Hypatia - Remarkable Women
3Hypatia was one of the most famous philosophers of Egypt. She was also an astronomer, mathematician, and professor at the University of Alexandria. Historians couldn't find who her mother was but were able to establish that she was the daughter of Greek scholar and mathematician Theon. He edited and arranged Euclid's Elements and wrote commentaries on Euclid's (father of geometry) and Ptolemy's (a mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist) works.
Theon raised Hypatia as if she were his son, passing his knowledge to her and schooling her to become a professor at his university.
The city they lived in was established by Alexander the Great and was the economic and cultural centre of the world. The city attracted the brightest minds of the era and was a Mediterranean cosmopolitan melting pot housing people of many religions and beliefs (Jews, Christians, and Pagans). Despite Roman's policy of religious tolerance during Hypatia's time, there was a lot of religious strife, rivalries, and violence.
As a leading mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and inventor (she invented the astrolabe used for sea navigation), Hypatia was well respected by all the fractions. Even Christian scholars who were hostile to her because of her neoplatonic beliefs commended Hypatia for her excellent scholarship and intelligence.
Hypatia was a good friend of Orestes, the civil governor of the city who promoted religious tolerance. This friendship frustrated Cyril, the archbishop of Alexandria, who accused them of being blasphemers who refused to embrace the true (his) faith, Christianity.
Hypatia's Pagan teachings. She believed that mathematics had a spiritual aspect, divided into the four branches of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. She thought that the numbers were the sacred language of the universe.
Deakin wrote about Hypatia "Almost alone, virtually the last academic, she stood for intellectual values, for rigorous mathematics, ascetic Neoplatonism, the crucial role of the mind, and the voice of temperance and moderation in civic life."
These beliefs cost her life. In 415 A.D., Hypatia was attacked on her way home from university."Hypatia was dragged out of her chariot by a Christian mob, primarily monks.
"At the urging of Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, they had already destroyed the remains of the Library of Alexandria. The parabalani razed pagan temples, attacked the Jewish quarters, and defiled masterpieces of ancient art they considered demonic by mutilating statues and melting them down for gold. They now set their gaze on the city's beloved teacher of mathematics and philosophy, whose social ranking was on par with Alexandria's most important men. Understanding nothing of her philosophy, they called her a witch. They pulled the elderly teacher from her chariot as she rode through the city and dragged her to a temple. She was stripped naked, her skin flayed with jagged pieces of oyster shells, her limbs pulled from her body and paraded through the streets. Her remains were burned in a mockery of pagan sacrifice.
Hypatia's death marked the end of paganism and the triumph of Christianity, the final act of a one-hundred-year-old feud waged by the new religion against the ancient world." - Soraya Field Fiorio, The Killing of Hypatia.
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