SYMHC Classics: Hypatia

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Speaker 1: Hello and Happy Saturday. Listener Sheila wrote in recently and suggested an episode on Hypatia. That is an episode we have already done, and it's from long enough ago that some of the podcast apps don't even show it in our feed anymore, in case folks are not aware, Just as an Fyi, various apps have a cap on the number of episodes that stay in the feed, and that limit isn't something that's within our control. So if that's an app you used, we cannot really assist on the old ones coming back in unless we run it as a classic. The episodes are all available in the iHeartRadio app and on the iHeartRadio website, although those are not searchable by individual episode topic. Anyway, we are bringing out that past Hypatia episode as today's Saturday Classic. Just the note upfront that this episode does include some discussion of her murder and that murder was particularly gruesome. This episode came out on August fifth, twenty thirteen. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye, and today we're going to talk about a very influential and awesome lady mathematician and astronomer. Her name was Hypatia and she lived in Alexandria. She was a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, and although none of her original writings have survived until today, we do know that she wrote at least one book on astronomy and two on math. She also taught and lectured, and she developed a whole following of her own devoted students, and she really helped preserve the knowledge of other scholars like Euclid and Ptolemy. She was one of the earliest female mathematicians and astronomers, and even though she wasn't the very first woman ever to study these fields, she was definitely the best known woman in antiquity to pursue them. She was also among the greatest. At the time of her murder, she was the foremost mathematician and astronomer in the West and possibly in the entire world. Goha Patia, I know she's fantastic. Uh. There's no clear record of when Hypatia was born. Her year of birth used to often be cited as three seventy, but today most scholars will generally say it was closer to three fifty or three fifty five, but it's still all pretty speculative. It's based on events we know she and her father witnessed and how old they might have been at the time, and also the age of her most famous pupil, Sinsius of Syrene. We also know basically nothing about her early life, and we don't know who her mother was. It's possible that Hypatia had a brother named Epiphanius. His name crops up in some of her father's writings, but he might have just been a favorite student of her father's. The translation could really go either way. Hypatia's father, Theon, was also a mathematician and astronomer, and he was the last known member of the Alexandrian Museum. This museum was not a building of exhibits and collections as we would think of a museum today. It was more akin to a university or a research center, and it also housed the Fame Library at Alexandria, which contained about half a million scrolls, including Aristotle's entire personal collection, archives of Greek plays, original editions of scholarly writings, et cetera. And when people came to the library, they would copy any scrolls they had with them and leave them there. Most of the physical buildings that made up the museum were actually destroyed by two seventy two, and it's unclear exactly when the library was destroyed, but its work in preservation and education actually continued for quite a while after that. Yes, there was a lot of destruction and rebuilding and moving things around, so it's a little unclear exactly when all of those buildings. Yeah, the title way, it's really fuzzy, yes, but the work that the museum was doing in terms of educating people and preserving knowledge did continue on for quite a while after the buildings were probably also all gone. Theon's own work was also really about preservation and teaching. Euclid's works survived in part thanks to Theon's efforts. One of Euclid's most important and influential works was called Elements, and until the nineteenth century, the only edition of this book that existed was Theon's edition. Theon also wrote commentaries on some of Ptolemy's works. These were basically copies of the original piece with explanations and additional notes. So while Theon wasn't like a groundbreaking new mathematician coming up with all kinds of new mathematical concepts. He was really preserving ideas of earlier mathematicians and making sure that they survived for later generations still learn from. So he's the first archivist, and maybe not the first, but that was really what his work was all about. Yeah, Theon and Hypatia also work together. It's actually possible that book three of his commentary on Ptolemy's Alma Jest, which is a thirteen volume astronomical manual, was really written by Hypatia. His inscription says it was quote prepared by her. So yes, it's a little unclear whether she did the actual writing on it. So it's possible that writing of hers exists, but we don't really know this was really hers or her father's, or how exactly she was involved in creating it. Yeah, the attribution is not absolute on that one. Right, when Theon died, he was regarded as the world's foremost mathematician, and after his death that distinction passed on to his daughter. She continued on with his tradition of teaching and preserving mathematical knowledge and writing her own books and commentaries, and in point of fact, according to historical accounts, Hypatia far surpassed her father's accomplishments. She was said to be profoundly intelligent. She was articulate, prudent, community minded, and atop it all off apparently also beautiful. Yeah, full package. Socrates