Life of Hilarion 1–27

As I set out to write the Life of blessed Hilarion, I call upon the Holy Spirit who dwelt in him, that he who bestowed his virtues on him may give me the speech to tell of them, so that the words may match the deeds. For the virtue of those who have done great things (as Crispus says) is reckoned as great as brilliant minds have been able to exalt it in words. Alexander the Great of Macedon, whom Daniel calls a ram, or a leopard, or a he-goat, when he came to the tomb of Achilles, said: "Happy are you, young man, who enjoy a great herald of your merits!", meaning Homer, of course. But I have to tell the conduct and life of so great and such a man that even Homer, if he were here, would either envy the subject or be overwhelmed by it. For although holy Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, who spent much time with Hilarion, wrote his praise in a short letter that is widely read, it is one thing to praise a dead man in commonplaces and another to tell the dead man's own virtues. So we too, taking up the work he began, more as a favour to him than as a wrong, despise the voices of the slanderers: who once disparaged my Paul and now will perhaps disparage Hilarion too, having slandered the one for his solitude and reproaching the other for the crowds around him, so that he who always lay hidden is said not to have existed, and he who was seen by many is thought of little worth. Their forefathers the Pharisees did the same long ago, who were pleased neither by John's desert and fasting nor by the Lord and Saviour's crowds, food, and drink. But I will set my hand to the work I have resolved on, and pass the dogs of Scylla with stopped ears.

Hilarion was born in the village of Thabatha, which lies about five miles south of Gaza, a city of Palestine. Since his parents were devoted to idols, he blossomed, as they say, like a rose from thorns. They sent him to Alexandria and put him in the care of a grammarian; there, as far as his age allowed, he gave great proofs of ability and character; in a short time he was dear to all and skilled in the art of speaking. And what is greater than all this, believing in the Lord Jesus, he took no delight in the madness of the circus, the blood of the arena, or the indulgence of the theatre; his whole desire was in the assembly of the church.

Hearing then the famous name of Antony, which was spread among all the peoples of Egypt, he was fired with eagerness to see him and went to the desert. As soon as he saw him, he changed his former dress and stayed beside him about two months, observing the order of his life and the gravity of his conduct: how constant he was in prayer, how humble in receiving the brothers, how severe in rebuking them, how eager in exhorting them, and how no illness ever broke his continence and the hardness of his diet. But no longer able to bear the crowds of those who flocked to him for various afflictions or attacks of demons, and thinking it unfitting to put up with the populations of cities in the desert, and that he ought rather to begin as Antony had begun (Antony, as a brave man, was receiving the rewards of victory; he himself had not yet begun to serve as a soldier), he returned with some monks to his homeland. His parents being now dead, he gave part of his property to his brothers and part to the poor, keeping nothing at all for himself, fearing the example, or rather the punishment, of Ananias and Sapphira in the Acts of the Apostles, and above all remembering the Lord's words: "Whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple." He was then fifteen years old. So, naked and armed in Christ, he entered the wilderness which lies to the left, seven miles from Majuma, the port of Gaza, as one goes along the coast towards Egypt. And though the region was bloody with robberies, and his relatives and friends warned him of the danger hanging over him, he despised death so as to escape death.

All marvelled at his spirit, marvelled at his age, except that a certain flame of the heart and sparks of faith shone in his eyes. His cheeks were smooth, his body delicate and thin, unable to bear any hardship, so that it could be distressed by slight cold or heat. So, with his limbs covered only by sackcloth, and having a leather jacket which blessed Antony had given him when he left, and a peasant's cloak, he enjoyed the vast and terrible wilderness between the sea and the marsh, eating only fifteen dried figs after sunset. And since the region was notorious for robberies, he was never accustomed to stay in the same place. What was the devil to do? Where was he to turn? He who had boasted before, saying, "I will ascend into heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven, and I will be like the Most High", saw himself conquered by a boy, and trampled by him before he was old enough to sin.

