time; but he found that the multitude of people who resorted to the celebrated father of monasticism made life with him a city life rather than one of