Life of Hilarion 28–47

Finally, one of the brothers living about five miles from him he had driven out of his sight, because he found him too careful and anxious a keeper of his little garden and possessed of a little money. Wishing to be reconciled to the old man, he often came to the brothers, and especially to Hesychius, in whom the old man took very great delight. So one day he brought a bundle of green chickpeas, just as they were in the plant. When Hesychius had put it on the table for the evening, the old man cried out that he could not bear its stench, and at the same time asked where it was from. When Hesychius replied that a certain brother had brought the first fruits of his little field to the brothers, he said: "Do you not smell the foulest stench, and avarice stinking in the chickpeas? Send them to the oxen, send them to the brute beasts, and see whether they eat them." When he had put them in the manger as he was told, the oxen, terrified and lowing more than usual, broke their tethers and fled in different directions. For the old man had this grace, that from the smell of bodies and clothing, and of the things a person had touched, he knew to which demon or to which vice he was subject.

So in the sixty-third year of his life, seeing a great monastery and the multitude of brothers living with him, and the crowds of those who brought to him people seized with various sicknesses and unclean spirits, so that the wilderness all around was filled with every kind of person, he wept daily and remembered his former way of life with incredible longing. Asked by the brothers what was wrong, why he was wearing himself out, he said: "I have gone back again to the world and have received my reward in my lifetime. See, the people of Palestine and of the neighbouring province think I am of some importance; and I, under the pretext of the monastery and for the management of the brothers, have cheap furniture." But he was guarded by the brothers, especially by Hesychius, who was devoted with wonderful love to the veneration of the old man. When he had lived mourning like this for two years, that Aristaenete whom we mentioned above, then a prefect's wife but having nothing of a prefect's pomp, came to him, intending also to go on to Antony. He said to her in tears: "I should like to go too, if I were not held shut up in the prison of this monastery, and if there were any fruit in going. For today it is two days since the whole world was bereaved of such a father." She believed him and stayed. And a few days later, when a messenger came, she heard of Antony's falling asleep.

Let others marvel at the signs he did; let them marvel at his incredible abstinence, knowledge, and humility. Nothing astonishes me so much as that he was able to trample on glory and honour. Bishops, presbyters, flocks of clergy and monks, of Christian matrons too (a great temptation), and from every side the common people from cities and fields, and powerful men too and judges, flocked to receive from him blessed bread or oil. But he thought of nothing but solitude, so much so that one day he decided to leave, and, a donkey having been brought (for, too worn out by fasting, he could scarcely walk), he tried to set off on the journey. When this became known, and it was as if devastation and a public mourning had been proclaimed for Palestine, more than ten thousand people of different ages and both sexes gathered to keep him back. Unmoved by their prayers, and striking the sand with his staff, he said: "I will not make my Lord a liar; I cannot see churches overthrown, the altars of Christ trampled, the blood of my sons." All who were present understood that something secret had been revealed to him which he did not want to disclose; and they nonetheless guarded him so that he should not leave. So he resolved, calling all to witness aloud, that he would take no food or drink unless he were let go. And after seven days, released at last from his fast, he said farewell to very many and, with a countless column following him, came to Betilium; there, having persuaded the crowds to go back, he chose forty monks who had provisions for the journey and could walk while fasting, that is, eating only after sunset. Having visited the brothers who were in the nearby desert and lived at the place called Lychnos, three days later he went on to the fort of Theubatum to see Dracontius, bishop and confessor, who was in exile there. Having comforted him incredibly by the presence of so great a man, after another three days he reached Babylon with great toil to visit Philo, also a bishop and confessor. For the emperor Constantius, favouring the heresy of the Arians, had deported both to those places. Leaving there, three days later he came to the town of Aphroditon; there he met the deacon Baisanes (who used to hire dromedary camels and guide those going to Antony, because of the lack of water in the desert), and told the brothers that the anniversary of blessed Antony's falling asleep was at hand, and that he ought to keep a night vigil for him in the very place where he had died. So after three days through a vast and dreadful wilderness they reached at last a very high mountain, and found there two monks, Isaac and Pelusianus, of whom Isaac had been Antony's interpreter.

