Hypatia of Alexandria

Gabriellebirchak/ January 12, 2021/ Ancient History, Classical Antiquity

Podcast transcripts

Well, the hol­i­days are over, and with a lot of catch­ing up to do, I have decid­ed to do a pod­cast about a research project that I have under­tak­en for the last three, almost four years. I am going to talk about the math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor, philoso­pher, and astronomer Hypa­tia of Alexan­dria, Egypt.

Hypa­tia lived in Alexan­dria in the fourth and fifth cen­turies as a math­e­mati­cian and philoso­pher. How­ev­er, she is most famous for the way in which she died. In March 415, Hypa­tia was mur­dered. She was leav­ing her place of lec­ture, which might have been the arche­o­log­i­cal area that is now known as Kom el Dik­ka. She was on her char­i­ot when a mob of angry church mem­bers, under the influ­ence of Alexandria’s Pope Cyril, ripped her away from her car­riage, stripped her of her cloth­ing, skinned her while she was alive, and ripped her apart limb to limb. Then angry mob car­ried her limbs to Cinaron, which was locat­ed near the Cae­sareum, where they burned every last trace of her.

It was a hor­ri­bly trag­ic death that not only brings a lev­el of shock to our cur­rent soci­ety, it also shocked Alexan­dria at the time. You see, Hypa­tia was loved by Alexan­dria. There are many myths about her rep­u­ta­tion, but the truth is, she was hon­ored and appre­ci­at­ed by the diverse cit­i­zens of Alexan­dria, the gov­ern­ment, and the church.

Many peo­ple believe that her mur­der was actu­al­ly the begin­ning of the end of sci­en­tif­ic devel­op­ment in Alexan­dria. The sto­ries that cir­cu­late on the inter­net say that this was when the Great Library was burnt to the ground. How­ev­er, that is not the case. The library had been in decay for hun­dreds of years before Hypa­tia was even born in Alexan­dria. The ancient, renowned his­to­ri­an Stra­bo notes this decay in his works.

Hypa­tia was quite an accom­plished math­e­mati­cian. Her father, Theon, was also a math­e­mati­cian and trained her to fol­low his exam­ple. She was so good at what she did that aca­d­e­mics and his­to­ri­ans who lived near that time wrote about her intel­lect and how she sur­passed her father in apti­tude. It is not­ed in his­tor­i­cal works and has been exten­sive­ly researched that she worked on many com­men­taries. Back then, com­men­taries were con­sid­ered to be like work­books and sup­ple­ments to orig­i­nal sci­en­tif­ic pub­li­ca­tions. She worked on com­men­taries includ­ing Archimedes Dimen­sion of a Cir­cle, Euclid’s Ele­ments, Diophantus’s Arith­meti­ca, Apollonius’s Con­ics, as well as Isoperi­met­ric Sur­faces and Curved Sur­faces, and pos­si­bly so much more. It is unfor­tu­nate that almost all of her work does tan­gi­bly not exist in our cur­rent time. How­ev­er, many incred­i­ble his­to­ri­ans such as Wilbur Knorr and Adolphe Rome had con­duct­ed exten­sive research show­ing how some of her work had been copied and built upon by schol­ars that came after her.

Hypa­tia was a pagan philoso­pher who taught Neo­pla­ton­ism. She was also an astronomer who worked with astro­labes and wrote excerpts for the Almagest, which is a grand math­e­mat­i­cal tome that assists in chart­ing the stars. Her mur­der ties into these key pieces.

There are sto­ries that Hypa­tia was a witch who used astro­labes and beguiled the gov­er­nor of Alexan­dria. This is not true. The whole sto­ry behind her being a witch comes from pro­pa­gan­da per­pet­u­at­ed by the church hun­dreds of years after her death. Iron­i­cal­ly, this pro­pa­gan­da coin­cid­ed with the can­on­iz­ing of Cyril of Alexandria.

