Hypatia, Martyr to Politics
INTRODUCTION
Intellectual bigotry has a long and sordid history. From ancient times to the present, attacks on Christian moral principles have occupied an inordinate fraction of our literary time and energy. But then this is true of any revolutionary philosophy. Christianity introduced the requirement to love one’s neighbor, of having to forgive injury rather than plotting revenge, of affording each individual soul inalienable rights which politicians cannot abridge as enshrined in the American Constitution, and especially in believing that the universe is governed by orderly natural law rather than unpredictable magical forces and the whims of a pantheon of gods and goddesses.
So it is hard to understand why modern notables such as Carl Sagan in his otherwise delightful TV series “Cosmos”, create hate filled vignettes attacking Christian moral principles on which Western Civilization and especially the American experience is based. One distortion of the historical record concerns his recounting of Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 355 - 415 A.D.) who famously edited a portion of her father’s mathematical commentaries. The suggestive lie is that Christianity is somehow anti-science. This is especially egregious as it was the Catholic Church that invented science and has relentlessly defended it against pagan philosophies for the last two millennia.
Refuting the distortions which amount to outright lies, we note the following inconvenient facts:
1. Hypatia was never on the staff of
the famous Library of Alexandria.
Membership in the Library ceased to exist in the historical record by 260 A.D.
or about a century before her birth. A surviving building had been the
Sarapeum which is not believed to have contained any significant collection of
scrolls. This temple addition to the original library was dedicated to the
Greco-Egyptian sun god Serapis whose whims putatively controlled all natural
phenomena. In 391 A.D., the idols had been removed and the structure converted
to a Christian monastery several decades before her murder. Beginning with the
Roman Emperor Constantine (272-337 A.D.) such public monuments were gradually
being converted to Christian Churches in attempt to instill a philosophy of
rationality in nature free of blind superstition.
2. In Hypatia’s lifetime the Sarapeum
was not a library or a school of natural history but a pagan temple complete
with Greek fertility rituals.
By all accounts the Sarapeum had conducted worship rituals to the Greek gods
following the Neo-Platonic beliefs of Iamblichos of Chalkis-on-Belos (245-325
A.D.) and Porphyrios of Tyre (234-305 A.D.). And indeed the private school of
her father which she inherited were at philosophical odds with this cult.
Theon and his daughter Hypatia instead famously preferred the original and
purer form of Platonic philosophy or belief in the “One” which was more
conducive to Christian thought after Plotinos of Lykopolis (205–270 A.D.)
Also, every one of Hypatia’s students for which we have records was Christian.
3. Christians did not destroy the
famous library of Alexandria.
After centuries of decline what was left of its buildings were leveled by the
pre-Christian Romans under the Emperor Aurelian who re-conquered the city of
Alexandria from Queen Zenobia of Palmyra in 272 A.D. After a further
rebellion, the pagan Roman Emperor Diocletian again totally destroyed the same
part of the city in 297 A.D.
4. Nor did the Library’s surviving
records or tradition of inquiry cease to exist after Hypatia.
Rather the library had been long since disbursed to many smaller repositories
which served to educate new generations over succeeding centuries in an
unbroken chain. Nor was the cult of the sun god Serapis eliminated with the
destruction of the temple but rather many smaller temples were built in and
around Alexandria, and again for many centuries. Nor was the legacy of Hypatia
or that of her father Theon extinguished as the class notes they edited
preserved the Greek texts down the centuries to the present day.
5. Hypatia was not the “last Hellene”
nor the first or last female mathematician or scientist of note.
Her acclaim came from being a charismatic and extraordinarily gifted teacher. An
earlier female mathematician was Pandrosion of Alexandria. Female philosophers
who immediately succeeded Hypatia with similar reputations were Aidesia and
Asklepigenia followed a century later by Theodora of Emesa, and many others.
6. Hypatia did not make any astronomical
observations or conduct any experiments or make any scientific discoveries.
Rather she lived in a time of cultural and intellectual decline. Her
contributions and that of her father were elementary commentaries on famous
works of Greek antiquity serving as class notes for their small private school
for intellectual elite. They left no records of any original contributions to
mathematics, or astronomy, on indeed to any scientific endeavor. Rather they
provided the invaluable service of preserving Greek knowledge in simplified
editions and transmitting it to future generations.
