Jerome’s Life of Saint Hilarion recounts the conversion and ascetic career of a monk born to pagan parents near Gaza. After studying in Alexandria and encountering the example of Saint Antony, Hilarion renounces his inheritance, enters the wilderness at fifteen, and pursues prayer, humility, solitude, fasting, and severe bodily discipline. Demonic visions and attacks are overcome through the sign of the cross and the name of Jesus, while miracles of healing and deliverance draw crowds that repeatedly force him to seek greater solitude.

The biography follows Hilarion’s influence as a desert ascetic, his reverence for Antony, his journeys including flight to Cyprus, and his continued efforts to resist fame and worldly attachment. Jerome presents Hilarion’s life as an example of total devotion and the ascetic ideal he championed. Written in 390, the work includes legendary elements while preserving a record of fourth-century Christian attitudes and may have been intended for a larger, unfinished Church history.