So he tickled his senses and suggested to his growing body the usual fires of pleasure. The young recruit of Christ was forced to think of what he did not know, and to turn over in his mind the show of a thing of which he had no experience. Angry with himself, then, and beating his breast with his fists (as if he could drive out thoughts by the blows of his hand), he said: "I will see to it, little donkey, that you do not kick; I will not feed you on barley but on chaff. I will wear you out with hunger and thirst; I will load you with heavy burdens; I will drive you through heat and cold, so that you think of food rather than wantonness." So he sustained his failing spirit with the juice of herbs and a few dried figs every three or four days, praying often and singing psalms and digging the ground with a hoe, so that the labour of work might double the labour of fasting. At the same time, weaving baskets of rushes, he imitated the discipline of the Egyptian monks and the saying of the Apostle: "Whoever does not work, let him not eat." So he grew thin, his body so wasted that it scarcely clung to his bones.

One night he began to hear the wailing of infants, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cattle, something like the lamenting of women, the roaring of lions, the noise of an army, and again monstrous voices of every kind, so that he might be frightened by the sound and give way before he saw anything. He understood that these were the mockeries of demons; and falling on his knees he marked the cross of Christ on his forehead; armed with this, he fought more bravely lying down, in a way wishing to see those whom he shuddered to hear, and looking anxiously this way and that. Meanwhile, suddenly, in the bright moonlight, he sees a chariot with fiery horses rushing upon him; and when he had called on Jesus, the whole show was swallowed before his eyes by a sudden opening of the earth. Then he said: "Horse and rider he has thrown into the sea", and: "Some in chariots and some in horses, but we will be magnified in the name of God."

His temptations were many, and the snares of demons by day and night were various; if I wished to tell them all, I should exceed the bounds of this book. How often naked women appeared to him as he lay down, how often the most lavish feasts when he was hungry! Sometimes, while he prayed, a howling wolf and a yelping fox leapt over him, and as he sang psalms a fight of gladiators offered him a spectacle; and one, as if killed, fell at his feet and begged for burial.

Once he was praying with his head bowed to the ground, and, as human nature goes, his mind, drawn away from prayer, was thinking of something else: a driver leapt onto his back, kicking his sides with his heels and lashing his neck with a whip, and said: "Come on! Why are you dozing?" And laughing from above, he asked whether, if he was worn out, he would like some barley.

So from his sixteenth to his twentieth year he kept off the heat and the rains with a small hut which he had woven from rushes and sedge. Afterwards he built a small cell, which remains to this day, five feet high, that is, lower than his own height, and a little longer than his small body required, so that you would think it a tomb rather than a house.

He cut his hair once a year, on Easter Day. He lay on the bare ground and a rush mat until his death. The sackcloth he had once put on he never washed, saying that it was superfluous to look for cleanliness in a hair shirt. Nor did he change to another tunic until the first was completely torn. He knew the holy Scriptures by heart, and after prayers and psalms he would recite them as if God were present. And since it would take long to tell his ascent piecemeal through different periods, I will set it briefly before the reader's eyes, laying out his manner of life all together, and then return to the order of the narrative.

From his twenty-first year to his twenty-seventh, for three years he ate half a pint of lentils soaked in cold water, and for another three dry bread with salt and water. Then from his twenty-seventh year to his thirtieth he lived on wild herbs and the raw roots of certain shrubs. From his thirty-first to his thirty-fifth he took as food six ounces of barley bread and lightly cooked vegetables without oil. But feeling his eyes grow dim and his whole body shrivel with an eruption and a kind of pumice-like scurf, he added oil to his former diet, and ran this course of continence until the sixty-third year of his life, tasting nothing more, whether fruit or pulse or anything else. Then, when he saw that he was worn out in body and thought that death was close at hand, from his sixty-fourth year to his eightieth he abstained from bread, with incredible fervour of mind, so that at the time when others usually live more slackly he came as if new to the service of the Lord. A little broth was made for him of meal and chopped vegetables, food and drink together scarcely weighing five ounces; and so completing the course of his life, he never broke his fast before sunset, not on feast days nor in the most serious illness. But now it is time to return to the order of events.