And since the occasion offers itself and we have come to the place, it seems fitting to describe briefly the dwelling of so great a man. A rocky, lofty mountain, about a mile in extent, sends out water at its foot; some of it the sands drink up, some, flowing lower down, gradually forms a stream, over which countless palms on both banks give the place much beauty and convenience. You could see the old man hurrying here and there with the disciples of blessed Antony. "Here," they said, "he used to sing psalms, here to pray, here to work, here to sit down when tired. These vines, these little trees he planted himself; that garden bed he laid out with his own hands. This pool for watering the little garden he made with much sweat. This hoe he used for many years to dig the ground." Hilarion lay on his bed and kissed it as if it were still warm. The cell was no more than a square of the length a man could stretch out in sleep. Besides, on the high summit of the mountain, reached as if by a spiral, with a very steep effort, two cells of the same size could be seen, in which he stayed when fleeing the crowds of visitors and the company of his disciples. These were cut into the living rock and had only doors added. When they had come to the little garden, Isaac said: "You see this orchard planted with little trees and green with vegetables? About three years ago, when a herd of wild asses was laying it waste, he ordered one of their leaders to stand still, and, beating its sides with his staff, said: 'Why do you eat what you did not sow?' And from then on, except for the water which they used to come to drink, they never touched a tree or a vegetable." The old man also asked them to show him the place of his grave. They took him aside, and whether they showed it to him or not is unknown. They said that the reason for hiding it was Antony's command, lest Pergamius, who was very rich in those parts, should carry off the saint's body to his estate and build a martyr's shrine.

So, returning to Aphroditon and keeping only two brothers with him, he stayed in the nearby desert with such abstinence and silence that he said he had only then begun to serve Christ. Now for three years the heaven had been shut and had dried up those lands, so that people commonly said that even the elements were mourning Antony's death. Hilarion's fame did not escape the inhabitants of that place either, and men and women alike, pale-faced and wasted with hunger, begged in rivalry for rain from the servant of Christ, that is, from blessed Antony's successor. Seeing them, he grieved greatly; and lifting his eyes to heaven and raising both palms on high, he at once obtained what they had asked. But behold, the thirsty and sandy region, after it had been watered by the rains, suddenly swarmed with such a multitude of snakes and venomous creatures that countless people who were bitten would have died at once had they not run to Hilarion. So all the farmers and shepherds, touching their wounds with blessed oil, recovered certain health.

Seeing that there too he was receiving extraordinary honours, he went on to Alexandria, intending to pass from there to the desert of the further Oasis. And since he had never stayed in cities from the time he became a monk, he turned aside to some brothers known to him at Bruchium, not far from Alexandria. They received the old man with wonderful joy; and when night was already near, they suddenly hear his disciples saddling the donkey and him preparing to set out. So, falling at his feet, they begged him not to do this, and, prostrate before the threshold, they protested that they would sooner die than lose so great a guest. He answered them: "I am hurrying to leave precisely so as not to cause you trouble. You will certainly learn from what follows that I did not leave suddenly without reason." So on the next day men of Gaza, with the prefect's lictors (for they had learned that he had arrived the day before), entered the monastery, and when they did not find him they said to one another: "Is not what we heard true? He is a sorcerer and knows the future." For the city of Gaza, after Hilarion had left Palestine and Julian had succeeded to the empire, had destroyed his monastery and, by petitions presented to the emperor, had obtained the death of both Hilarion and Hesychius; and orders had been written throughout the whole world that both should be sought out.

