The life of St Hilarion the New, abbot of the Dalmatian Monastery
For eight untroubled years he led that community as its abbot, until 813 brought the iconoclast emperor Leo the Armenian to power, and Hilarion, unwilling to see the holy icons dishonored, openly charged the emperor with heresy. That defiance cost him years of torment and imprisonment.
A brief reprieve came under the more moderate Michael II, who freed him to return to his monastery, but the persecution resumed under Theophilus, and Hilarion again spoke out, rebuking the emperor's policy to his face. For this he was made to carry more than a hundred pieces of wood on his own back in public humiliation before being exiled to the island of Aphousia. Only when the empress Theodora restored the veneration of icons was he finally freed, returning once more to lead the Dalmatou monastery as its abbot.
He died there peacefully in 845, remembered as a confessor who bore exile and torment across three reigns rather than yield on the honor owed the icons. He is distinct from the other Hilarion the New the Church remembers, the ninth century abbot of Pelekete in Bithynia, a separate monk of the same era and name.