While he was still living in his hut at eighteen years of age, robbers came to him by night, either thinking he had something they could take, or considering it an insult to themselves if a solitary boy did not dread their attacks. So, running about between the sea and the marsh from evening till sunrise, they could never find the place where he lay. Then, having found the boy in broad daylight, they said, as if in jest: "What would you do if robbers came to you?" He answered them: "A naked man does not fear robbers." And they said: "But surely you can be killed." "I can," he said, "I can; and that is why I do not fear robbers, because I am ready to die." Then, marvelling at his constancy and faith, they confessed their wandering in the night and their blinded eyes, and promised to live a better life from then on.

He had now spent twenty-two years in the wilderness, known to all only by report and spoken of throughout all the cities of Palestine, when a certain woman of Eleutheropolis, seeing herself despised by her husband because of her barrenness (for in fifteen years she had borne no fruit of marriage), was the first who dared to break in upon blessed Hilarion; and while he suspected nothing of the kind, she suddenly fell at his knees and said: "Forgive my boldness; forgive my need. Why do you turn away your eyes? Why do you flee from one who entreats you? Do not look on me as a woman but as a wretched one. This sex gave birth to the Saviour. Those who are well do not need a physician, but those who are sick." At last he stopped, and having seen a woman after so long a time, he asked the reason for her coming and her tears. When he learned it, he raised his eyes to heaven and told her to have faith; he followed her with tears as she went, and a year later he saw her with a son.

This beginning of his signs was made famous by another, greater sign. Aristaenete, the wife of Elpidius, who later became praetorian prefect, a woman very noble among her own people and more noble among Christians, was returning with her husband and three children from blessed Antony and stayed at Gaza because of the children's illness. There, whether because of the corrupt air or (as later became clear) for the glory of Hilarion the servant of God, all three were seized at once by a semi-tertian fever and given up by the physicians. The mother lay wailing, and, running as it were among the three corpses of her children, did not know which to mourn first. But learning that there was a certain monk in the nearby wilderness, she forgot a matron's state (she knew herself only as a mother) and went, accompanied by her maids and eunuchs; and her husband could scarcely persuade her to ride on a donkey. When she came to him she said: "I beg you by Jesus, our most merciful God, I adjure you by his cross and blood, to give me back my three sons; and let the name of the Lord and Saviour be glorified in a city of the pagans, and let his servant enter Gaza, and let the idol Marnas fall." When he refused, saying that he had never left his cell and was not in the habit of entering even a hamlet, let alone a city, she threw herself on the ground crying again and again: "Hilarion, servant of Christ, give me back my children! Let those whom Antony held in Egypt be saved by you in Syria." All who were present wept, and he himself wept as he refused. In short, the woman did not leave until he had promised to enter Gaza after sunset. When he came there, signing the beds and burning limbs of each, he called on Jesus. And, O wonderful power! sweat burst out from all three as if from three springs; in the same hour they took food, and recognizing their weeping mother, and blessing God, they kissed the saint's hands. When this was heard and spread far and wide, people flocked to him in rivalry from Syria and Egypt, so that many believed in Christ and professed themselves monks. For at that time there were as yet no monasteries in Palestine, nor had anyone known a monk in Syria before holy Hilarion. He was the founder and teacher of this way of life and discipline in that province. The Lord Jesus had the old man Antony in Egypt; he had the younger Hilarion in Palestine.

Facidia is a small village belonging to Rhinocorura, a city of Egypt. From this village, then, a woman who had been blind for ten years was brought to blessed Hilarion; presented to him by the brothers (for there were already many monks with him), she said that she had spent all her substance on physicians. He answered her: "If you had given to the poor what you lost on physicians, Jesus the true physician would have healed you." But when she cried out and begged for mercy, he spat on her eyes, and at once the same power followed the Saviour's example.

A charioteer of Gaza, too, was struck by a demon in his chariot and became completely rigid, so that he could neither move his hand nor turn his neck. Carried in on a bed, since he could move only his tongue to make requests, he hears that he cannot be healed until he believes in Jesus and promises to give up his former profession. He believed, he promised, he was healed; and he rejoiced more over the health of his soul than of his body.

