Hypatia of Alexandria

Hypatia of Alexandria (d. 415) was a neo-Platonic philosopher, mathematician, astrologer, and teacher who lived in Alexandria, then a Greek settlement. Several works are attributed to her by later sources, including commentaries on Diophantus's Arithmetica, on Apollonius's Conics and on Ptolemy's works, but none have survived. Letters to her by her pupil Synesius give an idea of her intellectual milieu. She was murdered in March 415 by a Christian mob, led by a cleric named Peter, for reasons which are still debated.

She was the daughter of Theon, the last fellow of the Museum of Alexandria, which was adjacent to or included the main Library of Alexandria. Hypatia did not teach in the Museum, but received her pupils in her own private home. Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, had destroyed some "pagan" temples in the city in 391, which may have included the Museum and certainly included the Serapeum (a temple and "daughter library" to the Great Library). In 391, Emperor Theodosius had published an edict which prohibited visiting pagan temples, and Christians in the entire Roman Empire had embarked on an intense campaign to destroy pagan places of worship.

Hypatia clearly lived during a power struggle between pagans and tolerant Christians on the one side, and dogmatic Christians who demanded the final destruction of paganism on the other. Hypatia herself was a pagan, but was respected by many Christians, and exalted by some (though by no means all) later Christian authors as a symbol of virtue, often portrayed as a life-long virgin. These later accounts should not be seen as strict historical records, though, as they often contradict each other.

Her contemporary, the Christian historiographer Socrates Scholasticus in his Ecclesiastical History portrays her as a follows:

"There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science, as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner, which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind, she not unfrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed in going to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more."

Some insights into the power struggle of the time are granted by the letters written by Synesius of Cyrene, Bishop of Ptolomais, to Hypatia, whom he loved and respected as a teacher. In one of them, he complains about dogmatic thinkers: "Their philosophy consists in a very simple formula, that of calling God to witness, as Plato did, whenever they deny anything or whenever they assert anything. A shadow would surpass these men in uttering anything to the point; but their pretensions are extraordinary." In this letter, he also tells Hypatia that "the same men" had accused him for storing copies of "unrevised copies" of books in his library. [1] This indicates that books were rewritten to suit the prevailing Christian dogma, which may also relate to the difficulty of finding accurate contemporary information about Hypatia's life and death.

Hypatia's death

Theories range from a local, spontaneous Christian uprising tolerated by the Christian patriarch Cyril of Alexandria over a conflict between Cyril and the more tolerant prefect John, Bishop of Nikiû, a 7th century author, described her death as follows, obviously drawing on Socrates but coming to rather different conclusions [2]:

"And [after an alleged Jewish massacre was punished by the Christians and the Jews expelled from the city] a multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the magistrate – now this Peter was a perfect believer in all respects in Jesus Christ – and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her enchantments. And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her seated on a (lofty) chair; and having made her descend they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesarion. Now this was in the days of the fast. And they tore off her clothing and dragged her [till they brought her] through the streets of the city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fire. And all the people surrounded the patriarch Cyril and named him 'the new Theophilus'; for he had destroyed the last remains of idolatry in the city."

John of Nikiu also portrays Hypatia as a witch:

"And in those days there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through (her) Satanic wiles. And the governor of the city honored her exceedingly; for she had beguiled him through her magic. And he ceased attending church as had been his custom."

The punishment of witchcraft had been determined decades earlier by Emperor Constantius, as noted in Soldan's and Heppe's Geschichte der Hexenprozesse [3, p.82]:

"Things changed with Constantius, who thoroughly tried to get rid of magic and therefore of paganism. In one of the laws he passed for that reason he complains that there were many magicians who caused storms with the help of demons and who harmed others' lives. The magicians caught in Rome were supposed to be thrown to wild animals, the ones picked up in provinces were to be tortured and, if they persistently denied, the flesh should be torn off their bones with iron hooks."

With no iron hooks available, Hypatia's death seems to match the prescribed punishment for witchraft precisely. She may have been the first famous "witch", as was noted by many church-critical authors. In spite of Cyril's probable involvement in, or at least toleration of, her murder, he was later declared a saint.

Some authors have used Hypatia's death as a symbol of the repression of reasoned paganism by irrational religion. Included among these authors was the astronomer Carl Sagan, who provided a vivid account of her death and the burning of the Library of Alexandria in his popular science book Cosmos. Earlier writers with that perspective include Voltaire and historian Edward Gibbon. A recent work by the Polish historian Maria Dzielska explains Hypatia's death as the result of a struggle between two Christian factions, the moderate Orestes, supported by Hypatia, and the more rigid Cyril.

[1] Letter 154 of Synesius of Cyrene to Hypatia ().

[2] John, Bishop of Nikiu: The Life of Hypatia. Chronicle 84.87-103 ().

[3] Soldan, W.G. und Heppe, H., Geschichte der Hexenprozesse, Essen 1990. (English translation by Erik Möller.)

Year of birth

Traditionally a recent date of birth has been ascribed to Hypatia, perhaps informed by after-the-fact romanticized descriptions of her which imply youth. Many authors presumed she died in her 40's, and thus had been born around 370. However, Dzielska has most recently argued that she was more likely born around 350 and thus would have been in her sixties when she was killed.