Venerable Hilarion the New (+845)
The Venerable Hilarion the New was born into a God-loving noble family. His parents, Peter and Theodosia, trained their son in virtue and made him deeply learned in Holy Scripture. Saint Hilarion was twelve when he was tonsured a monk in the monastery of Hesychius near Byzantium; from there he moved to the Dalmatus monastery, where he took the great schema and became a disciple of the Venerable Gregory of Decapolis (commemorated 20 November). The holy father greatly honoured his God-bearing namesake, the Venerable Hilarion the Great (commemorated 21 October), and strove to be like him, and so he was called Hilarion the New. In the Dalmatus monastery the saint was ordained priest. After the abbot’s death the brethren wanted to choose the Venerable Hilarion in his place. But when the blessed father learned of this, he secretly left the place and made for Byzantium.
Then the monks of the Dalmatus monastery petitioned the holy Patriarch Nicephorus to appoint Hilarion their superior and return him to the monastery. The venerable father regarded the patriarch’s order as the will of God; he returned to the monastery and for eight years governed it peacefully; but in 813 the accession of the iconoclast Emperor Leo the Armenian (813–820) and the renewed persecution of the Orthodox broke the usual rhythm of the brethren’s life. The Venerable Hilarion refused to insult the icons and boldly denounced the emperor for his heresy, for which he had to endure many sufferings: he was thrown into prison several times. The false patriarch Theodotus, who had taken the throne of the banished Nicephorus, tried to bend the holy confessor by torture, but in vain. The monks of the Dalmatus monastery loved their superior so much and so longed to see him that they went to the emperor and told him that if Saint Hilarion were released they would submit to the emperor’s will. But having returned to the monastery with their elder, they remained faithful to the rule of the veneration of icons. The enraged Leo the Armenian imprisoned the Venerable Hilarion again.
The lawless emperor did not escape God’s punishment: he was cut down by his own soldiers in the church, on the very spot from which he had first thrown down a holy icon. The new emperor, Michael II (820–829), set the Venerable Hilarion free, and he shut himself up in a solitary cell. When Theodore the Studite (commemorated 11 November), who had been tortured by the iconoclasts, reposed, the venerable father saw angels carrying his soul up to heaven. In the time of the iconoclast emperor Theophilus (829–842) the Venerable Hilarion was seized again, cruelly beaten and exiled to the island of Aphusia.
After the death of Theophilus the holy Empress Theodora (842–855) brought the confessors back from exile. Saint Hilarion too returned to the Dalmatus monastery, became its abbot again, and reposed in peace in 845.