Again, a very strong young man named Marsitas, from the territory of Jerusalem, prided himself so much on his strength that he would carry fifteen measures of grain for a long time and a long way, and counted it the prize of his strength if he could beat donkeys. Seized by a most evil demon, he could not bear chains, fetters, or bolted doors without breaking them; he had bitten off the noses and ears of many, broken the feet of some and the legs of others. He had struck such terror of himself into everyone that, loaded with chains and ropes pulled in different directions, he was dragged to the monastery like a most savage bull. When the brothers saw him they were terrified (for he was of remarkable size) and told the father. He, sitting as he was, ordered him to be dragged to him and released. When he was untied, he said: "Bow your head and come." The man began to tremble and to bend his neck, not daring to look him in the face, and, laying aside all his ferocity, began to lick the feet of the seated man. So the demon that had possessed the young man, adjured and tormented, came out on the seventh day.

Nor must I pass over in silence that Orion, a leading and very rich man of the city of Aila, which overlooks the Red Sea, possessed by a legion of demons, was brought to him. His hands, neck, sides, and feet were loaded with iron, and his fierce eyes threatened savage fury. While the saint was walking with the brothers and expounding something from the Scriptures, the man broke out of the hands of those holding him, seized him from behind, and lifted him high in the air. A cry went up from all, for they feared he would crush limbs worn out by fasting. The saint, smiling, said: "Be quiet, and leave my wrestler to me." And so, reaching his hand back over his shoulders, he touched his head, took hold of his hair, and brought him round in front of his feet; gripping both his hands opposite him and treading on both his feet with his own, he said again and again: "Be tormented, crowd of demons, be tormented!" And as the man howled and, his neck bent back, touched the ground with the top of his head, he said: "Lord Jesus, release the wretch, release the captive. It is yours to conquer many as well as one." I tell an unheard-of thing: from one man's mouth different voices were heard, like the confused shouting of a crowd. So this man too was healed, and not long afterwards he came to the monastery with his wife and children, bringing very many gifts as if to return thanks. The saint said to him: "Have you not read what Gehazi and what Simon suffered, the one of whom took a price and the other offered it, the one to sell the grace of the Holy Spirit, the other to buy it?" When Orion said with tears, "Take it and give it to the poor", he answered: "You can distribute your own goods better, since you go about the cities and know the poor. I who have left my own, why should I seek another's? For many the name of the poor is an occasion for avarice; but mercy has no craft. No one gives better than he who keeps nothing for himself." And to the man, saddened and lying on the ground, he said: "Do not be sad, my son; what I do for myself I do for you too. For if I accept these things, I shall both offend God and the legion will return to you."

Who could pass over in silence that Gazanus, a man of Majuma, cutting stones for building from the seashore not far from his monastery, was completely undone by paralysis, and, carried to the saint by his fellow workers, at once went back to work healthy? For the shore that stretches along Palestine and Egypt, soft by nature, is roughened by sand hardening into rock; and the gravel, gradually cohering, loses its feel though it does not lose its look.

Again, Italicus, a Christian citizen of the same town, kept circus horses to race against a duumvir of Gaza who was devoted to the idol Marnas. This custom had been kept in Roman cities from the time of Romulus: in memory of the successful rape of the Sabine women, four-horse chariots run seven laps in honour of Consus, as the god of counsels, and victory lies in breaking down the horses of the opposing party. This man, since his rival had a sorcerer who by certain demonic incantations would both hinder his horses and spur on the other's to the race, came to blessed Hilarion and begged not so much that his opponent be harmed as that he himself be protected. It seemed foolish to the venerable old man to waste prayer on trifles of this kind. When he smiled and said, "Why do you not rather give the price of the horses to the poor for the salvation of your soul?", the man answered that it was a public duty, that he did not so much wish it as was compelled to do it, that a Christian could not use magic arts, but would rather seek help from a servant of Christ, especially against the people of Gaza, adversaries of God, who were insulting not so much him as the church of Christ. So, asked by the brothers who were present, he ordered the earthenware cup from which he usually drank to be filled with water and given to him. Italicus took it and sprinkled the stable, the horses, his charioteers, the chariot, and the bars of the starting gates. The crowd's expectation was extraordinary: for his opponent had mocked this very thing and made it widely known, and Italicus's supporters were exulting, promising themselves certain victory. So, the signal given, these fly forward, those are held back. Under these men's chariot the wheels glow; the others can scarcely see the backs of those flying past them. The shouting of the crowd is enormous, so that the pagans themselves cried out together: "Marnas has been conquered by Christ." Then his furious opponents demanded Hilarion, the Christian sorcerer, for punishment. That undoubted victory, therefore, and many races afterwards, became an occasion of faith for a great many.

