St. Hilary of Poitiers


St. Hilary of Poitiers

Hilary, born to a prominent pagan family in the early 4th century,  became a Christian rather late in life after an arduous search for truth.  A husband and a father, he was elected bishop of Potiers, France around the year 353 AD and proceeded to become the leading and most respected Latin theologian of his age. Seeking to immunize the church against the infection of the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Christ, he wrote an extensive treatise On the Trinity which is perhaps his most famous work. For his trouble, he was exiled by the Emperor, an Arian sympathizer. St. Hilary, one of the Fathers of the Church, died around the year 368.  St. Augustine, fifty years later, identified him as a doctor of the church.  That title was officially bestowed upon him fifteen centuries later when Pope Pius IX proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church. Biography by Dr. Italy