Saint Hilarius

There’s something fitting about the fact that Pope Hilarius died on February 29, a day that exists once every four years. He was born in Sardinia and was the forty-sixth bishop of Rome, from 461 to 468. Before he became pope, the most dramatic event of his life had already happened. In 449 Pope Leo I sent him as his legate to the Second Council of Ephesus, the one history calls the *latrocinium*, the Robber Council. There Hilarius fought for the rights of the Roman see and opposed the condemnation of the bishop of Constantinople. Dioscorus of Alexandria took it badly and attacked him: he barely escaped. We still have a letter of his to the empress Pulcheria in which he apologizes for not delivering the pope’s letter to her — Dioscorus was trying to stop him from reaching Rome or Constantinople, and he had had to arrange an escape to bring the pontiff news of how things had gone. As pope he continued his predecessor’s firm line. He dealt above all with the Churches of Gaul and Spain, where political disorder threatened to wreck everything: there was, for example, a former archdeacon of Narbonne, Hermes, who had taken over that diocese illegally. Two Gallic bishops came to Rome to bring the matter before him, and in November 462 Hilarius called a synod to judge it. If your name is Hilary, your name day is January 13, which belongs to the other saint of that name, Hilary of Poitiers; but today is this one’s day. A man who once risked his neck to deliver a piece of news, and then spent seven years putting the paperwork in order. They’re two different sides of the same job.