Hypatia was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, himself a mathematician
and astronomer and the last attested member of the Alexandrian Museum. Theon is
best remembered for the part he played in the preservation of Euclid’s Elements,
but he also wrote extensively, commenting on Ptolemy’s Almagest and Handy
Tables. Hypatia continued his program, which was essentially a determined
effort to preserve the Greek mathematical and astronomical heritage in
extremely difficult times. She is credited with commentaries on Apollonius of
Perga’s Conics (geometry) and Diophantus of Alexandria’s Arithmetic (number
theory), as well as an astronomical table (possibly a revised version of Book
III of her father’s commentary on the Almagest). These works, the only ones she
is listed as having written, have been lost, although there have been attempts
to reconstruct aspects of them. In producing her commentaries on Apollonius and
Diophantus, she was pushing the program initiated by her father into more recent
and more difficult areas.
She was, in her time, the world’s leading mathematician and astronomer,
the only woman for whom such claim can be made. She was also a popular teacher
and lecturer on philosophical topics of a less-specialist nature, attracting
many loyal students and large audiences. Her philosophy was Neoplatonist and
was thus seen as “pagan” at a time of bitter religious conflict between
Christians (both orthodox and “heretical”), Jews, and pagans. Her Neoplatonism
was concerned with the approach to the One, an underlying reality partially
accessible via the human power of abstraction from the Platonic forms,
themselves abstractions from the world of everyday reality. Her philosophy also
led her to embrace a life of dedicated virginity.
An early manifestation of the religious divide of the time was the
razing of the Serapeum, the temple of the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis, by
Theophilus, Alexandria’s bishop until his death in 412 ce. This event was
perhaps the final end of the great Library of Alexandria, since the Serapeum
may have contained some of the Library’s books. Theophilus, however, was
friendly with Synesius, an ardent admirer and pupil of Hypatia, so she was not
herself affected by this development but was permitted to pursue her intellectual
endeavours unimpeded. With the deaths of Synesius and Theophilus and the
accession of Cyril to the bishopric of Alexandria, however, this climate of
tolerance lapsed, and shortly afterward Hypatia became the victim of a
particularly brutal murder at the hands of a gang of Christian zealots. It
remains a matter of vigorous debate how much the guilt of this atrocity is
Cyril’s, but the affair made Hypatia a powerful feminist symbol and a figure of
affirmation for intellectual endeavour in the face of ignorant prejudice. Her
intellectual accomplishments alone were quite sufficient to merit the
preservation and respect of her name, but sadly, the manner of her death added
to it an even greater emphasis.
She was, in her time, the world’s leading mathematician and astronomer,
the only woman for whom such claim can be made. She was also a popular teacher
and lecturer on philosophical topics of a less-specialist nature, attracting
many loyal students and large audiences. Her philosophy was Neoplatonist and
was thus seen as “pagan” at a time of bitter religious conflict between
Christians (both orthodox and “heretical”), Jews, and pagans. Her Neoplatonism
was concerned with the approach to the One, an underlying reality partially
accessible via the human power of abstraction from the Platonic forms,
themselves abstractions from the world of everyday reality. Her philosophy also
led her to embrace a life of dedicated virginity.
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