RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
High Priest Hilarius
he alone cared for the external relations of the people and was their protector (Ecclus. 1. 4). The assumption of the royal title, e.g., by Aristobulus (104-103 B.C.), did not alter the essential facts of the office, and the robes needed no change to express re"al authority. Under the influence of the times, the political interests became predominant, as is seen in the history of the Maccabean period; but of the office between the days of Ezra and the last pre-Maccabean high priest almost nothing is known. The transference of the office to the priestly family of the Maccabees in 153 B.C. was no less illegal than the deposition of Jason in favor of Menelaus, but the gratitude of the people restrained the opposition of the legalists. The downfall of the Hasmoneans marked the end of the high-priesthood in its special significance. True, the office continued till the destruction of Jerusalem, and the holder was first in the Sanhedrin and possessed important influence; but he had lost the two essentials of the office, its transmission by heredity and its possession for life. Herod the Great and the Romans arbitrarily changed the high priests, and the title was held not only by those who at the time performed the duties of the office, but by those who had formerly done so. With the fall of Jerusalem the office ceased to exist. (F. Buhl.)
Bibliography: The two early treatments of the subject, still useful, are: J. S. Selden, De successione in pontificatum Ebra'oram, book i., chaps. 11-12, Frankfort, 1673; J. Lightfoot, Ministerium templi Hierosolymitani, iv. 3, in vol. ix. of his works, London, 1825. The most comprehensive modern treatise is W. Baudissin, Die Geschichte des alttestamentlichen Priesterthums, Leipsic, 1889. Consult further: H. Ewald, Alterthiimer des Volkes Israel, pp. 382 sqq., Gottingen, 1866, Eng. transl., Antiquities of Israel, pp. 288 sqq., Boston, 1876; H. Gratz, in Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums, 1877, pp. 450-464, 1881, pp. 49-64, 97-110; J. Wellhausen, Geschichte Israels, chap, iv., Berlin, 1878; Oort, De Aaronieden, in ThT, xviii (1884), 289-335; H. Vogelstein, Der Kampf iwischen Priestern und Leviten seit den Tagen Ezechiels, Stettin, 1889; A. Kuenen, in ThT, xxiv (1890), 1-42; A. van Hoonacker, Le Sacerdoce levitique, Louvain, 1899; Schvirer, Geschichte, ii. 214 sqq., Eng. transl., II., i. 195 sqq.; idem, in TSK, 1872, pp. 593-657; Benzinger, Archdologie, passim; Nowack, Archaologie, ii. 106-108, 117 sqq.; DB, iv. 83-84; EB, iii. 3837-47; JE, vi. 389- 393; and the commentaries on Enodus and Leviticus.
HILARION, SAINT: Palestinian hermit; b. at Tabatha (5 Roman m. s. of Gaza) 291; d. in the island of Cyprus 371. He received his first instruction at Alexandria, where he became a Christian. Hearing of St. Anthony and his hermit life, he lived two months with him. He then returned home, and, at the age of fifteen, began the life of a solitary in a little hut in the vicinity of Majuma, the port of Gaza. Like the Egyptian hermits, he wove baskets of rushes to earn his subsistence. At the same time he observed the strictest discipline of fasting. He was visited by frequent apparitions of demons, but soon obtained the gift of healing demoniacs and other patients. He became especially known by curing the sons of an aristocratic lady, Aristaenete, and this gave occasion, in 329, to the founding of a colony of hermits about him. He is supposed to have maintained a correspondence with St. Anthony, and visited the sacred localities in Jerusalem (Jerome, Epist., lviii., ad Paulinum). Jerome has much to say of the conversions to Christianity wrought by Hilarion, as when he is reported
to have won over the Saracens of Elusa in the desert of Kades.
Owing to predictions of impending times of distress— the persecutions of the Christians under Julian — Hilarion left Palestine never to return. By way of Lychnos he reached Castrum Theubatum (Thaubastum), where he visited Dracontius, exiled by the Emperor Constantius on account of his orthodoxy. His pilgrimage then led him to the Nile city Aphroditopolis and to Mount St. Anthony, from which he went to the Alexandrian suburb Bruchium. At the port town of Paraitonion, in the Egyptian Marmarica, he met his Palestinian disciple Hadrian, who, apparently, came to conduct him back to Palestine; but he refused to go. Hilarion next reached Sicily, and lived as a hermit in the vicinity of the promontory Pachynum. Here, in a wonderful manner, he was discovered by his pupil Hesychius. But he soon left Sicily, because here, as elsewhere, a crowd of disciples gathered about him, so that he could not live the solitary life. He betook himself to Epidaurus in Dalmatia. The last years of his life were spent in Cyprus, first in the vicinity of Paphos, afterward at a lonely place in the interior, called Carbyris by Sozomen. To his sojourn in Cyprus belongs the period of his converse with Epiphanius. Shortly before his death he made over to his favorite pupil, Hesychius, his only belongings — his tunic, cowl, and cloak. He was buried in the neighborhood of Paphos, but Hesychius stole his corpse, and, greatly to the grief of the Cypriots, conveyed it to Majuma.
Hilarion is accredited with the distinction of having been among the first to transplant the hermit life to Palestine, though he was not the only Palestinian hermit in the first half of the fourth century. His activity, however, was confined exclusively to southern Palestine; and, even here, he merely naturalized the hermit life in its oldest Egyptian form, without undertaking the slightest modification or development. G. Grutzmacher.
Bibliography: Documentary sources for the life of Hilarion are a biography by Jerome (Opera, ed. Valarsi, ii. 13 sqq.; in MPL, xxiii. 29 sqq., and ASB, Oct., ix. 16-59, Eng. transl., NPNF, 2d ser., vi (303-314), compiled about 390 and notices by Sozomen (Hist, eccl., iii. 14; v. 10). A. brief letter of eulogy written by Epiphanius of Salamis not long after the saint's death has been lost, although Jerome used it for his Vita. Jerome is the main source. He greatly exaggerated his saint's importance in order to glorify Palestinian monasticism, to which he himself belonged. Hence, in spite of a historical nucleus, it is often hard to decide what are the facts. Consult W. Israel, Die Vita S. Hilarionis des Hieronymus als Quelle fiir die Anfange des Mbnchthums kritisch untersucht, in ZWT, xxiii (1880), pp. 129 sqq.; O. Zockler, in Neue Jahrbucher filr deutsche Theologie, iii (1894), pp. 147 sqq.; L. Servieres, Hist, de S. Hilarion, Rodez, 1884; Ceillier, Auleurs socres, vi. 376, vii. 593-594, 690; Neander, Christian Church, ii. 142, 271, 378, iii. 420; KL, v. 2039-42; DCB, iii. 52-54.
HILARIUS: Roman deacon of the fourth century. Hilarius was an adherent of Bishop Lucifer of Calaris (q.v.), whom he probably accompanied to the Synod at Milan (355). He was mentioned by Jerome in the " Dialogue against the Luciferians " as already dead (NPNF, vi. 331, cf. 333, 334). To suppose that he is the same as the so-called Ambrosiaster (q.v.) is without any warrant.
G. Kruger.
Hilary- Hilary of Poitiers