In the same town, the port of Gaza, a young man of the neighbourhood was madly in love with a virgin of God. When he had made no progress by frequent touches, jokes, nods, whistles, and other such things which are usually the beginnings of a virginity about to die, he went to Memphis, to confess his wound and return armed with magic arts against the virgin. So after a year, taught by the priests of Asclepius, who does not heal souls but destroys them, he came, eager for the debauchery he had already planned in his mind, and buried under the threshold of the girl's house certain monstrous words and monstrous figures engraved on a plate of Cyprian copper. At once the virgin went mad, threw off her head covering, whirled her hair, gnashed her teeth, and called aloud the young man's name. The greatness of the love had turned into madness. So she was brought by her parents to the monastery and handed over to the old man; and at once the demon howled and confessed: "I suffered violence, I was brought here against my will: how well I used to deceive men at Memphis with dreams! O crosses! O the torments I suffer! You force me to come out, and I am held bound under the threshold. I will not come out unless the young man who holds me lets me go." Then the old man said: "Great is your strength, you who are held tied by a thread and a plate! Say, why did you dare to enter a girl of God?" "To keep her a virgin," he said. "You keep her, you betrayer of chastity? Why did you not rather enter the man who sent you?" "Why should I enter him," he answered, "when he had my colleague, the demon of love?" The saint would not, before he had cleansed the virgin, have either the young man or the signs searched for, lest the demon should seem to have departed because the spells were undone, or he himself to have given credit to his word; he declared that demons are deceitful and clever at pretending. And when her health had been restored he rather rebuked the virgin for having done things through which the demon could have entered.

His fame had spread not only in Palestine and the neighbouring cities of Egypt and Syria but also in distant provinces. For a candidate of the emperor Constantius, with red hair and a fair complexion that showed his province (for his people, lying between the Saxons and the Alamanni, not so much extensive as powerful, is called Germany by the historians and now Francia), possessed of old, that is, from infancy, by a demon that forced him to howl, groan, and gnash his teeth at night, secretly asked the emperor for a travel warrant, telling him the reason plainly. And having received letters also to the consular governor of Palestine, he was escorted to Gaza with great honour and retinue. When he asked the councillors of that place where Hilarion the monk lived, the people of Gaza were greatly frightened, and thinking he had been sent by the emperor, they brought him to the monastery, both to show honour to one so recommended and so that, if any offence remained in him for their past wrongs against Hilarion, it might be wiped out by this new service. The old man was then walking on the soft sand murmuring something to himself from the Psalms; seeing so great a crowd coming, he stopped. Having returned the greetings of all and blessed them with his hand, after an hour he ordered the rest to go away, but the man to remain with his servants and attendants; for from his eyes and face he had recognized why he had come. At once, at the question of the servant of God, the man was lifted up so that he scarcely touched the ground with his feet, and roaring terribly he answered in Syriac, the language in which he had been questioned. You could see pure Syriac words sounding from a barbarian mouth, from one who knew only Frankish and Latin, so that not a hiss, not an aspirate, not an idiom of the Palestinian speech was lacking. He confessed, then, in what order he had entered him. And so that his interpreters, who knew only Greek and Latin, might understand, he questioned him in Greek too. When he answered likewise in the same words, and pleaded many occasions of incantations and the compulsions of magic arts, Hilarion said: "I do not care how you entered; but I command you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to come out." When he had been healed and, with rustic simplicity, offered ten pounds of gold, he received from him a barley loaf instead, hearing that those who were fed on such food counted gold as mud.

