Life of Hilarion

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.

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.