Barbara Haggh-Huglo (ed.), Historia Sancti Hylarii Episcopi Pictavensis (circa 816–930), Historiae 28, Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen/Musicological Studies LXV/28. Kitchener, Ontario: Institute of Mediæval Music, 2018. ix + 127 pp. €82. ISBN 978 1 926664 50 7.

Abstract

The volume under review is a worthy addition to the long-established Historia project of the Cantus Planus study group of the International Musicological Society. It maintains the high standards of previous offerings with an edition of a saint’s office that will appeal to both scholars and performers. St Hilary of Poitiers, the saint honoured by this office, preserved complete and incomplete in several versions, was, like the more famous Athanasius of Alexandria (296/298–373), a staunch a defender of Nicene orthodoxy against Arius and his followers. Hilary was born to pagan parents, probably in Arles, c.315. He converted to Christianity and was elected, as a married man with a daughter, as perhaps the first bishop of Poitiers in 350. Six years later, in punishment for opposing a pro-Arian bishop backed by the emperor, hewas exiled to Phrygia, where he familiarised himself with eastern theology. Back in Gaul by 360, Hilary continued to confront heterodox bishops. In alliance with Eusebius of Vercelli he attempted (unsuccessfully) to have the Arian bishop of Milan, Auxentius, deposed. (Auxentius held on to his position until his death in 374, when he was succeeded by Ambrose.) Hilary composed a number of Scripture commentaries, including a Tractatus mysteriorum, which interpreted the Old Testament in allegorical terms. His most important dogmatic treatise, De Trinitate (De fide adversus Arianos), necessarily had a polemical aspect, given the need to clarify the relationship between the divine and human natures in Christ. Three abecedarian hymns (one incomplete) are also credited to him. Hilary died at Poitiers in 367 or 368. His feast day is celebrated on 13 January; he was named a ‘Doctor of the Church’ by Pope Pius IX in 1851. The edition of the office is preceded by an exemplary introduction, whose subdivisions are clearly laid out in the table of contents. (The reader will discover immediately from the two-column layout that this a bilingual publication, in English and French.) Pages 4–19 of the introduction provide an excellent overview, amply footnoted with primary and secondary sources, of Hilary’s life and the development of his cult. The