7. Hypatia did not invent either the
astrolabe or the hydrometer.
Both of these were in general use centuries before her birth. Indeed her
father, Theon of Alexandria, wrote at least two definitive treatises on the
astrolabe. Synesios was the Christian bishop of Ptolemaïs in the region of
Kyrenaïka in North Africa. Some 156 of his letters survive of which seven were
addressed to his teacher Hypatia. In one he thanks her for advice on how to
build a planar astrolabe. In his correspondence Synesios credits the actual
invention of the astrolabe to Hipparchus some 500 years earlier. In another letter he asks her to
find a craftsman to build him a hydrometer providing such detail as to suggest
she had never seen one before.
8. Hypatia was of Greek ancestry of
Middle-Eastern origin and was not a sub-Saharan Nubian or a northern European.
To suggest otherwise by purely imaginative invention is simply disgusting
racist propaganda. Hypatia’s father was Greek and although no mention of her
mother survives, the society from which she came was also overwhelmingly
Greek. And the lack of any physical description within a century of her death
is not reasonable license for extraordinary claims. Indeed the many surviving
portraits from Alexandria in the late fourth century invariably depict Middle-Eastern
Greek individuals [1].
9. Hypatia was in her 60’s when
murdered.
Her father, Theon of Alexandria, was born in 335 A.D. and was thus about 20
years old when Hypatia was born in 355 A.D. Her most famous student, Synesios,
was born in 373 A.D. making him some 17 years younger than Hypatia. It is irrational
to suppose that she was the same age as her student and that both were educated
by her father in the same class.
10. Hypatia not murdered because of her
beliefs in, or teaching of, natural law or scientific inquiry.
Her tragic death was the result of her political support for one side in a
violent and un-Christian dispute between the Christian Bishop of Alexandria and
the secular Roman Governor who was also a Christian.
Lies to the contrary are not honest disagreements as the historical record, albeit sparse, is not in any doubt. Nor are deliberate misrepresentations harmless as they undermine the very basis of our moral principles and democratic social institutions.
Basically, opponents of Christianity like Carl Sagan invent outright and easily refuted lies in a mean-spirited and prejudiced attack on Christian moral principles. But what is especially obscene is that Sagan claims to believe in Christian-invented principles of scientific enquiry while at the same time defaming Christianity to the advantage of pagan personages and their anti-scientific beliefs in magic and mysticism.
HYPATIA
The political turmoil in fifth century Alexandria, Egypt, was recorded by Hypatia’s contemporary, the Christian historian Sokrates Scholastikos, in Book VII of his “Ecclesiastical History”.
Hypatia was a Neo-Platonist which philosophy concentrated on the rituals necessary to placate the Greek gods. She and her father broke with the mainstream theology of Neo-Platonic thought and rather supported a mysterious all encompassing and unifying principle of the “One”. Her father was Theon of Alexandria who following the Greek tradition of scholarship wrote a definitive treatise on the construction and use of planar astrolabe, which had by then been in use for several centuries. He also wrote famous reviews of Euclid’s Elements and the Almagest.
In 412, Theophilos, the Christian bishop of Alexandria who had been a friend of Hypatia, died suddenly. Theophilos had elevated at least two of Hypatia’s students to be Christian Bishops. During his tenure, the pagan temple of the “Serapeum” which had been closed by the Christian Emperor Constantine in July, 325 A.D. was finally razed in 391 A.D. some twenty years before Hypatia’s murder. The statues of pagan gods, whose whims were believed to animate and govern the physical world as opposed to the Christian concept of natural law intrinsic to God’s creation as in “Secondary Causation”, were destroyed and a monastery built in its place. The Roman Emperor Theodosius had previously sent a letter authorizing Theophilos to destroy the public pagan statues in the Serapeum but required him to grant pardon to any pagans attempting to defend them.
In any event after the
passing of Theophilos, a violent feud broke out between his young nephew Cyril
and his archdeacon Timothy, both of whom claimed to be the rightful successor.
For three days, there was fighting and bloodshed in the streets. Finally, Cyril
won and then closed churches which had supported Timothy and confiscated
property. As to which side Hypatia favored, we have a single surviving letter
from Synesios (373 – c. 414 AD) to Cyril. Synesios was a former student and
life-long admirer of Hypatia in which he speaks of Theophilos in glowing terms,
but offers only insults towards Cyril.
