| Full name | Hypatia (Ὑπατία) |
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| Born | ca. AD 351–370 Alexandria |
| Died | AD 415 Alexandria |
| Era | Ancient philosophy |
| Region | Alexandria, Egypt |
| School | Platonism |
| Main interests | Mathematics, astronomy |
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Hypatia (ca. AD 350–370–March 415) ( /haɪˈpeɪʃə/ hy-pay-shə; Greek: Ὑπατία Hypatía) was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher in Roman Egypt who was the first notable woman in mathematics.[1] As head of the Platonist school at Alexandria, she also taught philosophy and astronomy.[2][3][4][5][6][7]
As a Neoplatonist philosopher, she belonged to the mathematic tradition of the Academy of Athens, as represented by Eudoxus of Cnidus;[8] she was of the intellectual school of the 3rd century thinker Plotinus, which encouraged logic and mathematical study in place of empirical enquiry and strongly encouraged law in place of nature.[1]
Hypatia lived in Roman Egypt, and was murdered by a Christian mob which accused her of causing religious turmoil.[9] Kathleen Wilder proposes that the murder of Hypatia marked the end of Classical antiquity,[10][11] while Maria Dzielska and Christian Wildberg note that Hellenistic philosophy continued to flourish in the 5th and 6th centuries, and perhaps until the age of Justinian.[12][13]
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The mathematician and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was the daughter of the mathematician Theon Alexandricus (ca. 335–405) and last librarian of the Library of Alexandria in the Museum of Alexandria.[14] She was educated at Athens and in Italy; at about AD 400, she became head of the Platonist school at Alexandria,[15][16][17] where she imparted the knowledge of Plato and Aristotle to any student; the pupils included pagans, Christians, and foreigners.[1][18][19]
The contemporary 5th-century sources do identify Hypatia of Alexandria as a practitioner and teacher of the philosophy of Plato and Plotinus, but, two hundred years later, the 7th-century Egyptian Coptic bishop John of Nikiû identified her as a Hellenistic pagan and that "she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through her Satanic wiles".[20][21] Nonetheless, despite the historical record, the Christians later used Hypatia as symbolic of Virtue.[1]
The Byzantine Suda encyclopaedia reported that Hypatia was "the wife of Isidore the Philosopher" (apparently Isidore of Alexandria);[18] however, Isidore of Alexandria was not born until long after Hypatia's death, and no other philosopher of that name contemporary with Hypatia is known.[22] Moreover, the Suda also stated that "she remained a virgin" and that she rejected a suitor with her menstrual rags, saying that they demonstrated "nothing beautiful" about carnal desire.[18][23][24]
Hypatia corresponded with former pupil Synesius of Cyrene, who became bishop of Ptolemais in AD 410 and an author of the Christian Holy Trinity doctrine derived from the Platonic education he received from her.[25] Together with the references by the pagan philosopher Damascius, these are the extant records left by Hypatia's pupils at the Platonist school of Alexandria.[26] The contemporary Christian historiographer Socrates Scholasticus described her in Ecclesiastical History:
| “ | 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 infrequently appeared in public in the 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.[1] | ” |
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—Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History |
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Hypatia was believed to be the cause of strained relations between Orestes, the Imperial Roman Prefect, and the Patriarch Cyril, thus she attracted the hatred of the Christians of Alexandria, who wanted the governor and the priest to reconcile. One day, in March AD 415, during Lent, a Christian mob of lay Christians led by "Peter the Reader," waylaid Hypatia's chariot as she travelled home.[27] The mob attacked Hypatia, stripped her naked as a form of humiliation, then dragged her through the streets to the recently Christianised Caesareum church, where they killed her. The reports suggest that the mob of Christians flayed her body with ostraca (pot shards), and then burned her remains:
| Socrates Scholasticus (5th century) | John of Nikiû (7th century) | |||
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Yet even she fell a victim to the political jealousy, which at that time prevailed. For, as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was calumniously reported, among the Christian populace, that it was she who prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. 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 Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her by scraping her skin off with tiles and bits of shell. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them." [28] |
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 Satanic wiles . . . A multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the Magistrate . . . 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 . . . they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesareum. Now this was in the days of the fast. And they tore off her clothing and dragged 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.[20] |
Many of the surviving works commonly attributed to Hypatia are believed to have been collaborative works with her father, Theon Alexandricus, this kind of authorial uncertainty being typical for female philosophers in Antiquity.[29]
A partial list of Hypatia's works:
Her contributions to science are reputed to include the charting of celestial bodies[7] and the invention of the hydrometer,[33] used to determine the relative density (or specific gravity) of liquids. However, the hydrometer was invented before Hypatia, and already known in her time.[34][35]
Her student Synesius, bishop of Cyrene, wrote a letter describing his construction of an astrolabe.[36] Earlier astrolabes predate that of Synesius by at least a century,[37][38] and Hypatia's father had gained fame for his treatise on the subject.[39] However, Synesius claimed that his was an improved model.[40] Synesius also sent Hypatia a letter describing a hydrometer, and requesting her to have one constructed for him.[41]
Shortly after her murder, there appeared under Hypatia's name a forged anti-Christian letter.[42] The Neoplatonist historian Damascius (ca. AD 458–538) was "anxious to exploit the scandal of Hypatia's death", and attributed responsibility for her murder to Bishop Cyril and his Christian followers; that historical account is contained in the Suda.[43] Moreover, Damascius's account of the Christian murder of Hypatia is the sole historical source attributing responsibility to Bishop Cyril.[44] Maria Dzielska proposes that the bishop's body guards might have murdered Hypatia.[45]
The intellectual Eudokia Makrembolitissa (1021–1096), the second wife of Byzantine Emperor Constantine X Doukas, was described by the historian Nicephorus Gregoras as a "second Hypatia".[46]
Centuries later, the early 18th-century deist scholar John Toland used the murder of Hypatia as the basis for the anti-Catholic tract Hypatia: Or the History of a most beautiful, most vertuous, most learned, and every way accomplish’d Lady; who was torn to pieces by the Clergy of Alexandria, to gratify the pride, emulation, and cruelty of their Archbishop, commonly, but undeservedly, stil’d St. Cyril.[47]
In turn, the Christians defended themselves from Toland with The History of Hypatia, a most Impudent School-Mistress of Alexandria: Murder'd and torn to Pieces by the Populace, in Defence of Saint Cyril and the Alexandrian Clergy from the Aspersions of Mr. Toland, by Thomas Lewis, in 1721.[48]
In the 19th century, interest in the "literary legend of Hypatia" began to rise[49] Diodata Saluzzo Roero's 1827 Ipazia ovvero delle Filosofie suggested that Cyril had actually converted Hypatia to Christianity, and that she had been killed by a "treacherous" priest.