Scholasticus, also known as Socrates of Constantinople, not the classical philosopher Socrates, a different person with the same name, described her this way quote. There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the philosopher Theon, who had 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 Platinus, 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 presence of the magistrates. Neither did she feel abashed and coming to an assembly of men for all men, on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her, the more high praise. She was extremely highly respected. Yeah, there are many people who, for one reason or another did not like her that those reasons also often boiled down to religion, but even zo like, the praise of her mind and her ability and her presentation is pretty much universal among all accounts. If only everyone could enjoy such delights, I know, I mean, that's really that's incredibly high praise. I can't think of a single like public figure now that you could say that. Of right, there's no one that's universally like everyone respects them, even if they disagree with them. There's always some you know, ra ra about the whole thing, right anyway. We also know from surviving letters that Hypatia had the skill and knowledge to craft scientific devices like astrolabes and what was called a hydroscope. Although we're not sure what the hydroscope did exactly, we just know there was a thing called that, yes, and that had to do with astronomy, and that she could figure out how to make one. Primary sources almost unanimously describe her as never marrying and leading an entirely celibate life, so much so that the one reference that does exist to her having a husband named Isidorus is mostly written off as an error today. There was also a historical person named Isidorus, but he died before she lived. She was definitely not married to that guy. Like there has been no other candidate for who this Isidorus might have been. So pretty much all the scholars who look at all of this think that, like that was one person's error in writing a biography of her, because everyone else right, And we do know that those kinds of errors happen in transcription when people are copying down records into other books and stuff. It happens all the time in history. Yes, that's part of sort of unraveling history. A lot of the time is figuring out which accounts are factual and which ones are either embellished or accidentally incorrect. Right from the early encyclopedia known as the Suda, there's a quote that says she was so very beautiful and attractive that one of those who attended her lectures fell in love with her. He was not able to contain his desire, but he informed her of his condition. Ignorant reports say Hypatia relieved him of his disease by music, but truth proclaims that music failed to have any effect. She brought some of her female rags and threw them before him, showing him the sign of her unclean origin, and said, you love this, o youth, and there is nothing beautiful about it. His soul was turned away by shame and surprise at the unpleasant sight, and he was brought to his right mind. I love this story so much. I both love it and have that. You know, Hi, Patia, You're so smart. Why are you got to hate this thing about yourself? Well, and that one of the books that I read about Hypatia did get into that about how to a modern woman's ear? Yeah, you do, kind of. But when you look historically at the world of women's bodies and women's physiology, even at the time that like a girl's first period was sometimes viewed as a magical thing. So this whole story may be more about power than about look how gross this is? Yeah. Well, And she also was moving in circles that were almost entirely males, so that probably informed her view on things. I were in Highpatia's shoes, and I wanted a dude to get away from me. That might be a thing that might be a weapon at my disposal. Yeah. Sadly, Hypatia lived at a time when the intellectual life in which she so obviously excelled was quickly crumbling into hearing, and her life and her accomplishments are often overshadowed by her death, and understanding how that came to be requires some understanding of what was going on politically and socially in Alexandria at the time. The Greek city of Alexandria had been founded in Egypt during the reign of Alexander the Great about six hundred years before Hypatia's birth in three point thirty one BCE. It really quickly became a renowned place of learning, knowledge, literature, and culture. It was really one of the great intellectual centers of the world. Ptolemy was Alexandria's founder and first ruler, and Ptolemy sort of co opted the Egyptian god Serapis, which was a god of the underworld, as a son god to be worshiped in Alexandria, and he built a temple to him. That temple will be important in just a bit. Rome annexed Alexandria in eighty BCE, and it continued to be governed by the Pharaohs until Cleopatra's death fifty years later, Although it became governed by Rome at this point, Alexandria really continued to be a heavily Greek city with very Greek traditions and culture. Before the advent of Christianity, both Pagans and Jews lived in Alexandria, and Christianity was introduced to Alexandria very early in the religion's history. The Apostle Mark founded the first Christian church in Alexandria in the year forty eight, and Christianity spread over the next few hundred years, becoming the dominant and eventually official religion of the Roman Empire. By the time Hypatia was born, things were not going well in Alexandria. Christianity, Judaism, and Paganism, which was kind of a blanket characterization for people who were neither Christian nor Jewish, they were not coexisting harmoniously. There was really a lot of hostility among the religions, and the