So, leaving Bruchium, he entered the Oasis through a trackless wilderness; and having spent a year or so there, since his fame had reached even there, he thought, as if he could no longer lie hidden in the East, where many knew him both by reputation and by sight, of sailing to lonely islands, so that the seas at least might hide one whom the land had made famous. About the same time his disciple Hadrian arrived from Palestine, saying that Julian had been killed and a Christian emperor had begun to reign, and that he ought to return to what remained of his monastery. On hearing this he rejected it with loathing; and hiring a camel, he crossed the vast wilderness and reached Paraetonium, a coastal city of Libya. There the unhappy Hadrian, wanting to return to Palestine and seeking his former glory under his master's name, did him many injuries. At last, having packed up what he had brought, sent to him by the brothers, he left without his knowledge. On this, since there is no other place to tell it, I will say only this, to frighten those who despise their teachers: that after a short time he rotted away with the jaundice.

So the old man, having Gazanus with him, went on board a ship sailing for Sicily. And when, having sold the book of the Gospels which he had written with his own hand as a young man, he was preparing to pay the fare, about the middle of the Adriatic the captain's son was seized by a demon and began to shout: "Hilarion, servant of God, why are we not allowed to be safe even on the sea because of you? Give me time until I reach land, so that I am not cast out here and hurled into the abyss." He answered him: "If my God allows you to stay, stay; but if he casts you out, why do you make me odious, a sinner and a beggar?" He said this so that the sailors and merchants on board should not betray him when they reached land. Not long afterwards the boy was cleansed, his father and the others present giving their word that they would say nothing about his name.

On reaching Pachynus, a promontory of Sicily, he offered the captain the Gospel book for the passage of himself and Gazanus. The captain did not want to take it, especially when he saw that apart from that book and the clothes they wore they had nothing more, and at last swore that he would not take it. But the old man, kindled by the confidence of a conscience that knew its poverty, rejoiced the more in this, both that he had nothing of this world and that he was taken for a beggar by the inhabitants of the place.

Then, reflecting that merchants coming from the East might make him known, he fled inland, that is, twenty miles from the sea; and there, in a deserted plot of land, he would bind a bundle of firewood every day and put it on his disciple's back. When it had been sold in the next village, they bought a little bread both as food for themselves and for those who happened to come to them. But truly, as it is written, "A city set on a hill cannot be hidden": a member of the imperial guard, while being tormented in the basilica of blessed Peter at Rome, cried out, the unclean spirit in him saying: "A few days ago Hilarion, the servant of Christ, entered Sicily, and no one knows him, and he thinks he is hidden; I will go and betray him." At once he took ship in the harbour with his young slaves, landed at Pachynus, and, the demon leading him, as soon as he prostrated himself before the old man's hut he was cured on the spot. This beginning of his signs in Sicily brought to him from then on an innumerable crowd of the sick, and of religious people too, so much so that one of the leading men, swollen with dropsy, was cured on the very day he came to him. When he afterwards offered him countless gifts, he heard the Saviour's saying to his disciples: "Freely you have received, freely give."

While these things were happening in Sicily, his disciple Hesychius was looking for the old man all over the world, going round the coasts, penetrating deserts, and having only this confidence, that wherever he was he could not lie hidden long. When three years had passed, he heard at Methone from a certain Jew who sold cheap wares to the people that a prophet of the Christians had appeared in Sicily, doing such miracles and signs that he was thought to be one of the ancient saints. Asking about his dress, his gait, his speech, and above all his age, he could learn nothing; for the man who reported it testified that only the fame of the man had reached him. So he entered the Adriatic and with a favourable voyage came to Pachynus; and inquiring in a small village on the curving shore about the fame of the old man, he learned from the unanimous voice of all where he was and what he was doing, everyone marvelling at nothing in him so much as that after so many signs and miracles he had not accepted even a crumb of bread from anyone in those parts. To be brief, the holy man Hesychius fell at his master's knees and wet his feet with tears; raised up by him at last, after two or three days' conversation he heard from Gazanus that the old man could no longer live in those regions, but wished to go to certain barbarian nations where his name and reputation would be unknown.

