Saint Hilary of Poitiers

Hilary was born at Poitiers, probably about 310, into a wealthy family, and received a solid literary education. He does not seem to have grown up a Christian. In his writings he describes a long search for the truth that led him, through the reading of Scripture, to the faith, and he was baptized about 345.

About 353 or 354 he was chosen bishop of Poitiers. In the years that followed he wrote a commentary on the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the oldest that survives in Latin. He resisted the bishops who favored Arianism, and in 356, at the Synod of Béziers, which he called the “synod of false apostles,” they refused to hear his defense of the faith and asked the Emperor Constantius to send him away. In the summer of that year he was exiled to Phrygia, in present-day Turkey.

In exile he began his best-known work, On the Trinity, and wrote the Book of the Synods. In On the Trinity he wrote, in a passage Pope Benedict XVI quoted on October 10, 2007, “God knows not how to be anything other than love, he knows not how to be anyone other than the Father.” He came back to Poitiers in 360 or 361. His last great work was the Treatises on the Psalms, a commentary on fifty-eight psalms.

Hilary was the teacher of Saint Martin. According to Sulpicius Severus, Martin joined him at Poitiers, and the bishop wished to ordain him deacon; out of humility Martin accepted only the order of exorcist. After Hilary’s return, Martin settled at Ligugé, on land near Poitiers that Hilary gave him, and founded a monastery there in 361. Hilary died at Poitiers in 367; some sources give 368.

Tradition says Hilary had a chapel built outside the walls of Poitiers, dedicated to Saints John and Paul, and that he was buried there; it was later enlarged into a pilgrimage church. The present church of Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand was consecrated on November 1, 1049, and from the twelfth century it was a stop for pilgrims on the way to Compostela; since 1998 it has been one of the sites of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France on the UNESCO World Heritage List. During the invasions of the eighth and ninth centuries the canons took relics of Hilary to Le Puy-en-Velay. In 1562 the Huguenots sacked the church and scattered his remains, and the chapter later asked Le Puy for a relic. His relics now lie in a small crypt behind the altar, on the spot of his tomb, in a reliquary made for the canons in 1658, housed since 1892 in a large bronze shrine paid for by the faithful. On October 3, 2024, a fire, which investigators treated as deliberate, damaged the interior of the church and several statues.

Pope Pius IX proclaimed Hilary a Doctor of the Church in 1851. His memorial is kept on January 13 in the General Roman Calendar, and Poitiers also keeps a summer feast of Saint Hilary on June 26.

Hilary is shown as a bishop. At Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand the eleventh-century paintings on the pillars of the nave show the bishops of Poitiers, and scenes of the Apocalypse were uncovered and restored there in the late 1980s. A capital at the junction of the nave and the north transept probably shows his death, with angels carrying his soul to the hand of God. Three seventeenth-century stone statues of the Virgin, Hilary and Radegund, which once stood on the city gate called La Tranchée, were moved into the church, and the high altar of 1884 shows Christ blessing between Hilary, Martin and Radegund.

• Poitiers, Saint-Hilaire-le-GrandThe Romanesque church built over his tomb, with his relics in the crypt behind the altar; it was damaged by fire in October 2024, so check that it is open before a visit.
• LigugéThe Benedictine abbey of Saint-Martin, on the land near Poitiers that Hilary gave Saint Martin, who founded his monastery there in 361.