It is too little to speak of men: brute animals too, raging, were dragged to him daily. Among them was a Bactrian camel of enormous size, which had already trampled many; more than thirty men brought it in with shouting, held taut with very strong ropes. Its eyes were bloodshot, its mouth foamed, its rolling tongue was swollen, and above all the terror its huge roar resounded. The old man ordered it to be let go. At once both those who had brought it and those who were with the old man fled, to the last man. But he alone went to meet it and said in Syriac: "You do not frighten me, devil, with so great a bulk of body: in the little fox and in the camel you are one and the same." And meanwhile he stood with his hand stretched out. When the beast, raging and as if about to devour him, reached him, it at once fell down and lowered its head to the ground, while all who were present marvelled at such sudden gentleness after such ferocity. The old man taught that for the sake of men the devil seizes even beasts of burden, and burns with such hatred of men that he desires to destroy not only them but also what belongs to them. As an example of this he cited how, before he was allowed to tempt blessed Job, he destroyed all his substance. Nor should it trouble anyone that by the Lord's command two thousand pigs were killed by demons; for those who had seen it could not otherwise have believed that so great a multitude of demons had gone out of the man, unless a great number of pigs had fallen down together, as if driven by many.

Time will fail me if I wish to tell all the signs that were done by him. For he had been raised by the Lord to such glory that blessed Antony too, hearing of his way of life, wrote to him and gladly received his letters; and if ever sick people went to him from the regions of Syria, he would say to them: "Why did you want to trouble yourselves to come so far, when you have my son Hilarion there?" So, following his example, innumerable monasteries began to exist throughout Palestine, and all the monks ran to him in rivalry. Seeing this, he praised the grace of the Lord and exhorted each to the progress of the soul, saying that the form of this world passes away, and that the true life is the one bought with the hardship of the present life.

Wishing to give them an example both of humility and of duty, on fixed days before the vintage he went round the cells of the monks. When the brothers learned this, all flocked to him, and, accompanied by such a leader, they went round the monasteries, carrying their own provisions, for at times as many as two thousand men gathered. But as time went on, every village gladly offered food to the neighbouring monks for the reception of the saints. How great his care was to pass by no brother, however humble, however poor, this shows: going into the desert of Kadesh to visit one of his disciples, he arrived with a countless column of monks at Elusa, on the very day when an annual festival had gathered the whole population of the town into the temple of Venus. They worship her for the sake of Lucifer, to whose cult the Saracen nation is devoted. The town itself, too, is largely half-barbarian because of its situation. So, hearing that holy Hilarion was passing (for he had often healed many Saracens seized by demons), they went out to meet him in crowds with their wives and children, bowing their necks and crying out in Syriac "Barech", that is, "Bless". Receiving them kindly and humbly, he begged them to worship God rather than stones, and at the same time wept abundantly, looking up to heaven and promising that if they believed in Christ he would come to them often. Wonderful grace of the Lord! They would not let him leave until he had marked out the line of a future church, and their priest, garlanded as he was, had been signed with the sign of Christ.

Another year, too, when he was about to set out to visit the monasteries and was setting down on a sheet with whom he should stay and whom he should visit in passing, the monks, knowing that one of the brothers was rather stingy, and wishing at the same time to cure his fault, asked him to stay with him. He said: "Why do you want to do injury to yourselves and annoyance to the brother?" When that stingy brother heard of this, he blushed; and with everyone pressing him, they scarcely obtained from Hilarion against his will that he should put this monastery too among his stopping places. So on the tenth day they came to him; but guards had already been placed in the vineyard, by which they were to come, to frighten them off as they approached with stones, clods thrown, and the whirling sling; and in the morning they all set out without eating a grape, the old man laughing and pretending not to know what had happened.

Then they were received by another monk, named Sabas (for we ought to keep silent the name of the stingy one and tell that of the generous one); since it was the Lord's Day, he invited them all into his vineyard, to relieve the toil of the journey by eating grapes before the hour of the meal. But the saint said: "Cursed is he who seeks the refreshment of the body before that of the soul. Let us pray, let us sing psalms, let us render our service to the Lord, and so you will hurry to the vineyard." When the service was over, standing on a height he blessed the vineyard and let his sheep go to feed. Those who ate were no fewer than three thousand. And though the vineyard, still untouched, had been estimated at a hundred flagons, twenty days later it produced three hundred. But that stingy brother, gathering much less than usual, lamented too late that even what he had had turned to vinegar. The old man had foretold this to many brothers beforehand. He particularly detested monks who, from a kind of unbelief, kept their goods in reserve for the future and took care of either expenses or clothing or any of the things that pass away with the world.