HILARION was born in a village called Tabatha, to the south of Gaza, his parents being idolaters. He was sent by them to Alexandria to study, where, being brought to the knowledge of the Christian faith, he was baptized when he was about fifteen. Having heard of St Antony, he went into the desert to see him, and stayed with him two months, observing his manner of life. But Hilarion found the desert only less distracting than the town and, not being able to bear the concourse of those who resorted to Antony to be healed of diseases or delivered from devils, and being desirous to begin to serve God in perfect solitude, he returned into his own country.

   Finding his father and mother both dead, he gave part of his goods to his brethren and the rest to the poor, reserving nothing for himself (for he was mindful of Ananias and Sapphira, says St Jerome). He retired into the desert seven miles from Majuma, towards Egypt, between the seashore on one side and a swamp on the other. He was a comely and even delicate youth, affected by the least excess of heat or cold, yet his clothing consisted only of a sackcloth shirt, a leather tunic which St Antony gave him, and an ordinary short cloak. He never changed a tunic till it was worn qut, and never washed the sackcloth which he had once put on, saying, “ It is idle to look for cleanliness in a hair-shirt “,which mortifications, comments Alban Butler, “the respect we owe to our neighbour makes unseasonable in the world and then cut off part of his scanty meal. His occupation was tilling the earth and, in imitation of the Egyptian monks, making baskets, whereby he provided himself with the necessaries of life. During the first years he had no other shelter than a little arbour, which he made of woven reeds and rushes. Afterwards he built himself a cell, which was still to be seen in St Jerome’s time it was four feet broad and five in height, and a little longer than his body, like a tomb rather than a house. Soon he found that figs alone were insufficient to support life properly and permitted himself to eat as well vegetables, bread and oil. But advancing age was not allowed to lessen his austerities. St Hilarion underwent many grievous trials. Sometimes his soul was covered with a dark cloud and his heart was dry and oppressed with bitter anguish; but the deafer Heaven seemed to his cries on such occasions, the more earnestly he persevered in prayer. St Jerome mentions that though he lived so many years in. Palestine Hilarion only once went up to visit the holy places at Jerusalem, and then stayed one day. He went once that he might not seem to despise what the Church honours, but did not go oftener lest he should seem persuaded that God or His worship is confined to any particular place.

St Hilarion had spent twenty years in the wilderness when he wrought his first miracle. A certain tharried woman of Eleutheropolis (Bait Jibrin, near Hebron) was in despair for her barrenness, and prevailed upon him to pray that God would bless her with fruitfulness; and before the year’s end she brought forth a son. Among other miraculous happenings, St Hilarion is said to have helped a citizen of Majuma, called Italicus, who kept horses to run in the circus against those of a duumvir of Gaza. Italicus, believing that his adversary had recourse to spells to stop his horses, came for aid to St Hilarion, by whose blessing and pouring water over the chariot wheels his horses seemed to fly, while the others seemed fettered upon seeing which the people cried out that the god of the duumvir was vanquished by Christ. From the model, which he set, other settlements of hermits were founded in Palestine, and St Hilarion visited them all on certain days before the vintage. In one of these visits, watching the pagans assembled at Elusa, south of Beersheba, for the worship of their gods, he shed tears to God for them. He had cured many of their sick, so he was well known to them and they came to ask his blessing. He received them with gentleness, beseeching them to worship God rather than stones. His words had such effect that they would not suffer him to leave them till he had traced the ground for the foundation of a church, and till their priest, all dressed for his office as he was, had become a catechumen.

St Hilarion was informed by revelation in 356 of the death of St Antony. He was then about sixty-five years old, and had been long afflicted at the number of people, especially women, who crowded to him; moreover, the charge of his disciples was a great burden. “ I have returned to the world “, he said, “ and received my reward in this life. All Palestine regards me, and I even possess a farm and household goods, under pretext of the brethren’s needs.”
    So he resolved to leave the country, and the people assembled in great numbers to stop him. He told them he would neither eat nor drink till they let him go; and seeing him pass seven days without taking anything, they left him. He then chose some monks who were able to walk without eating till after sunset, and with them he travelled into Egypt and at length came to St Antony’s mountain, near the Red Sea, where they found two monks who had been his disciples.
 