So he took him to Epidaurus, a town of Dalmatia, where, staying a few days on a small plot nearby, he could not be hidden. For a serpent of extraordinary size, of the kind they call in their native tongue boas because they are so large that they usually swallow oxen, was laying waste the whole province far and wide, and swallowing not only herds and flocks but also farmers and shepherds, drawn to itself by the force of its breath. He ordered a pyre to be prepared for it, and having sent up a prayer to Christ, called it out and commanded it to climb the pile of wood, and set fire under it. So, with all the people watching, he burned up the monstrous beast. Then, in turmoil over what to do and where to turn, he was preparing another flight; and surveying lonely lands in his mind, he grieved that while his tongue was silent about himself, his miracles spoke.

At that time, in the earthquake over the whole world which happened after Julian's death, the seas went out of their bounds, and, as if God were again threatening a flood, or everything were returning to the ancient chaos, ships were carried onto steep mountainsides and hung there. When the people of Epidaurus saw this, the roaring waves, the masses of water, and mountains of surge being driven onto the shores, fearing what they saw had already happened elsewhere, that the town would be overturned from its foundations, they went to the old man, and as if setting out for battle they placed him on the shore. When he had drawn three signs of the cross in the sand and stretched out his hands against it, it is incredible to say to what height the sea swelled and stood before him; and after roaring for a long time, as if indignant at a barrier, it gradually sank back into itself. Epidaurus and that whole region proclaim this to this day, and mothers teach it to their children to hand the memory on to posterity. Truly, what was said to the apostles, "If you believe, you will say to this mountain, Pass into the sea, and it will be done", can be fulfilled even literally, provided one has the faith of the apostles, and such faith as the Lord commanded them to have. For what difference does it make whether a mountain goes down into the sea, or immense mountains of waves suddenly grow stiff and become like rock before the old man's feet alone, while flowing gently on the other side?

The whole city marvelled, and the greatness of the sign had become known even at Salona. Understanding this, the old man fled secretly by night in a small boat, and finding a merchant ship two days later, he went on towards Cyprus. Between Malea and Cythera, pirates, having left on the shore their fleet (which is steered not by a yard but by a pole), met them with two fair-sized light galleys, and waves came at them from both sides; all the rowers on board began to tremble, weep, run about, and get poles ready, and, as if one messenger were not enough, they vied in telling the old man about the pirates. He, looking at them from a distance, smiled; and turning to his disciples he said: "O you of little faith, why are you afraid? Are these more than Pharaoh's army? Yet all were drowned, God so willing." He was saying this, and nonetheless the enemy keels with foaming beaks were bearing down, only a stone's throw away. So he stood at the prow of the ship and, stretching out his hand against them as they came, said: "Let it be enough to have come this far." O wonderful reliability of things! At once the little ships sprang back, and, though their oars were driving against it, their course ran back towards the stern. The pirates marvelled that they were going backwards against their will, and, straining with the whole effort of their bodies to reach the ship, they were carried to the shore much faster than they had come.

I pass over the rest, lest I seem to lengthen the book in telling of signs. I will say only this: sailing with a favourable voyage among the Cyclades, he heard on every side the voices of unclean spirits crying out from the cities and villages and running together to the shores. So he came to Paphos, a city of Cyprus famous in the songs of the poets, which, having often fallen in earthquakes, now shows only by the traces of its ruins what it once was; and he lived unknown two miles from the city, glad that he might live quietly for a few days. But not quite twenty days had passed when throughout that whole island all who had unclean spirits began to cry out that Hilarion, the servant of Christ, had come, and that they must hurry to him. Salamis, Curium, Lapethus, and the other cities cried this out, most declaring that they knew Hilarion indeed and that he was truly the servant of God, but did not know where he was. So within thirty days, and not many more, about two hundred people, both men and women, gathered to him. When he saw them, grieved that they would not let him rest, and as it were raging in revenge for himself, he scourged them with such persistence in prayer that some were cured at once, others after two or three days, and all within a single week.

