Hilarion was the son of pagan parents in Thabatha near Gaza. Sent to Alexandria for education, he converted to Christianity and at fifteen made the desert journey to visit St. Anthony the Great in his Egyptian retreat. Inspired, he returned home and went into the desert south of Gaza to live as a hermit — the first Palestinian to do so.
He lived sixty-five years in a series of progressively more remote hermitages — first in a hut by the Mediterranean coast, then in a cave near Maiuma, then on a series of journeys through Egypt, Sicily, Dalmatia, and finally Cyprus. Disciples gathered around him at each location, and several major monasteries trace their origin to his settlements.
St. Jerome's Life of Hilarion (c. 391) is one of the great early hagiographic biographies, modeled on Athanasius's Life of Anthony and providing the foundational text of Palestinian monastic culture. The recently-excavated monastery of Tel Umm Amer in the Gaza Strip — endangered by ongoing conflict — preserves the historical site of his foundation.