The Gallic Nicene Episcopate

In 356 the emperor Constantius II, who wanted a single creed his bishops would all sign, exiled the bishop of Poitiers to Phrygia for refusing to condemn Athanasius. It was a miscalculation. Hilary spent four years in the Greek-speaking East learning the eastern debates from the inside, and wrote back to the Gallic bishops to explain them - De Synodis, a patient account of what the eastern creeds actually said and where they could and could not be met. He also wrote De Trinitate, a massive Latin answer to Arianism running to some 190,000 words. When he was allowed home around 360, the Gallic church repudiated the Homoian creed that had been imposed at Ariminum, at a council in Paris. Hilary went on to attack Auxentius, the Homoian bishop of Milan, with less success. He died in 367. The province he left behind was securely Nicene, Latin, and in possession of a theological vocabulary it had not had before - and a young ex-soldier named Martin, whom Hilary had ordained, was already living as a monk at Ligugé.