De sancto Hylarione
The Call to the Desert
Hilarion discovers his monastic vocation under the guidance of Anthony and begins his life of radical detachment.
Hilarion was a holy monk whose virtuous life was recorded by Jerome; although his parents were idolaters, he himself blossomed, as they say, like a rose among thorns. He was sent to Alexandria, where he learned grammar and was baptized; his whole heart was set on the gatherings of the Church, and upon hearing the name of Anthony, he set out for Egypt to see him, and as soon as he saw him, he immediately changed his habit and stayed with him for two months. For he contemplated the order of his life, the gravity of his ways, how frequent he was in prayer, how humble in welcoming the brothers, how severe in correcting them, and how eager in exhorting them. He also practiced such self-control that no infirmity of his could break the austerity of his food. Instructed in these virtues, Hilarion returned to his homeland with some monks. After his parents died, he gave part of his inheritance to his brothers and part to the poor, keeping nothing at all for himself. He was fifteen years old when he entered the wilderness, clothed only in a sackcloth and a rustic cloak that the blessed Anthony had given him when he left him; eventually, he was content with this food, eating fifteen dried figs after sunset. Until he was twenty, he protected himself from the heat and rain in a small hut he had covered with reeds and rushes.
A Life of Austere Devotion
Hilarion maintains a rigorous, lifelong discipline of fasting and prayer, refining his asceticism even into old age.
He then prepared a small cell, four feet wide and five feet long, so that you'd think it more a tomb than a home; he cut his hair only once a year, on Easter, and slept on the bare ground from the beginning until his death. He never washed or changed the sackcloth he first put on, unless it had worn through; holding the Holy Scriptures in his heart as if by memory, he sang the psalms after prayer as if God were present. From his twenty-first year until his twenty-sixth, he ate a pint of lentils soaked in cold water for the first three years, and for the next three he took dry bread with salt and water; from his twenty-seventh to his thirtieth year, he was sustained by wild herbs and raw roots. He ate an ounce of bread and a little cooked vegetable without oil. But feeling his eyes dimming and his whole body turning to skin disease and breaking out in a purple rash, he added a little oil to his usual food; and he lived at this level until his sixty-fourth year, tasting nothing of fruit, legumes, or any other pleasant thing. Seeing himself worn out in body and believing his end was near, from his sixty-fourth year, until his seventieth, he abstained from bread with such incredible fervor of spirit that at that time he approached the service of God as if he were a novice, while others are accustomed to live more laxly. He would make for himself a small broth of flour and a tiny bit of oil, weighing barely five ounces for both food and drink, and in this way he completed the order of his life.
The Holy Passing and Legacy
Hilarion faces his final hour with confidence in Christ, and his body is later recovered as a fragrant witness to his sanctity.
He never broke his fast before sunset, not even on feast days or when he was in the best of health. Therefore, this man, so powerful in miracles and incomparable in holiness, wrote a short letter in his own hand in his eightieth year, while Elicius—who had always loved him as a close friend—was away. In it, he left him all his possessions: his hair shirt, his cowl, and his cloak. By then, there was only a little warmth left in his chest, and he was barely alive. “Get going, why do you hesitate?” “You’ve served Christ for eighty years, and you’re afraid of death!” With these words he breathed his last, and his body was buried immediately; he had even asked everyone who came to visit him during his illness not to keep his body for even a single hour after his death. Later, the holy man Elicius, at the risk of his own life, stole his body about ten months afterward and brought it to Palestine. He brought it to the monastery with the monks following with frequent praises, and he buried it with his hair shirt, cowl, and cloak; his whole body remained intact, as if he were still alive, and it gave off a very fragrant scent, as if it had been anointed with the finest oils, in testimony to his most holy life, to the praise and insuperable glory of God himself, who lives and reigns, etc. His feast is celebrated on the twelfth day before the Kalends of November, the same day as the feast of the ten thousand virgins and the blessed Ursula.