By 414 AD, Cyril’s growing consolidation of Christian authority apparently alienated
the Jewish community of Alexandria. Tensions eventually led a group of Jewish
militants to massacre a congregation of Christians after luring them out with
false cries that their church was on fire. In retaliation, Cyril closed down
synagogues, again confiscated property, and even expelled Jews from Alexandria.
This act outraged the Roman prefect of Alexandria, Orestes, who was a recent convert to Christianity. He wrote a scathing letter to Emperor Theodosios II complaining about Cyril’s behavior. Cyril was outraged and brought in a group of monks known as the “parabalani” whose official purpose was to tend to the sick and bury the dead but in practice were only Cyril’s private army.
The parabalani incited a
riot against Orestes, accusing him of being a pagan despite his public
conversion to Christianity. One of the monks named Ammonios attacked Orestes by
hitting him with a stone inflicting a near fatal injury. Orestes had Ammonios
publicly executed as an example to other would-be attackers.
Responding to sentiment for a reduction of tension by the largely Christian
populace, Orestes turned to Hypatia for political advice because she was a
famous academic tutor widely respected by both Christians and non-Christians
alike. Unfortunately, rumors began to spread claiming that Hypatia was
deliberately trying to exacerbate the conflict. The accusation was that she was
preventing reconciliation perhaps by spreading lies about Cyril’s
anti-Christian activities and demeaning his character as her students did in
writing. This was entirely out of character for Hypatia so it is hard to
believe. Notwithstanding the facts, in March 415 A.D., while Hypatia was
riding about in her carriage, she was stopped by a vicious mob of Cyril’s
supporters. They dragged her to a church where they stripped and murdered her
with roof tiles or oyster shells.
The horrified Christian historian Sokrates Scholastikos describes the awful events of that day in detail:
“Some of them [i.e. Christian supporters of the bishop Cyril] therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her [i.e. Hypatia] returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Kaisareion, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her with tiles.
After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Kinaron, and there burnt them. This affair brought not the least opprobrium, not only upon Cyril, but also upon the whole Alexandrian church. And surely nothing can be farther from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights, and transactions of that sort.”
This Christian commentary is the only contemporaneous description of Hypatia’s murder and is extremely critical of political violence reasoning from Christian moral principles and in opposition the other philosophies of the era. Whether he instigated her murder or not, Cyril officially denied responsibility and publically condemned the violence. Nor was any evidence ever discovered directly implicating him; nor perhaps could any ever have been found.
CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA
Despite the personal tragedy, these events are significant only in light of the later success of Cyril. Unfortunately these violent un-Christian beginnings tarnish a later career of exemplary service and virtue.
Eight years after Hypatia’s death in 423 A.D., the Christian Roman Emperor created an imperial law from 423 AD, specifically protecting non-Christians which states:
“We especially command those persons who are truly Christians, or who are said to be, that they shall not abuse the authority of religion and dare to lay violent hands on Jews and pagans who are living quietly and attempting nothing disorderly or unlawful.”
In 431, sixteen years after Hypatia’s murder, Cyril served as the president of the Council of Ephesos, the third ecumenical council, where he was the leading opponent of Nestorianism. The Council of Ephesos ruled that Christ has one nature that is simultaneously fully human and fully divine at the same time. It also ruled that salvation is by the grace of God and declared Pelagianism, which taught that salvation was by personal merit, heretical. These remain central tenants of the Catholic Church but are somewhat mangled by Protestants.
The Council of Ephesos also overturned the First Council of Constantinople, which had modified the Nicene Creed, and proclaimed Trinitarianism the only orthodox position.
REFERENCES
1. “City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria” by the classical historian Edward J. Watts.
2. Sokrates Scholastikos, in Book VII of his “Ecclesiastical History”
3. https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2018/08/06/who-was-hypatia-of-alexandria-really/
4. “Hypatia of Alexandria” by Maria Dzielska, translated by F. Lyra, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (1995).
5. “The Life, Work, and Death of Hypatia” by Alan Cameron in “Les Voyage Des Legendes”, p. 65-82.
6. “Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher” by Edward J. Watts, Oxford University Press (2017).
7. https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2019/10/14/was-hypatia-of-alexandria-black/