5 His vocabulary is very poorly treated in the dictionaries; one of the many Signs of the neglect into which he has fallen. There are at least twenty-four words in the Tractatus super Psalmos which are omitted in the last edition of George's' lexicon, and these good Latin words, not technical terms invented for purposes of argument. Among the most interesting is quotiensque for quotienscumque; an unnoticed use is the frequent cum quando for quandoquidem. Of Hilary's other writings there is as yet no trustworthy text; from them the list of new words could at least be doubled.

6 Ep. 70,5, ad Magnum.

7 Ep. 58, 10, ad Paulinum.

8 Comm. in Gall. ii. pref.

9 Cf. Tract. in Ps. xiii. I, Trin. I. 38

10 Yet he strangely reproaches his Old Latin Bible with the use of nimis for ualde, Tract. in Ps. cxxxviii. 38. This employment of relative for positive terms had been common in literature for at least a century and a half.

11 E.g. Trin. v. II, vii. 14, ix. 4.

12 Trin. ii. 22.

13 Trin. x. 14. This is a very remarkable allusion. Celsus, vii. prae., confidently assumes that all surgical operation must be painful.

14 Comm. in Matt. xxi. 8.

15 Trin. xi. 15.

16 Tract. in Ps. cxviii. Ain. 16; it is from Plin. N.H. 37, 32.

17 Tract. in Ps. lvii. 3. It suggests virgil, Ovid, Silius, and others.

18 Trin. vii. 3.

19 F.p. 70, 5, Vir. Ill. 100.

20 Tract. in Ps. i. 7, lxi. 2, Ixiii. 5, &c. As usual, Hilary does not name his opponents.

21 Hilary's legendary daughter Abra., to whom he is said to have written a letter printed in the editions of his works, is now generally abandoned by the best authorities, e.g. by Fechtrup, the writer, in Wetzer-Welte's Encyclopaedia, of the best short life of Hilary.

22 De Doctr. Chr. ii. 40.

23 Trin. viii. 13-17.

24 This is on the assumption, which seems probable, that Irenaeus was not yet translated from the Greek. He certainly influenced Tertullian, and through him Hilary; and his doctrine of the recapitulation of mankind in Christ, reappearing as it does in Hilary, though not in Tertullian, suggests that our writer had made an independent study of Irenaeus. Even if the present wretched translation existed, he would certainly read the Greek.

25 Dr. Bigg's Bampton Lectures upon them are full of hints for the student of Hilary.

26 Vir. Ill. 100.

27 E.g. Tract. in Ps. cxxix. 4 f.

28 E.g. Trin. ix. 6.

29 Comm. in Matt. v. I. It may be mentioned that the chapters of the Commentary do not coincide with those of the Gospel.

30 Comm. in Matt. xvi. 4, theotetam quam deitatem Latini nuncupant, xxvi. 5, theotetam quam deitatem nuncupamus. The strange accusative theotetam makes it the more probable that we have here a specimen of the primitive Greek vocabulary of Latin Christendom of which so few examples, e.g. Baptism and Eucharist, have survived. Cyprian had probably the chief share in destroying it; but the subject has never been examined as it deserves.

31 So especially xii. 18. There is similarly a possible allusion to Marcellus' teaching in xi. 9, which, however, may equally well be a reminiscence of some cognate earlier heresy.

32 Maffei's Introduction, §15.

33 xxxi. 3, penes quem erat antequam nasceretur.

34 See Ebert, Litteratur des Mittelalters, I. 139.

35 Syn. 91; regeneratus pridem et in episcopatu aliquantisper manens. The renderings `long ago0' and `for some time0' in this translation seem rather too strong.

36 E.g. Trin. viii. I. The bishop is a prince of the Church.

37 Sacerdos in Hilary, as in all writers till near the end of the fourth century, means `bishop0' always.

38 By Dr. Robertson of King's College, London. This, and Professor Gwatkin's Studies of Arianism, are the best English accounts.

39 Syn. 91.

40 The Apologia contra Arianos, p. 100 ff. in Dr. Robertson's translation.

41 Origines du culte chretien, p. 88.

42 Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 134.

43 Ib., p.28.

44 Trin. vii. 3.

45 There is much more evidence to this effect in Reuter, Augustineische Studien, p. 182 f. It was probably due to jealousy between West and East; cf. the way in which John of Jerusalem ignored the African decision in Pelagius' case. But the West was ignorant, as well as jealous, of the East. Even in his last years, after his sojourn in Asia Minor, Hilary believed that Jerusalem was, as had been prophesied, an uninhabited ruin; Tr. in Ps. cxxiv. ?2, cxxxi. ??18, 23, cxlvi. ?I.

