RT Article
T1 A Reassessment of the Early Career and Exile of Hilary of Poitiers
JF The journal of ecclesiastical history
VO 42
IS 2
SP 202
OP 217
A1 Williams, Daniel H. 1955-
LA English
YR 1991
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1784754757
AB Exiled from his see in the year 356, Hilary of Poitiers suddenly emerges on the historical scene out of a shroud of undocumented silence. It is well known by students of Hilary and his times how few facts are available about the saint's early life and his first years as bishop. The existence of such lacunae in the career of a person who would eventually become one of the West's major theologians and apologists created a vacuum too tempting not to fill. It comes as no surprise, therefore, to find later hagiographic accounts eager to trace Hilary's virtus and undefiled orthodoxy back to the earliest stages of his life. This is well exemplified by Hilary's sixth-century biographer Venantius Fortunatus, who locates signs of future fidelities in the very beginning. Despite the implications in the first book of De Trinitate that Hilary had been a pagan prior to becoming a Christian, Venantius confidently tells us how the saint took in Christian doctrine and true religion with his mother's milk.
DO 10.1017/S0022046900000051