Hypatia

 The crushing

No part of Hypatia’s work has survived, although she seems to have been well versed in philosophy, astronomy, and mathematics. A charismatic teacher, she attracted students from remote places who came to Alexandria just to attend her lectures. A pagan Platonist (she was the head of the Platonic school in the city), Hypatia was intellectually ecumenical and tolerant, as proven by the diversity of her followers—pagans and Christians, Greeks and foreigners. One of her disciples, for example, Synesius of Cyrene (c. 373—c. 414), was a Christian who became Bishop of Ptolemais in 410. We don’t know exactly what her philosophical ideas were, but there is evidence that her learning, practical wisdom, and manner of speaking made her influential in Alexandria and gave her access to people in high places, including the Roman prefect (governor), Orestes. Socrates Scholasticus, who was Hypatia’s contemporary and is considered a reliable source, says of her in his Historia Ecclesiastica: “On account of the majestic outspokenness [parrēsía] at her command as the result of her education [paideía], she maintained a dignified intercourse with the chief people of the city, for all esteemed her highly, and admired her for her sophrosyne” (in Dzielska 1995: 41).

There was something distinctly uninhibited about Hypatia’s public persona. She was free-spirited, independent, and, as the chronicler mentions, she always spoke her mind. She socialized with whoever she pleased, showed up wherever she wanted, and social conventions didn’t mean anything to her. A beautiful woman in her youth, Hypatia didn’t think much of her attractiveness. As a Platonist, she must have been keenly aware of the precariousness of everything finite, physical beauty included. According to another source, Damascius (c. 458–538), one of Hypatia’s students fell madly in love with her. Unable to suppress it, he confessed his passion. Hypatia listened patiently and, in response, produced her sanitary napkin, offering it to him along with a lesson in applied metaphysics: “This is what you really love, my young man, but you do not love beauty for its own sake” (in Dzielska 1995: 50).4 Apparently she kept her chastity to the end of her life, and adopted an ascetic life-style, as was the custom among philosophers at the time.

Her contempt for the body was something she shared with the Christians, but that may be all they had in common. In the Alexandria of the early fifth century a woman like her—outspoken, independent, and pagan to boot—was bound to enter on a collision course with the city’s authoritarian Christian leader, the Patriarch Cyril (c. 376–444). He must have perceived Hypatia as a competitor for the symbolic power over the city that he was seeking to gain for himself. It didn’t help matters that she was also on close terms with the city’s prefect.5 As customarily happens in such situations, Hypatia must have received warnings and threats, more or less discreet. But she did not change her ways, which must have enraged Cyril and given him a reason to act. Indeed, it appears that he incited his faithful parabalani (a Christian brotherhood, a militia of sorts) against Hypatia. Involved primarily in charity work, parabalani also served as Cyril’s “toughs,” being deployed wherever firm action was needed.6 Their involvement in Hypatia’s death, attested to even by pro-Cyril chroniclers, reveals the kind of work they sometimes did for the Patriarch.

In March 415 (“in the tenth consulship of Honorius and the sixth consulship of Theodosius II, during Lent”), Hypatia was abruptly seized by a group of parabalani. This is how Socrates Scholasticus reports the event:

They threw her out of her carriage and dragged her to the church called Caesarion. They stripped off her clothes and then killed her with broken bits of pottery [ostraka]. When they had torn her body apart limb from limb, they took it to a place called Cinaron and burned it. (Socrates Scholasticus in Dzielska 1995: 17–18)

What the report communicates is an image of total annihilation. For a mob of hot-blooded fanatics the parabalani are remarkably thorough. Slowly, methodically, they subject the body of the philosopher to a process of utter physical destruction. Hypatia is dragged, broken, burned, torn to pieces, literally reduced to nil; they want to make sure that nothing is left of her corporeal presence in the world. There is an uncanny sense here that such an exit—departure through dismemberment—cruel beyond measure as it certainly was, suited Hypatia the Platonic philosopher. For someone who associated feminine beauty with menstrual blood, the body must have been a site of discontent and frustration, a rather unpleasant place to find yourself in. The tomb of the soul indeed. This may explain Hypatia’s total lack of resistance; the chronicles don’t mention the faintest opposition on her part. Why oppose your liberators?

DYING FOR IDEAS 

The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers

COSTICA BRADATAN