Formation and Conversion
Hilarion was born to pagan parents around 291 in the village of Tabatha, some five miles south of Gaza. His family sent him to Alexandria to study with a grammarian, and it was there that he became acquainted with the Christian faith and received baptism.
Rather than return at once to secular life, he traveled into the Egyptian desert to find Anthony the Great, the acknowledged father of the anchoritic life. He remained with Anthony for approximately two months, studying his ascetic practices, before the crowds surrounding Anthony prompted him to seek greater solitude.
The Palestinian Hermit
After his parents died, Hilarion came back to the area of Gaza, distributed his goods to his brothers and the poor, and established himself as a hermit in the desert about seven miles inland from Maiuma, the port of Gaza. Around 308 he built a small hut of reeds and lived there in solitude for roughly twenty-two years.
He supported himself by weaving baskets, a craft he had learned in Egypt, and gave himself to strict fasting and constant prayer. According to Jerome, who wrote his Life, Hilarion struggled against fleshly desires through fasting and strenuous labor. Tradition also holds that he overcame demonic temptations and even persuaded thieves to abandon their crimes through his spiritual influence.
Healings and a Growing Movement
Hilarion was first sought out by a woman suffering from sterility, and after her cure his reputation for healing spread. The sources relate that he cast out demons and healed the sick without accepting payment, saying that the grace of God is freely received and must be freely given. Tradition credits him with the ability to discern spiritual afflictions by smell alone.
Among the healings recorded are those of the three children of Helpidius, later a praetorian prefect, and the exorcism of Alaphion at Bethelea, an event tradition connects with the conversion of the family of the church historian Sozomen. During the reign of the emperor Constantius (337–361) Hilarion established a monastery that grew into a large community, remembered as a foundation of Palestinian cenobitic monasticism, with monasteries springing up across the region under his guidance.
Travels and Repose
After Anthony's death around 356, Hilarion journeyed to Egypt to visit his master's cell, and then, seeking solitude from the crowds that pursued him, traveled to Sicily and to Dalmatia. Tradition relates that in Dalmatia he calmed the sea during the great tsunami of July 21, 365, by tracing three crosses in the sand.
He finally settled in Cyprus near Paphos, welcomed by his former disciple Epiphanius, and lived there as a solitary ascetic until his repose around 371, at the age of eighty. The sources place his death variously in 371 or 372.
Relics & Shrines
Tradition relates that some ten months after his death his disciple Hesych secretly carried his body — reported to be incorrupt and fragrant — back to his monastery at Maiuma, where annual festivals commemorated him. The Piacenza Pilgrim recorded his tomb around 570. In the West, Hilarion is honored as the patron saint of Caulonia in Calabria, Italy.
Iconography
In icons Hilarion is depicted as an elderly man with a divided, three-pointed beard, at times holding a scroll. One inscription rendered on such scrolls reads that the tools of a monk are steadfastness, humility, and love according to God. The liturgical tradition honors him with hymns naming him an unfading light of the Spiritual Sun and a rampart of ascetics.
