Hypatia: The Sum of Her Life — Chapter One
I have good hope that there is something after death. This is a quote by Plato that I chose to use for the first chapter of my recently published book, Hypatia: The Sum of Her Life. This quote is so profound to me because her legacy continued to live on after Hypatia’s death. Some were negative, some were propaganda, and some were a perfect and true reflection of this astounding woman who was a prominent and respected mathematician, philosopher, professor, and government advisor.
1
ALEXANDRIA’S DESCENT
415 CE
I have good hope that there is something after death.1 – Plato
Hypatia stood at the precipice of change. As her father’s legacy, she watched the academic institute that her father wholeheartedly worked for crumbling and decaying at the hands of change. Like her father, Hypatia immersed herself in academics during an era that was perishing. Regardless, she persisted in encouraging self-development and intellectual aptitude.
At the pinnacle of her career, in her late forties or early fifties, Hypatia was a revered and treasured Roman citizen of Alexandria. One spring evening during Lent in March 415, Hypatia stepped outside to the refreshing Alexandrian spring air. Dressed in her philosopher’s white cloak, she left her lecture hall, ascended into her chariot, and began her ride home.
That evening, as the indulgent blankets of sunset softened the colors of the buildings and veiled the mood and tone of Alexandria, the scents of the indigenous lotus bloom perhaps tempted many to come outside to relish in the springtime evening. However, behind the shadows cast by the twilight, the monks, also known as the parabalani from the Nitrian hills, began to rise as they prepared to do the bidding of a forceful church leader.
At this point in her career, Hypatia was dedicated to enlightening her students with philosophy, science, astronomy, and mathematics. The city was socially evolving. Her steadfast disciples and students existed with their hearts in the new Christian movement and their minds in Alexandria’s old, trusted academics. Far past the borders of Alexandria and throughout Rome, many knew Hypatia as an exceptionally accomplished professor, revered scholar, philosopher, and respected political advisor. Her students and disciples reflected this as they became cultivated leaders, intelligent rhetoricians, and insightful educators.
Even so, the profoundness of her competence also seeded jealousy in others. Cyril, the new Pope of Alexandria, was keenly aware of who she was and what kind of pragmatic influence she wielded. Cyril had motives some considered authoritarian.2 His ulterior intentions were no secret to his peers and his enemies.3 He felt threatened by Hypatia, and the city knew it. He watched her closely with a piercing eye while his malevolence and venom followed her wherever she wandered. Cyril was angry, and so were his congregants. Accordingly, different factions of this once-tolerant city festered with resentment and divisions.
Hypatia had a legendary standing in the community. In Alexandria and surrounding cities, many knew her, many knew of her, and many celebrated her. Given the platform from which ancient historians and a former disciple wrote about her, it is evident she altruistically shared the depths of her knowledge with her eager learners. She had self-respect that was infectious and intelligence that inspired. Hypatia’s renowned prominence allowed her to advise and influence local and surrounding government officials, Alexandrian communities, and the city’s academics. Hypatia was one of Alexandria’s most valuable figures, and the town of Alexandria loved her.
However, as she traveled through the city that evening, the vicious parabalani approached her. Yanking her off her chariot, they dragged her to a nearby church called the Caesareum. There, at their religious sanctuary, they morbidly stripped Hypatia of her clothes and dignity in a moment of chaos. As she lay on the steps of their church, the monks swarmed over her body like a barbaric hurricane.
The heartless mob stomped on her body, smashed her ribs, and shattered her limbs. Then, as their demonic act heightened to brutal inhumanity, the Alexandrian churchgoers gathered shards of ceramic tiles and flayed the skin off her body.
Hypatia’s body dripped with blood. Her eyes, which once looked upon her disciples with pride, her arms, which carried treasured books, and her legs, which walked through the city’s respected university, were now mangled and unrecognizable. At the instigation of one man, the mob suffocated her mind, massacred her soul, and demolished the constructs of all that she gave to Alexandria. Cyril’s pack of human monsters shattered Hypatia’s personal temple and destroyed Alexandria’s treasured incandescence. Even after Hypatia relinquished her life, the beasts continued.
As the sun began its final daily descent, Hypatia exhaled her last breath. Her pain dissipated as she slipped away from the world. Possibly, to Hypatia, the screams of evil and wrath became muffled while she faded into a place of comfort as the vehement mob ripped off her limbs.
All around, witnesses in Hypatia’s beloved city watched as the throng proudly carried her appendages through the streets of Alexandria to the Cinaron, where they burned her remains.
The act was over.
On that spring day, all that defined Hypatia had disintegrated during Alexandria’s gruesome and violent commotion. Her extraordinary life, respectful love for her disciples, hard-earned accomplishments, academic passions, highly trained intellect, and sapient thoughts all burned to ashes and blew away with the Alexandrian spring breeze.
This murder was the end of her life and the apex of time that signified the fast decline of Neoplatonic Paganism – that breathtaking evening ushered in the birth of oppression, suppression, and government-ordered illiteracy.
Her gruesome demise juxtaposed her abundant life that included a loving community of friends, disciples, students, peers, and political leaders. Hypatia had seized and achieved opportunities many would consider beyond reach for any academic, let alone for a woman. She was the heir of the great mathematician Theon and rightfully the head of her own university. She had established herself as a prominent scholar, government counsel, and asset to Alexandria’s community and time-honored academia.
The account of her death is brief; however, the story of her world and her life is not. Thus, through the gift of historians, scholastics, and academics, we find traces of Hypatia. And through these outlines, we can honor her and remember her not for her death but for all she embraced.
- Plato et al., The Apology, Phaedo, and Crito of Plato (New York: PF Collier & Son, 1909), 51.
- Edward J Watts, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 202.
- Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, Comprising a History of the Church, in Seven Books (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1853), 349