Hilarion the Georgian

Saint Hilarion the Georgian (1776-1864), venerable, was confessor of the royal court of Imereti and later a hermit and spiritual father on Mount Athos, where he came to be called "the confessor of confessors". His life was bound up with the great upheavals of the nineteenth century: the end of the kingdom of Imereti, the annexation of Georgia by Russia and the Greek revolution of 1821. He is celebrated on 14 February, the day of his repose.

Childhood and service at court

He was born in 1776 in the village of Losiatkhevi near Shorapani in Imereti, to the noble family of Khakhulia and Maria Kanchaveli, and was baptized Iese. His mother's brother, the hierodeacon Stephen, a well-⁠known elder who lived in asceticism near the monastery of Tabakini, asked that the family's first child be dedicated to God. After much hesitation his parents gave Iese to him at the age of six. His uncle taught him to read the Holy Scriptures and raised him in silence, abstinence and prayer.

After some twelve years, when his uncle died, the young man moved to the monastery of Tabakini. He wished to go to a theological school in Tbilisi, but Bishop Athanasius of Nikozi, having heard him read and speak about the Scriptures, advised him to go home, telling him that the school could not teach him what he had already learned in the wilderness.

His father then took him to Kutaisi to serve at the royal palace. Prince Giorgi Tsereteli, seeing his bent for the spiritual life, sent him to the learned archimandrite Gerontius Sologashvili at the monastery of Jruchi. There, besides the spiritual life, Iese learned calligraphy, grammar, arithmetic and other subjects. Back at court, he became a scribe of the royal chancery.

At the insistence of King Solomon II of Imereti he married and was ordained priest, becoming confessor to the court and counsellor to the king. He worked to reconcile quarrelling princes and took part in the king's negotiations in the years when Imereti was passing under Russian rule. More than once he rebuked Prince Zurab Tsereteli for betraying his king. While Father Iese was away for the funeral of his wife Maria, the king was drawn to Tiflis and placed under guard, and in 1810 he fled to Ottoman territory. Iese stayed with him until the king's death at Trebizond in 1815.

The king's widow, Queen Maria, then called him to Moscow as her confessor. Father Iese suffered amid the worldly life of her court, but the queen would not let him go. Greek sources say that there he also declined a proposal to make him a bishop. In 1819, with the help of Metropolitan Seraphim of Saint Petersburg, he obtained a passport and set out through Odessa for Constantinople, meaning to visit the Holy Land.

On Mount Athos

In Constantinople Patriarch Polycarp of Jerusalem advised him to spend some time on Athos, of which he then knew almost nothing. Hiding his birth and his priesthood, he came to the Holy Mountain dressed as a poor monk. He went first to the monastery of Iviron, then entered the monastery of Dionysiou, where he took the hardest obediences: chopping wood, carrying water and working in the vineyards. In Great Lent of 1821 he was tonsured with the name Hilarion, together with a Georgian friend who became the well-⁠known Athonite elder Benedict Kiotishvili.

When the brethren learned from his papers that he was a priest and had been the king's confessor, they began to honour him as an elder. The abbot wanted to entrust him with hearing the community's confessions and no longer let him do heavy work. Hilarion fled from this honour and withdrew into the wilderness.

During the Greek revolution

In 1822 the pasha of Thessaloniki came with a large army to the border of the Holy Mountain and demanded that the abbots appear before him, threatening otherwise to lay Athos waste. The monasteries sent monks ready to die, and among those from Dionysiou went Hilarion. It then emerged that the pasha had been born in Abkhazia, the son of a Georgian Orthodox priest, and had been kidnapped as a child, sold to the Turks and converted to Islam. The pasha urged Hilarion to come away with him and promised him protection. The saint refused and rebuked him for abandoning his faith and his people. After long discussions the pasha gave up his plan and left the region of Athos.

Learning afterwards that the pasha had put many Christians to death, Hilarion went to Thessaloniki and talked with him about the faith over several days. The courtiers demanded his death and the pasha ordered him beheaded, but two of his guards, countrymen of them both, led him out of the city and sent him back to Athos. Hilarion returned to Thessaloniki instead, and for six months served the prisoners in the White Tower, Athonite monks seized during the revolt as well as Turks: he washed their clothes and brought them food and water bought with alms collected from Christians. When the pasha again ordered him killed, for giving food to men condemned to die of hunger, the saint was told in a dream to leave, and he went back to the Holy Mountain, finding someone to care for the prisoners in his place.

Hermit and spiritual father

Hilarion then lived two and a half years in a cave near Dionysiou and another three and a half years in the caves of Katounakia, eating herbs, roots and chestnuts. After that he shut himself for nearly three years in a tower of the New Skete, where a monk brought him dry bread and water once every fifteen days. This monk testified that more than once he found him beaten by demons and half dead, and at last the elder Benedict persuaded him to leave his seclusion.

In 1836 he spent six months at Iviron, where he put the Georgian books in order and compiled the first catalogue of the monastery's Georgian library. From the books and manuscripts he gathered extracts, chiefly lives of saints, which were later printed in Russia in Georgian without his name. He took two Greek disciples, the calligrapher Makarios and Savvas, from whom he learned better Greek. At the request of the Russian monks he went to hear confessions at the monastery of Saint Panteleimon.

Though he refused the title of confessor, many came to him for counsel, and the monks began to call him the confessor of the confessors of Athos. In 1849 he was visited by the Russian writer Andrei Muravyov, who called him a priceless treasure and noted that out of deep humility the elder no longer served as a priest. During the Crimean War he was deeply distressed that prayers for a Turkish victory were being read on Athos.

In 1857 he left Dionysiou and settled at the Skete of Little Saint Anne, in a cell of Saint Onuphrius, where he lived for five years. The cell's church was rebuilt with a gift sent by a woman in Wallachia, and at his wish it was consecrated to the Resurrection of Christ. In 1862 he moved with his disciple Savvas to the Russian monastery of Saint Panteleimon, and a year later to a cell of the Great Martyr George built especially for him.

The brethren who watched his life said that the elder and his disciple kept the prayer of the mind, held vigil at night, served Matins and the Liturgy in the morning and worked by day, he himself as a carpenter. They fasted strictly, cooking only on Saturday and Sunday, and Hilarion slept only two hours a day.

Repose and veneration

Saint Hilarion reposed on 14 February 1864 at the monastery of Saint Panteleimon, where he had come to hear the brethren's confessions. He had asked to be buried in a hidden place and later to have his bones mingled with those of the other fathers. Savvas carried his body out of the monastery by night and did as he had asked. When word spread that the body had not decayed, the monks urged Savvas to uncover the relics. On 25 May 1867 the fragrant relics were brought to light and laid to rest at the Skete of Little Saint Anne.

The Church of Georgia numbered him among the saints on 17 October 2002, and in 2016 the Holy Synod of the Russian Church entered his name in its calendar. He is celebrated on 14 February.