HILARION, SAINT, 288-371; b. at Gaza of heathen parents. Attracted by the fame of St. Anthony, he went to visit that saint in his solitude, and forthwith became his disciple. Returning to Palestine with some companions while still only a lad of 15. he gave away all the property which he had inherited by the recent death of his parents, and withdrew into the loneliness of the desert between the sea and the marshes On the Egyptian border. In this solitude he observed the most rigid asceticism, and (to quote the quaint remark of Butler) " thought himself at liberty to practice certain mortifica tions which the respect we owe to our neighbor makes unseasonable in the world." Twenty years of patient continuance in the way of life he had chosen for himself were rewarded, we are told, with miraculous gifts and with rapidly growing fame; disciples and imitators multiplied to the number of two or three thousand, and were all under the spiritual control of Hilarion. When 65 years old, the death of St. Anthony being
revealed to him, he undertook an extended tour into Egypt, and visited the scenes of that saint's labors; afterward he proceeded in company of a favorite disciple, Ilesyehius, to Sicily, where, however, his popularity rendered the quiet and retirement which were congenial to hint, impossible. A further migration to Epidaurus thus became necessary, and ultimately he found a resting-place in Cyprus, the diocese of his old friend Epipha nies, where in a lonely cell among some almost inaccessible rocks he died. According to Sozomen. his festival was observed in Palestine with. great solemnity as early as the 5th c.; he is now tommemorated by the Roman church on Oct. 21.