Read the original Latin
Hylarion sanctus monachus fuit, cujus vitam virtutibus plenam scribit Hieronymus, Hujus parentes ydolis dediti, ipse (ut dicitur) rosa de spinis floruit. Alexandriam missns et ibi grainīnaticam discens ibidem etiam baptizatus est totaque illi voluntas in ecclesiae congregationibus fuit, Audiens nomen Anlonii, in Aegyptum perrexit ad videndum eum, Quem ut vidit, statim habitum mutavit et duobus mensibus vix cwn eo mansit. Contemplatus est enim ordinem vitae suae, gravitatem inorum, quam creber in Orationibus, quam hunilis in suscipiendis fratribus, quam severus in corripiendis, alacer in exhortandis. Talem etiam habuit continentiam, ut cibi ejus asperitatem nulla ejus infirinilas frangeret. His virtutibus Hylarion instructus redit ad patriam cum quibusdam monachis. Parentibus suis jun defunctis partem substantiae fratribus, partem etiam pauperibus dedit, sibi nihil omnino reservans. Erat antem annorun XV et solitudinem ingressus est sacco tantum coopertus et sagum rusticum, quod beatus Antonius ei dedit, cum ab eo discessit, secum tulit, Tandem XV caricas post solis occasum comedens hoc cibo contentus fuit, a XV. usque ad XX, aetatis suae annum aestus et pluvias brevi tugurio, quod junco et caricis texerat, declinavit.
Deinde brevem cellam paravit latitudine pedum IV, longitudine vero pedum V, ut sepulchrum potius quam doinuin crederes, Capillos semel in anno, scilicet die paschae, totondit, super nudam terram in inilio usque ad mortem cubavit. Saccmn, quo semel indutus fuit, nunquam lavans nec mutans altero, nisi cum primo scissus esset, Scripturas sacras quasi memoriter tenens post orationem psalhnos quasi Deo praesente cecinit, a XXI. anno usque ad XXVI, tribus annis primis dünidiae lentis sextariun madefactum aqua frigida comedit, aliis tribus sequentibus panem aridum cum sale et aqua sumsit, A XXVII, usque ad XXX, herbis agrestibus et virgultorum radicibus crudis sustentatus est, a XXX. unciam panis et coctum modicum olus absque oleo comedit. Sentiens autem caligare oculos et totum corpus in impetiginem verti et punicea scabedine contrahi, ad superiorem cibum adjecit panun olei; Et hoc usque ad LXIV, annum vitae suae tali cucurrit gradu nihil gustans pomorum aut leguminum seu cujuscunque alterius delectabilis rei. Hic dum videret, se corpore fatigatum, et exitum crederet. imminere, a LXIV. usque ad LXX, pane abstinuit incredibili fervore mentis, ut eo tempore quasi novus accederet ad servitutem Dei, quo caeteri solent remissius vivere.
Fiebat aulem ei sorbitiuncula de farina et cum minimo olei, vix pro cibo et potu V nncias appendens sicque complevit ordinem vitae snae. Nunquam ante solis occasum nec in diebus festis nec in summa valetudine unquam solvit jejunium, Igitur potentissunus in miraculis, sanctitate incomparabilis LXXX, aetatis suae anno, cum absens esset Elicius, qui eum semper familiaris dilexerat, quasi in testimonium testamenti brevem manu propria scripsit literam, omnes divitias ei derelinquens, quas habuit, videlicet tunicam de sacco, cucullam et palliohun, Jamque modicus calor in pectore erat et quasi jam vix vivebat, Apertis oculis haec loquebatur: egredere, quid times? egredere, quid dubitas? LXXX vere annis Christo serviisti, et mortem times! Inter haec verba exhalavit spiritum statimque corpus ejus humanum obrutum est sicque et ipse omnes, qui ad negrotantem venerant, rogavit, ne quidem pnnctun horae post mortem ejus corpus servaretur. Postmodum Elicius vir sanctus cum periculo vitae post X fere menses corpns ejus furatus est et in Palaestinam. deferens monachis crebris prosequentibus laudibus monasterio condidit cum tunica, cuculla et pallio, toto corpore, quasi adhuc viveret, integro et multo fragrante odore, quasi optimis illibutmm esset unguentis in testimonium ejus sanctissimae vitae ad laudem et insuperabilem ipsius Dei gloriam, qui vivit et regnat etc, Festum antem ipsius recolitur X11 cal. Kovembr,, quo videlicet die X1millimn virginum et beatae Ursulae festum celebratur,
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