| Honorific Prefix: | Saint |
| Hilarion | |
| Birth Date: | AD 291 |
| Death Date: | AD 371 |
| Feast Day: | October 21 |
| Venerated In: | Oriental Orthodox Church Eastern Orthodox Church Roman Catholic Church |
| Birth Place: | Thabatha, south of Gaza in Syria Palaestina, Roman Empire |
| Death Place: | Province of Cyprus, Roman Empire |
| Titles: | Abbot |
| Canonized Date: | Pre-congregation |
Hilarion the Great (291–371) was an anchorite who spent most of his life in the desert according to the example of Anthony the Great (c. 251–356). While Anthony is considered to have established Christian monasticism in the Egyptian Desert, Hilarion is considered by some to be the founder of Palestinian monasticism[1] (see also Chariton the Confessor) and venerated as a saint by the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church.
The chief source of information regarding Hilarion is the biography written by Jerome.[2] "The life of Hilarion was written by Jerome in 390 at Bethlehem. Its object was to further the ascetic life to which he was devoted. It contains, amidst much that is legendary, some statements which attach it to genuine history, and is in any case a record of the state of the human mind in the 4th century."[3]
Hilarion was born in Thabatha, south of Gaza in Syria Palaestina of pagan parents. He successfully studied rhetoric with a grammarian in Alexandria. It seems that he was converted to Christianity in Alexandria. After that, he shunned the pleasures of his day—theatre, circus and arena—and spent his time attending church. According to Jerome, he was a thin and delicate youth of fragile health.
After hearing of Anthony, whose name, according to Jerome, "was in the mouth of all the races of Egypt", Hilarion, at the age of fifteen, went to live with him in the desert for two months.[4] As Anthony's hermitage in the Nitrian Desert was busy with visitors seeking cures for diseases or demonic affliction, Hilarion returned home along with some monks. At Thabatha, his parents having died in the meantime, he gave his inheritance to his brothers and the poor and left for the wilderness.[2]
Hilarion went to the area southwest of Maiuma, the port of Gaza, that was limited by the sea at one side and marshland on the other. Because the district was notorious for brigandage, and his relatives and friends warned him of the danger he was incurring, it was his practice never to abide long in the same place.[3] With him he took only a shirt of coarse linen, a cloak of skins given to him by Anthony, and a coarse blanket. He led a nomadic life, and he fasted rigorously, not partaking of his frugal meal until after sunset. He supported himself by weaving baskets.[2]
Hilarion lived a life of hardship and simplicity in the desert, where he also experienced spiritual dryness that included temptations to despair.[5] He was "so wasted that his bones scarcely held together" (Jerome). According to Jerome:
He finally built a hut of reeds and sedges at the site of modern-day Deir al-Balah, in which he lived for four years. Afterwards, he constructed a tiny low-ceilinged cell, "a tomb rather than a house",[3] where he slept on a bed of rushes, and recited the Bible or sang hymns. He never washed his clothes, changed them only when they fell apart, and shaved his hair only once a year. He was once visited by robbers, but they left him alone when they learned that he did not fear death (and had nothing worth stealing, anyway).
Jerome described Hilarion's diet as a half a pint of lentils moistened with cold water, and after three years he switched to dry bread with salt and water. Eventually, perceiving his sight to grow dim and his body to be subject to an itching with an unnatural roughness, he added a little oil to this diet.[6]
After Hilarion had lived in the wilderness for 22 years, he became quite famous in Syria Palaestina. Visitors started to come, begging for his help. Miracles were attributed to him.[5] His first miracle was when he cured a woman from Eleutheropolis (a Roman city in Syria Palaestina) who had been barren for 15 years. Later, he cured three children of a fatal illness, healed a paralysed charioteer, and expelled demons.[7]
By 340 a monastery had grown around his cell. The parade of petitioners and would-be disciples drove Hilarion to retire to more remote locations, but they followed him everywhere. First he visited Anthony's retreat in Egypt before withdrawing to Sicily, later to Dalmatia, and finally to Cyprus.
Hilarion died at Cyprus in 371[7] and was first buried there, but his disciple Hesychas stole the body and buried it in the monastery.[8] His relics continued to be venerated and are also mentioned by the anonymous Piacenza Pilgrim around the year 570.[9]
Hilarion is the patron saint of Caulonia under the name Sant'Ilario.[10] In iconography, is depicted as an old man with a brown, rush-like beard divided into three points.[4]
Hermann Hesse adapted a biography of Hilarion as one of the three Lives of Joseph Knecht, making up his Nobel Prize–winning novel The Glass Bead Game (also known as Magister Ludi).