HILARION, SAINT: Palestinian hermit; b. at Tabatha (5 Roman m. s. of Gaza) 291; d. in the island of Cyprus 371. He received his first instruction at Alexandria, where he became a Christian. Hearing of St. Anthony and his hermit life, he lived two months with him. He then returned home, and, at the age of fifteen, began the life of a solitary in a little but in the vicinity of Majuma, the port of Gaza. Like the Egyptian hermits, he wove baskets of rushes to earn his subsistence. At the same time he observed the strictest discipline of fasting. He was visited by frequent apparitions of demons, but soon obtained the gift of healing demoniacs and other patients. He became especially known by curing the sons of an aristocratic lady, Aristtenete, and this gave occasion, in 329, to the founding of a colony of hermits about him. He is supposed to have maintained a correspondence with St. Anthony, and visited the sacred localities in Jerusalem (Jerome, Epist., lviii., ad Paulinum). Jerome has much to say of the conversions to Christianity wrought by Hilarion, as when he is reported to have won over the Saracens of Elusa in the desert of Kades.

Owing to predictions of impending times of dis tress-the persecutions of the Christians under Julian-Hilarion left Palestine never to return. By way of Lychnos he reached Castrum Theubatum (Thaubastum), where he visited Dracontius, exiled by the Emperor Constantius on account of his or thodoxy. His pilgrimage then led him to the Nile city Aphroditopolis and to Mount St. Anthony, from which he went to the Alexandrian suburb Bruchium. At the port town of Paraitonion, in the Egyptian Marmarica, he met his Palestinian disciple Hadrian, who, apparently, came to con duct him back to Palestine; but he refused to go. Hilarion next reached Sicily, and lived as a hermit in the vicinity of the promontory Pachynum. Here, in a wonderful manner, he was discovered by his pupil Hesychius. But he soon left Sicily, be cause here, as elsewhere, a crowd of disciples gath ered about him, so that he could not live the soli tary life. He betook himself to Epidaurus in Dalmatia. The last years of his life were spent in Cyprus, first in the vicinity of Paphos, afterward at a lonely, place in the interior, called Carbyria by Sozomen. To his sojourn in Cyprus belongs the period of his converse with Epiphanius. Shortly before his death he made over to his favorite pupil, Hesychius, his only belongings-his tunic, cowl, and cloak. He was buried in the neighborhood of Paphos, but Hesychius stole his corpse, and, greatly to the grief of the Cypriots, conveyed it to Majuma. Hilarion is accredited with the distinction of having been among the first to transplant the hermit life to Palestine, though he was not the only Pales tinian hermit in the first half of the fourth century. His activity, however, was confined exclusively to southern Palestine; and, even here, he merely naturalized the hermit life in its oldest Egyptian form, without undertakingthe slightest . modification or development.

G. Grützmacher.

Bibliography: Documentary sources for the life of Hilarion are a biography by Jerome (Opera, ed. Valarsi, ii. 13 sqq.; in MPL, xxiii. 29 sqq., and ASB, Oct., ix. 16-59, Eng. transl., NPNF, 2d ser., vi (303-314), compiled about 390 and notices by Sozomen (Hist. eccl., iii. 14; v. 10). A brief letter of eulogy written by Epiphanius of Salamis not long after the saint's death has been lost, although Jerome used it for his Vita. Jerome is the main source. He greatly exaggerated his saint's importance in order to glorify Palestinian monasticism, to which he himself belonged. Hence, in spite of a historical nucleus, it is often hard to decide what are the facts. Consult w. Israel, Die Vita ,S. Hilarionis des Hieronvmua ale Quelle far die Anfange des Mbnchthums kritiwh untersucht, in ZIPT, xxiii (1880), pp. 129 sqq; O. Zöckler, in New Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie, iii (1894), pp. 147 sqq.; L. Servibres, Hist. de S. Hilarion, Rodez, 1884; Ceillier, Auteurs sacrés, vi. 376, vii. 593-594, 690; Neander, Christian Church, ii. 142, 271, 378, iii. 420; KL, v. 2039-42; DCB, iii. 52-54.