In 1843, German authors Soldan and Heppe argued in their highly influential History of the Witchcraft Trials that Hypatia may have been, in effect, the first famous "witch" punished under Christian authority (see Witch-hunt).[50]
In his 1847 Hypatie and 1857 Hypatie et Cyrille, French poet Charles-Marie-René Leconte de Lisle portrayed Hypatia as the epitome of "vulnerable truth and beauty".[51]
Charles Kingsley's 1853 novel Hypatia – or New Foes with an Old Face, which portrayed the scholar as a "helpless, pretentious, and erotic heroine",[52] recounted her conversion by a Jewish-Christian named Raphael Aben-Ezra after supposedly becoming disillusioned with Orestes.
In 1867, the early photographer Julia Margaret Cameron created a portrait of the scholar as a young woman.[53]
Some authors mention her in passing, such as Marcel Proust, who dropped her name in the last sentence of "Madame Swann at Home," the first section of Within a Budding Grove.
Some characters are named after her, such as Hypatia Cade, a precocious child and main character in the science fiction novel The Ship Who Searched by Mercedes Lackey and Anne McCaffrey.
Rinne Groff's 2000 play The Five Hysterical Girls Theorem features a character named Hypatia who lives silently, in fear that she will suffer the fate of her namesake.
Hypatia is the name of a 'shipmind' (ship computer) in The Boy Who Would Live Forever, a novel in Frederik Pohl's Heechee series.
Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino sees the protagonist meet a secluded society of satyr-like creatures who all take their name and philosophy from Hypatia.
A fictional version of the historic character appears in several works and indeed series, such as
She also appears, briefly, as one of the kidnapped scientists and philosophers in the Doctor Who episode Time and the Rani.
American astronomer Carl Sagan, in Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, gave a detailed speculative description of Hypatia's death, linking it with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.
A more scholarly historical study of her, Hypatia of Alexandria by Maria Dzielska (translated into English by F. Lyra, published by Harvard University Press), was named by Choice Magazine as an "Outstanding Academic Book of 1995, Philosophy Category".
She has been claimed by second wave feminism, most prominently as Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, published since 1986 by Indiana University Press.
Judy Chicago's large-scale The Dinner Party awards her a place-setting, and other artistic works draw on or are based on Hypatia.
A central character in Iain Pears' The Dream of Scipio is a woman philosopher clearly modeled on (though not identical with) Hypatia.
The last two centuries have seen Hypatia's name honored in the sciences, especially astronomy. 238 Hypatia, a main belt asteroid discovered in 1884, was named for her. The lunar crater Hypatia was named for her, in addition to craters named for her father Theon and for Cyril. The 180 km Rimae Hypatia is located north of the crater, one degree south of the equator, along the Mare Tranquillitatis.[54]
By the end of the 20th century Hypatia's name was applied to projects ranging in scope from an Adobe typeface (Hypatia Sans Pro),[55] to a cooperative community house in Madison, Wisconsin. A genus of moth also bears her name.
Her life continues to be fictionalized by authors in many countries and languages. Two recent examples are Ipazia, scienziata alessandrina by Adriano Petta (translated from the Italian in 2004 as Hypatia: Scientist of Alexandria), and Hypatia y la eternidad by Ramon Galí, a fanciful alternate history, in Spanish (2009).[56]
The 2008 novel Azazīl, by Egyptian Muslim author Dr. Yūsuf Zaydan, tells the story of the religious conflict of that time through the eyes of a monk, including a substantial section on Hypatia;[57] Zaydan's book has been criticized by Christians in Egypt.[58]
Her life is portrayed in the Malayalam novel Francis Itty Cora (2009) by T. D Ramakrishnan.
Examples in English include
More factually, Hypatia of Alexandria: Mathematician and Martyr (2007) is a brief (113 page) biography by Michael Deakin, with a focus on her mathematical research. Hypatia has been considered a universal genius.[61]
The 2009 movie Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenábar, focuses on Hypatia's final years. Hypatia, portrayed by actress Rachel Weisz, is seen investigating the heliocentric model of the solar system proposed by Aristarchus of Samos, and even anticipating the elliptical orbits discovered by Johannes Kepler 1200 years later.
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology by William Smith (1870).
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