The true sto­ry is this. Hypa­tia was a beloved philoso­pher who taught Neo­pla­ton­ism. At this time, there were two promi­nent philoso­phies in Alexan­dria. One was Neo­pla­ton­ism, which, for the sake of time, focused on devel­op­ing a sin­gle rela­tion­ship with a sin­gle spir­i­tu­al realm. The oth­er promi­nent phi­los­o­phy taught in Alexan­dria at that time was Iamblich­a­nism, which uti­lized ani­mal sac­ri­fices and mantras. It would be like the dif­fer­ence between Judaism and meta­physics. Her role as a philoso­pher and gov­ern­ment advi­sor was hon­ored by Alexan­dria. She was so loved by aca­d­e­m­ic cir­cles and the peo­ple of Alexan­dria that when gov­ern­ment lead­ers and elites would vis­it the city, they would vis­it her first out of honor.

In her class­room and evening meet­ings with her dis­ci­ples, she exem­pli­fied the impor­tance of tol­er­ance. The church did not hate her. Nor did she dis­like the church. In fact, she was a pub­lic pro­fes­sor and had a diverse stu­dent body that trav­eled from far dis­tances to come and learn from her. Some of her stu­dents were devot­ed pagans, oth­ers were ded­i­cat­ed Chris­tians, and oth­ers were hon­or­able Jews. Her lessons had cre­at­ed the per­fect plat­form to incor­po­rate a rela­tion­ship with God into phi­los­o­phy. More­over, it worked per­fect­ly for her. So at this point, she had no qualms with the church.

As a mat­ter of fact, as she was a bur­geon­ing pro­fes­sor just start­ing to take over her father’s school, she had gar­nered an alliance with the then Pope of Alexan­dria, Theophilus. Theophilus val­ued her con­tri­bu­tion to Alexan­dria so much that he even presided over the mar­riage of one of her dis­ci­ples, Syne­sius. How­ev­er, Theophilus grew old and passed away. Then his nephew forced his way into the posi­tion. This was Cyril. Cyril did not ascend to the throne. Actu­al­ly, his uncle had tak­en some of his church priv­i­leges away months before his uncle passed away. How­ev­er, Cyril manip­u­lat­ed his way into the posi­tion of the Pope of Alexan­dria. There was push back by a group of Chris­tians who want­ed anoth­er per­son, Bish­op Tim­o­thy as their Pope. This group saw Cyril as an iron-fist­ed leader.

Cyril was not a good guy, and he was the one per­son who hat­ed her so much that even his­to­ri­ans of this time rec­og­nized it. The Suda notes his jeal­ousy. Oth­er his­to­ri­ans such as Dam­as­cius wrote about his jeal­ousy of her in his work called The Life of Isadore.

It was soon after Cyril became Pope that Hypa­tia became an advi­sor to Orestes, who was the new gov­er­nor of Alexan­dria. Also, around this time, there had been infight­ing between the dif­fer­ent enclaves of Alexan­dria. And even though there had been fight­ing between the Jews and the Chris­tians and the Chris­tians and the pagans, the gov­ern­ment and the church were able to keep peace in the city.

How­ev­er, there was one par­tic­u­lar day when every­thing start­ed to go south. To make a long sto­ry short, Orestes and Cyril had been at odds with each oth­er. There had been com­plaints about the loud Jew­ish Sab­bath cel­e­bra­tions that were held on Saturdays.

It was Orestes’s job to main­tain peace in the city. How­ev­er, he did not want to pro­hib­it cel­e­bra­tions. This might have been advice from Hypa­tia in order to main­tain peace in the city. So on the day that he announced this in the the­ater, Cyril’s sub­or­di­nate Hier­ax was in the the­ater, heck­ling Orestes. Orestes had Hier­ax arrest­ed and tor­tured, which infu­ri­at­ed Cyril, who ordered that the Jews be pun­ished. The Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty of Alexan­dria refused to be manip­u­lat­ed by Cyril. So they arranged to have a street bat­tle with the Christians.