    St Hilarion walked all over the place with them. “ Here it was “, said they, “that he sang, here he prayed there he laboured and there he reposed when he was weary. He himself planted these vines, and these little trees; he tilled this piece of ground with his own hands he dug this pond to water his garden, and he used this hoe to work with for several years.” On the top of the mountain (to which the ascent was very difficult, twisting like a vine) they found two cells to which he often retired to avoid visitors and even his own disciples; and near by was the garden where the power of Antony had made the wild asses respect his vegetables and young trees. St Hilarion asked to see the place where he was buried. They led him aside, but it is unknown whether they showed it him or no; for they said that St Antony had given strict charge that his grave should be concealed, lest a certain rich man in that country should carry the body away and build a church for it.

    St Hilarion returned to Aphroditopolis (Atfiah), and thence went into a neigh­bouring desert and gave himself with more earnestness than ever to abstinence and silence. It had not rained there for three years, ever since the death of St Antony, and the people addressed themselves to Hilarion, whom they looked upon as Antony’s successor, imploring his prayers. The saint lifted up his hands and eyes to heaven, and immediately obtained a plentiful downpour. Anointing their wounds with oil that he had blessed cured many laborers and herdsmen who were stung by serpents and insects. Hilarion, finding himself too popular also in that place, spent a year in an oasis of the western desert. But finding that he was too well known ever to lie concealed in Egypt, he determined to seek some remote island and embarked with one companion for Sicily. From Cape Passaro they travelled twenty miles up the country and stopped in an unfrequented place here; by gathering sticks Hilarion made every day a faggot, which he sent Zananas to sell at the next village to buy bread. St Hesychius, the saint’s disciple, sought him in the East and through Greece when, at Modon in Peloponnesus, he heard from a Jewish peddler that a prophet had appeared in Sicily who wrought many miracles. He arrived at Passaro and, inquiring for the holy man at the first village, found that everybody knew him: he was not more distinguished by his miracles than by his disinterestedness, for he could never be induced to accept anything from anyone.
     He found that St Hilarion wanted to go into some country where not even his language should be understood, and so Hesychius took him to Epidaurus in Dalmatia (Ragusa). Miracles again defeated the saint’s design of living unknown.
   St Jerome relates that a serpent of enormous size devoured both cattle and men, and that Hilarion induced this creature to come on to a pile of wood and then set fire to it so that it was burnt to ashes. He also tells us that when an earthquake happened the sea threatened to overwhelm the city. The affrighted inhabitants brought Hilarion to the shore, as it were to oppose him as a strong wall against the waves. He made three crosses in the sand, then stretched forth his arms towards the sea which, rising up like a mountain, returned back.

    St Hilarion, troubled over what he should do or whither he should turn, going alone over the world in his imagination, mourned that though his tongue was silent yet his miracles spake. At last he fled away in the night in a small vessel to Cyprus. Arrived there, he settled at a place two miles from Paphos. He had not been there long when his identity was discovered, so he went a dozen miles inland to an inaccessible but pleasant place, where he at last found peace and quietness.

   Here after a few years Hilarion died at the age of eighty; among those who visited him in his last illness was St Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, who afterwards wrote about his life to St Jerome. He was buried near Paphos, but St Hesychius secretly removed the body to the saint’s old home at Majuma.

See Palladius, Historia Lausiaca, c. 19 seq. Acta Sanctorum, January 15 Schiwietz, Morgenländ. Mönchtum, vol. i, pp. 97 seq. Bardenhewer, Patrology (Eng. ed), pp. 266—267  Gore in Journ. of Theol. Stud., vol. viii, pp. 85—90; Cheneau d’Onleans, Les saints d’Egypte (1923), vol. i, pp. 117—138