Français – عربي – ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ – English
Hypatia of Alexandria was a Neoplatonist philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer, who was leading the Neoplatonist school of Alexandria in the 4th-5th Centuries. She was renowned for her knowledge and respected by all for the wisdom of her teaching and council. She is the first female mathematician whose life is so well documented.
Hypatia was born between 355 and 370, depending on the sources. She was the daughter of the mathematician Theon of Alexandria. Her father was the director of the Museion, a highly renowned Neoplatonist school. While she had many suitors, she wasn’t interested in men and never married (legend has it that she gave an especially pushy suitor a tissue soaked with her menstrual blood).
Hypatia taught mathematics and astronomy to students who originated from the whole Mediterranean basin. While she was a Pagan herself, she was very tolerant of Christians and had many Christian students, including future bishops. Her most famous student was Synesius of Cyrene, who deeply admired her.
As for her works, she wrote a commentary of Diophantus of Alexandria’s Arithmetics, and of Apollonios of Perga’s treatise on conic sections. She probably also participated in her father’s edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s Almagest. She knew how to make astrolabes (instruments used to calculate the date and time based on the planets’ position) and hydrometers (instruments used to determine a liquid’s density). In astronomy, she mostly devoted herself to the calculation of the date of the equinox.
Hypatia was a well-known and respected figure in Alexandria. The Christian historian Socrates Scolasticus speaks very highly of her: “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 coming to an assembly of men. For all men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the more.” Despite this, she became a victim of the growing intolerance of Alexandrian Christianity, eager to overcome the old order.
In 412, bishop Theophilus of Alexandria died and his nephew Cyril succeeded him. While Theophilus seems to have been on good terms with Hypatia, Cyril mistrusted her. In 414, after several violent incidents between Jews and Christians in Alexandria, bishop Cyril had all the city’s synagogues closed and expelled the Jewish population. These measures shocked Orestes, the city governor, who was a close friend of Hypatia. Orestes, who had himself recently converted to Christianity, shared Hypatia’s desire for peaceful coexistence between Christians, Jews and Pagans. He was also concerned that the bishop was overstepping his prerogatives and impinging on the powers of the civil authorities, with the support of the Alexandrian popular classes, who were strongly Christian and more and more fanaticized.
The conflict between the bishop and the governor degenerated into a violent clash. In this confrontation, Cyril could count on the support of the monks (parabalani) of the Nitrian desert, South-West of Alexandria. During a riot, a monk named Ammonius threw a stone on Orestes, wounding him at the head. Orestes, furious, had him tortured so violently that he died. Cyril wanted to proclaim him a martyr, but most Christians were opposed to this move, which increased the tensions even more.
In this context, rumors started to spread that Hypatia, who was advising the governor, was working against any reconciliation between him and the bishop. The monks, furious, seized her and killed her. Socrates Scolasticus recounts her murder: “Some of them therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her from her carriage, they took her to the church called Cæsareum, 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 Cinaron, and there burnt them.”
Was Bishop Cyril himself behind Hypatia’s death? Did the monks act on his orders, or at their own initiative? This point is still debated by specialists. Whether or not Cyril did order Hypatia’s murder, the intolerant measures he took definitely contributed to the toxic atmosphere that led the monks to take action.
While Socrates Scolasticus doesn’t claim that Cyril ordered Hypatia’s murder, he mentions that her death was very detrimental to the bishop’s popularity: most Alexandrian Christians appreciated Hypatia and were shocked when she was killed.
