St Hilary of Poitiers

Hilary of Poitiers begins as a cultivated pagan of high standing, a married man led toward Christianity not by fashion but by serious thought and by the revelation of God he encountered in Scripture, especially in St John's Gospel. Once baptized, he did not remain a private believer for long. He was chosen bishop of Poitiers and soon found himself in the full violence of the Arian crisis, when emperors, councils, and bishops alike were wavering over the confession of Christ's true divinity. Exile in Phrygia followed, and there he wrote, argued, learned more of the eastern controversy, and composed the work for which he is especially remembered, On the Trinity. When he returned to Gaul he did not come back softened into caution.

He worked to restore the orthodox, exposed compromise, and resisted imperial meddling in the life of the Church. What gives the portrait depth is the insistence that Hilary was by temperament gentle, courteous, and peaceable. His firmness was not the aggressiveness of a born partisan. It was the steadiness of a man who knew that Christ's divinity and the Church's faith were not matters for surrender.