reply to post by OldThinker
Hypatia was not a young woman at the time, she was old.
Were the point able to be substantiated, this is still completely irrelevant information. What matter if she was 25 or 45? How does her age absolve
her murderers or mitigate their crime in ANY
fashion? The truth is, we don't know her exact age, because we don't know her exact date of
birth. However, considering the position she held at the library, the body of works reputed to her by her students, and by what we know of her father
Theon - it's generally estimated that she was between 30-45 years old.
45 is -not- old.
Monks did not kill Hypatia, nor did the clergy, the Alexadrians led by a lector named Peter did it. The mob of monks that Mangasar is talking about
were around several years before this scene in 419 A.D. and they rescued Christians from death at the hands of the Alexandrian Jews.
Nitrian Monks are sometimes cited as the source of instigation, if not the comprising the actual mobs. It's true that no hard evidence still exists
to pin her murder on them, however their fanatical adherence to their particular form of Christianity (which espoused isolated simple desert life as a
path to god) was diametrically opposed to the metropolitan nature of Alexandria as a city, and for what the Library of Alexandria represented as a
pagan affront to god. They were certainly an influence in the religious atmosphere of the time.
In any case, I can find nobody who denies that it was an organized group of Christians who committed the act to exact a political end. The cover up of
Hypatia's murder after the fact by the Orthodox Christian church afterwards is certainly suspect that someone within the higher circles of the
religion had a hand, whether as an accomplice or by coincidence, in this tragedy. Her story was, like many things deemed pagan, slurped into the
Christian mythos when she was merged with the story of Cathrine of Alexandria and canonized as a saint. According to Brian Trent, Raphael's painting
"The School of Athens" had to be "reworked" at the behest of Pope Julius II to remove Hypatia - although she was still snuck into the final work
as an un-named student.
Also... the date he gives in that quote is 419, about four years after the death of the Hypatia. So the monks your quoted text refers to didn't come
that time, they came after. Considering the strained relationship between Christianity and Judaism for much of the last 2,000 years,
especially in the first millenium, it seems to make sense to me that strife caused by the decay of Alexandria at the hands of the Christians lead to
violence in the years after the burning of the Library and the death of Hypatia. The Jews would have been an excellent scapegoat for the violence.
Cyril did not instigate the mob nor was he there
Cyril did not need to be there in person to stir up emotions. His correspondence with Orestes and his position of power allowed his words and intents
to travel far further than his own feet. As said, it's not been concretely proven that he ordered Hypatia's murder - but he was in such a position,
and in such a position as to benefit greatly from her death. Nor do I recall any accounts of his public denouncement of the act, or condolences of
sympathy to Orestes - despite the fact that Hypatia was well respected within the larger Christian community due to her virtue. (She is said to have
remained a virgin her entire life, devoting her entire being to the pursuit of knowledge)
The main source of suspicion for Cyril comes from the historian Damascius, whom had uncovered a forged document in which Hypatia supposedly harshly
criticized and ideologically attacked Christianity. He traced the source of this forgery to Cyril and, without collaborating evidence, published this
as fact in the Suda - a sort of historical Encyclopedia of the time.
[edit on 9-2-2009 by Lasheic]