St Hilary of Poitiers

Biography

Hilary became bishop of Poitiers around 350, a convert from paganism through the reading of the Scriptures. When the Arianizing emperor Constantius pressed the Western bishops to condemn Athanasius, Hilary refused, and at the synod of Béziers in 356 he was deposed by the Arian party and exiled to Phrygia.

Exile made him the West's theologian of the Trinity: there he wrote On the Trinity and On the Synods, mastering the Eastern controversies at their source. Restored around 360, he spent his last years contending against Auxentius, the Arian occupant of Milan, and died in 367 or 368.

The controversy

• The Arian ascendancy under Constantius, when the imperial power drove council after council against the Nicene confession and the buildings of whole provinces passed to the heresy.
• Against Auxentius of Milan he pressed the charge of Arianism to the emperor's face, and, failing to dislodge him, warned the faithful of Milan against the false peace of a heretical altar.

Position taken

• The Church is not located by her buildings but by her faith: when the roofs are held by heresy, the faithful are safer in the mountains, the woods, and the prisons where the prophets prophesied.
• Communion follows the confession, not the certificate of possession: he treated the see of Milan as vacant of a shepherd while Auxentius preached against the Son.