46 I Chron. ii. 39.

47 Syn. 91.

48 This sparing of Marcellus in the cave of a Western like Hilary, may have been a concession to the incapacity of the West, e g. Julius of Tome and the Council of Sardica, to see his error. But this is not so likely as that it was a falling in with the general policy of Athanasius, as was the rare mention or the homoousion; cf. Gwatkin, op. cit. 42. n. Hilary was singularly independent of Western opinion, and his whole aim was to win the East.

49 No such examination seems to have been made as that to which Reuter in his admirable Augustineische Studien has subjected some of the thoughts of St. Augustine.

50 Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, ii. p. 243 n, (ed. 3). Hilary is, `making all allowance for dependence on Athanasius, an independent thinker, who has, indeed, excelled the bishop of Alexandria as a theologian.0'

51 Hort, Two Dissertations, p. 27.

52 Trin. viii. 40.

53 Cf. Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 130.

54 Ib., p. 159. It would not be fair to judge Hilary by the de Synodis alone. The would-be diplomatist, in his eagerness to bring about a reconciliation, is not quite just either to the facts or to his own feelings.

55 1 Chron ii. 39.

56 Syn. 32.

57 Ib. 78.

58 Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 163.

59 Sulp. Sev. Chton. ii. 42.

60 Sulp. Sev. ii. 42, iuxta ea, quae Nicaeae erant a patribus conscripta.

61 Sulpicius Severus, Chron. ii. 45, says that he addressed at this time three petitions to the Emperor. This is, of course, not impossible; but it is more likely that he had in his mind the two appeals, that before the exile and the present one, and the invective.

62 Cf. Trin. ii. 13 ff.

63 Reading habet for habeo, but the text is obscure.

64 It is true that the Nicene Council is not named here, the allusion is obvious. The Conservatives had actually objected to the novelty of the Creed; and the Arians had, as Hilary goes on to say, used the pretext of novelty to destroy the Gospel. The Council of Nicaea was thirty-five years before, and is very accurately described as a `Synod of our fathers.0'

65 Cf. Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 182.

66 `Bodies lifted up without support, women hanging by the feet without their garments falling about their face.0' The other references which the Benedictine editor gives for this curious statement are evidently borrowed from this of Hilary. From the time of the first Apologists exorcism is, of course, constantly appealed to as an evidence of the truth of Christianity, but usually, in somewhat perfunctory language, and without the assertion that the writer has himself seen what he records. Hilary himself does not profess to be an eye-witness.

67 This is a telling point. Constantius had been notoriously unsuccessful in his Persian Wars.

68 The text is corrupt, but it is not probable that Hilary means that Paulinus was first relegated to Phlygia and then to some pagan frontier district, if such there was. It is quite in Hilary's present vein to assume that because the Montanists were usually called after the province of their origin, in which they were still numerous, therefore all Phrygians were heretics and outside the pale Christendom. If hordeo be read for horreo the passage is improved. Paulinus had either to be satisfied with rations of barley bread, the food of slaves, or else to beg from the heretics. Such treatment is very improbable, when we remember Hilary's own comfort in exile. But passions were excited, and men believed the worst of their opponents. We may compare the falsehoods in Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, and in Neal's Puritans, which were eagerly believed in and after our own Civil War.

69 Hilary had previously (§ 27) asserted that `the Apostle has taught us to communicate with the tombs of the saints.0' This is an allusion to Rom. xii. 13, with the strange reading `tombs0' for `necessities0' (mneivaiz for creivaiz), which has, in fact, considerable authority in the mss. of the New Testament and in the Latin Christian writers. How far this reading may have been the cause, how far the effect, of the custom of celebrating the Eucharist at the tombs of Martyrs, it is impossible to say. The custom was by this time more than a century old, and one of its purposes was to maintain the sense of unity with the saints of the past. Constantius, by denying their doctrine, had made himself their enemy.

70 Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, p. 244.

71 Rufinus, Hist. Eccel. i. 30, 31, and, dependent on him, Socrates iii. 10 and Sozomen v. 13.

72 Cf. Dr. Bright, Waymarks, p. 217. n.



Website by C.J.S. Hayward (The Angelic Letters, TEDx Draft Lecture: The Silicon Rule, Doxology, The Consolation of Theology).

Site under the auspices of St. Job of Pochaev Print Shop of Holy Trinity Monastery ("Jordanville") (seminary, museum, publications).

Please visit our bookstore (books, candles, crosses, icons, incense, prayer ropes)!