So, a day after this, Cyril encour­aged his parish­ioners to enter the Jew­ish syn­a­gogues, appre­hend the Jews, and expel them from Alexan­dria. This actu­al­ly deplet­ed a large por­tion of Alexan­dria. Cyril then tried to manip­u­late Orestes into rec­on­cil­ing with him, which tipped the scales of pow­er to the church. This did not bode well for the diverse com­mu­ni­ty of Alexan­dria, and Orestes knew this. It gets ugli­er. Cyril, now angry, decid­ed to com­mand his army of Nitri­an monks to attack Orestes, which they did. This infight­ing con­tin­ued between Cyril and Orestes. Also, Cyril felt threat­ened by Hypatia’s advi­so­ry role to Orestes. And so he encour­aged the Nitri­an monks to harass her.

How­ev­er, the harass­ment went too far, and they mur­dered her.

Many peo­ple believe that this was the end of Neo­pla­ton­ism. It was not. It was the end of Hypatia’s Neo­pla­ton­ism. It was the end of a tol­er­ant com­mu­ni­ty empow­ered by a like-mind­ed phi­los­o­phy that encour­aged tol­er­ance and peace in Alexan­dria. And so, after her mur­der, phi­los­o­phy evolved into some­thing that was a bit more sus­pi­cious and divi­sive. Philoso­phers began to immi­grate out of Alexan­dria and go to Con­stan­tino­ple and Athens. How­ev­er, in Athens in 529, Emper­or Jus­tin­ian ruled that Pagan philoso­phies and astron­o­my not be allowed to teach pub­licly. This cre­at­ed anoth­er influx of philoso­phers mov­ing back to Alexan­dria. Many philoso­phers tried to fol­low in Hypatia’s steps. How­ev­er, many were unsuc­cess­ful. She had estab­lished a school of edu­ca­tion and phi­los­o­phy that could nev­er be dupli­cat­ed in Alexandria.

Hypa­tia left a tremen­dous impres­sion on Alexan­dria. She was also hor­ri­bly missed among lead­ers in the gov­ern­ment and in the church. So much so that with­in a year after her mur­der, the Roman Emper­or Theo­do­sius II estab­lished an edict to place restric­tions on Cyril’s activ­i­ty and pro­hib­it him from order­ing his parish­ioners to car­ry out his deeds. What made this edict incrim­i­nat­ing was that Cyril was named in this mandate.

Hypa­tia lit­er­al­ly gave her life to be a pro­fes­sor. To me, this sto­ry reflects the peo­ple who become aca­d­e­mics and pro­fes­sors and who com­mit their entire lives to learn and then teach so that they can make this world a smarter place. The only way we can cre­ate an intel­li­gent plan­et is to dili­gent­ly learn, inclu­sive­ly share, and opti­misti­cal­ly hope that we can per­pet­u­ate our own per­son­al inspi­ra­tions. Inspi­ra­tion is the most pow­er­ful lega­cy. I know this first hand from my own pro­fes­sors and advi­sors that I am so grate­ful for.

So, to set the false sto­ries straight, Hypa­tia served as an amaz­ing pro­fes­sor, philoso­pher, and math­e­mati­cian. She was loved by the city, by the gov­ern­ment, and by the church. The sto­ry of her life is an amaz­ing one. Her con­tri­bu­tions to math­e­mat­ics and astron­o­my were exten­sive. More­over, the philoso­phies that she taught her dis­ci­ples lived on.

In my opin­ion, Hypa­tia was a gal­lant mar­tyr. She was a defend­er for acad­e­mia, she was a role mod­el for math­e­mat­ics, and she was a Neo­pla­ton­ic saint. But most­ly, for all that she did in her life­time, Hypa­tia was a cham­pi­on for tolerance.