Staying there two years, and always thinking of flight, he sent Hesychius to Palestine to greet the brothers and see the ashes of his monastery, to return to him in the spring. When he returned, and Hilarion wished to sail again to Egypt, that is, to the places called Bucolia, because there were no Christians there but only a barbarous and savage people, he persuaded him rather to withdraw to a more secret place in the island itself. When after long searching everywhere he had found it, he brought him twelve miles from the sea among secret and rugged mountains, to a place one could scarcely climb up to by crawling on hands and knees. On entering, he saw that it was a very terrible and remote place, surrounded on all sides by trees, having also waters flowing down from the brow of a hill, a very pleasant little garden, and many fruit trees, whose fruit he never ate; and also, nearby, the ruin of a very ancient temple, from which (as he himself used to relate and his disciples testify) the voices of such innumerable demons resounded night and day that you would have thought it an army. He was much delighted with this, since he would have his adversaries close at hand, and he lived there five years; Hesychius often visited him, and in this last period of his life he was refreshed by the fact that, because of the roughness and difficulty of the place and the multitude of ghosts (as was commonly said), no one, or very few, could or dared climb up to him. One day, however, going out into the little garden, he saw a man lying before the door, paralysed in his whole body. He asked Hesychius who he was and how he had been brought. He answered that he had been the steward of the small estate to which the little garden where they were also belonged. Then, weeping, and stretching out his hand to the man lying there, he said: "I say to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, rise and walk." Wonderful speed! The words were still rolling in the speaker's mouth, and already the limbs, made firm for standing, were raising the man up. When this was heard, the need of very many overcame even the difficulty of the place and the trackless way. All the villages round about watched for nothing so much as that he should not somehow slip away; for the rumour had spread about him that he could not stay long in the same place. He did this not from some fickleness or childish feeling, but fleeing honour and importunity; for he always longed for silence and an obscure life.

So in the eightieth year of his age, while Hesychius was away, he wrote with his own hand a short letter as a kind of will, leaving him all his riches (that is, the Gospel book, a sackcloth tunic, a hood, and a little cloak); for his attendant had died a few days before. Many devout men came from Paphos to him in his sickness, especially because they had heard that he had said he was now about to depart to the Lord and be freed from the chains of the body; and also a certain holy woman, Constantia, whose son-in-law and daughter he had saved from death by anointing with oil. He adjured them all not to keep him even a moment after death, but to cover him with earth at once in the same little garden, dressed as he was in his tunic of goat's hair, his hood, and his peasant's cloak.

Now only a little warmth lingered in his breast, and nothing of a living man remained but his senses; yet with eyes open he said: "Go out, what are you afraid of? Go out, my soul, why do you hesitate? For nearly seventy years you have served Christ, and are you afraid of death?" With these words he breathed his last. And at once they covered him with earth, and announced to the city that he was buried before announcing that he was dead.

When the holy man Hesychius heard of this, he went to Cyprus, and pretending that he wanted to live in the same little garden, so as to remove from the inhabitants any suspicion of careful guarding, at great risk to his life, after about ten months, he stole his body. Carrying it to Majuma, followed by whole crowds of monks and townspeople, he laid it in the old monastery; his tunic, hood, and little cloak were undamaged and his whole body intact as if he were still alive, and so fragrant that you would think it had been anointed with perfumes.

It does not seem to me that at the end of the book I should keep silent about the devotion of that most holy woman Constantia, who, when the news was brought to her that Hilarion's body was in Palestine, at once died, proving even by her death her true love for the servant of God. For she used to spend whole nights in vigil at his tomb and to talk with him as if he were present, to help her prayers. You may see to this day a remarkable rivalry between the Palestinians and the Cypriots, the one claiming to have Hilarion's body, the other his spirit. And yet in both places great signs happen daily, but more in the little garden in Cyprus, perhaps because he loved that place more.