Jerome, in his Life of Hilarion, mentions a demoniac who was tormented at the basilica of *Peter (the Apostle, S00035) and got healed by *Hilarion (anchorite in Palestine and Cyprus, ob. 371, S00099) in Sicily. Written in Latin in Bethlehem (Palestine) in the early 390s.
E07997
Literary - Hagiographical - Lives
Jerome of Stridon
Trying to escape his fame, Hilarion hides in diverse parts of the Mediterranean. His presence in Sicily was exposed in the following way:
Scutarius quidam, cum in basilica beati Petri Romae torqueretur, clamauit in eo immundus spiritus: "ante paucos dies siciliam ingressus est hilarion, seruus christi, et nemo eum nouit et putat se esse secretum; ego uadam et prodam illum". Statimque cum seruulis suis ascensa in portu naue appulsus est Pachynum, et deducente se daemone, ubi ante tugurium senis se prostrauit, illico curatus est.
'A certain shield-man (scutarius) was vexed in the basilica of the blessed Peter at Rome, The unclean spirit within him cried out: "A few days ago Christ's servant Hilarion entered Sicily and no one knew him, and he thinks he is hidden. I will go and betray him." Immediately he embarked with his attendants in a ship lying in harbour, sailed to Pachynus and, led by the demon to the old man's hut, there prostrated himself and was cured on the spot.'
Text: Bastiaensen 1975, 128.
Translation: Fremantle et al. 1893 (adapted by Robert Wiśniewski).
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Cult building - independent (church)
MiraclesExorcism
Revelation of hidden knowledge (past, present and future)
Protagonists in Cult and NarrativesEcclesiastics - monks/nuns/hermits
Soldiers
Demons
Source
Jerome wrote the Life of Hilarion at the very beginning of the 390s, in the early years of his long stay in Bethlehem. Hilarion died in 371, before Jerome's first visit to the East, so he never met him personally: he probably learnt about the monk of Gaza from Epiphanius of Salamis. The Life presents Hilarion as a founder of monastic life in Palestine, a powerful miracle-worker, and a monk looking all his life for solitude. If the image of the hero and the monastic life presented by Jerome in his earlier life of Paul of Thebes is in many ways polemical to that presented in Athanasius' Life of Antony, Hilarion is depicted as a new, perhaps better, Antony: the polemic is gone. It is interesting to remark that in the Life of Hilarion Jerome aims to promote a posthumous cult of his hero: he mentions the miracles which occur both at his tomb in Maiuma, close to Gaza, and at the place of his first burial at Cyprus. Such a goal is not infrequent in later lives of holy monks, but at the end of the 4th century it was uncommon; in the Life of Antony we can see a desire to prevent the cult of its hero rather than to promote it, and the cultic aspect is also absent in Jerome's Lives of Paul and Malchus.Discussion
For other miracles of Hilarion, and for his reputation as a miracle-worker, see E00694 and E00713.Bibliography
BibliographyEdition:
Bastiaensen, A.A.R., and Smit, J.W., in: Vita di Martino. Vita di Ilarione. In memoria di Paola (Vita dei santi 4; Milan: Mondadori, 1975), with Italian translation by L. Canali and C. Moreschini.
Edition and French translation:
Morales, E.M. (ed.), and Leclerc, P. (trans.), Jérôme, Trois vies de moines (Paul, Malchus, Hilarion) (Sources chrétienns 508; Paris: Cerf, 2007).
English translation:
Fremantle, W.H., Lewis, W., and Martley, W.G., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 6 (Buffalo, NY, 1893).
Further reading:
Vogüé, A. de, Histoire littéraire du mouvement monastique dans l'antiquité. Vol. 2 (Paris: Cerf, 1993), 163-236.
Weingarten, S., The Saint's Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome (Leiden: Brill, 2005).
Robert Wiśniewski
24/06/2020
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Certain | S00099 | Hilarion, anchorite in Palestine and Cyprus, ob. 371 | Certain |
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