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The saints

St. Hilary of Poitiers

A married pagan philosopher who found God in Scripture and became the Athanasius of the West.

Feast: 13 January · about 315 to about 368 · The early Church · Poitiers, Gaul (France)

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Medieval manuscript painting of a bishop being consecrated by other bishops.

Richard de Montbaston et collaborateurs.. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Hilary of Poitiers

Poitiers, Gaul, the 4th century

Hilary grew up a pagan in Gaul and went looking for the meaning of life in philosophy.1

He found it in the Bible, and was baptized with his wife and daughter.1

The people of Poitiers then chose him as their bishop.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church remembers him as a defender of the divinity of Christ in the West.

01St. Hilary of Poitiers

Exile

He refused to condemn Athanasius and opposed the Arians, and the emperor exiled him to Asia Minor.1

He used the exile to write his great work on the Trinity.1

02St. Hilary of Poitiers

Too dangerous to keep

He argued so well in the East that the Arians asked to have him sent home.1

Live it this week

Read one Gospel start to finish

Hilary found God by reading Scripture. Pick the Gospel of Mark (it’s short) and read it straight through this week, a chapter a day or in one sitting, and underline one line that hits you.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Hilary of Poitiers”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.