Roman Empire at the same time was in decline. On top of that, ongoing civil wars were leading to the destruction of Alexandria's life and other important buildings, and all of the knowledge that they contained. In three hundred and sixty four, the Roman Empire split into the Eastern and Western Empires, and Alexandria became part of the Eastern Empire, and life there started to go rather sharply downhill. There was constant conflict between the people of different religions and philosophies, and the civil government was constantly at odds with the leadership of all of these various religions, so it was really just a hotbed and a morass of anger and dismay so much, and there was also internal strife within Christianity as well. Was still a relatively new religion at this point, and some people were considering some views to be orthodox and others heretical. Without getting into too long of a digression on the particulars, the Orthodox Christians were the ones who believed everything outlined in the Nicene Creed, which was originally drafted in the Council of Nicea in three twenty five. The quote heretical Christians disagreed with one or more of the specific tenants that's laid out in the Nicene Creed. The Nicing Creed was further revised and expanded over the next one hundred and twenty five years and it's still one of the major statements of orthodox faith in Christianity today. So there was really huge strife within Christianity between the people who believed all of the Nicing Creed and the people who took issue with one or more parts of it. Yeah, you're a heretic by virtue of disagreeing with one part of it. Basically, that was pretty much what was going on. Yeah, it was a pretty black and white split. Yeah. Well, and the nicing Creed was basically set down as in the official this is what we believe statement. That's basically what it is. And so the people who did not believe in one of those things were viewed with all kinds of like heretical anger, suspicion, and confision and contempt are totally what was going on. In three ninety one, the emperor ordered that all pagan temples be destroyed. Theophilis, the archbishop, carried these orders out and he destroyed the Temple to Syrapus that Ptolemy had built, which at this point was being used to house the last remnants of the museum's work. Most scholars really mark this as the final nail in the museum's coffin, like this was really the end of that institution. Yeah, that appears to be when the work of the museum ceased, even though the buildings themselves were pretty much gone before that. In four twelve, Theophilus's nephew, Cyril, who later became Saint Cyril of Alexandria, succeeded him as the archbishop. Cyril was even less tolerant of other religions than his uncle had been, and he was constantly fighting with Arrestes, who was the Prefect basically Alexandria's governor, and Arrestes was also Christian, but he was a more tolerant flavor of Christian than Saint Cyril was. At this point, tensions in Alexandria, which had already been high yeah for many years at this point, really started to escalate. And then two years later, a group of Jewish extremists massacred a number of Christians by setting fire to one of the major churches in the middle of the night and then slaughtered the Christians who came to try to put out the fire. In response, Cyril decided to drive the Jews out of Alexandria, and riots immediately followed. Attempts at reconciliation failed, and tensions between Cyril and the Christians versus Arrestes and the secular government just got worse and worse. At one point, a monk named Ammonius tried to kill Arrestes by throwing a stone at his head during a brawl. Ammonius was then arrested and tortured to death over the objections of a lot of his followers. Cyril canonized Ammonius, which sort of implicated him in this whole assassination attempt. This did not reflect well on Cyril, and Arrestes came out looking like the victor in the whole situation. So, to bring it all back to Hypatia, we knew, or we know that Hypatian Arrestes knew one another. Arrestes often came to her for advice and counsel, so in the aftermath of the dispute between Cyril and Arrestes, Hypatia apparently became something of a target for Christian zealots. She was also a Neoplatonist, so she fell under that broad pagan umbrella and was consequently a target for persecution. Right she apparently didn't write down a lot of her philosophical writing. She lectured a lot, but didn't record a lot of that in writing, so we don't know a lot of the particulars of what her beliefs were. That everyone pretty much agrees that she was a neoplatonist, and since she got lumped in with the bigger quote pagan group, sorting out any of it is probably a little bit yeah of a trick. Yeah, So, in March of four fifteen or possibly four sixteen, during Lent, a mob of Christian zealots led by a man named Peter the Lector, attacked the carriage that Hypatia was traveling in. They pulled her out of it and dragged her into a nearby church, and once there they stripped her naked and beat her to death with roof tiles. After that, they dismembered her body and burned the pieces. We'll just let that sit for a minute. Yeah, it's so gruesome and savage. It's gruesome and savage, and it's like all of the accounts, some of them kind of used different words for what was used to beat her to death, but the account is pretty much the same in all the historical sources. Okay, Mathematics Professor Ari Blanki theorizes a more specific cause for the mob's targeting of Hypatia that it actually had to do with when to celebrate Easter, which according to the First Council of Nicea, falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. Thanks to its astronomical tradition, Alexandria was responsible for setting the exact dates for Easter, which the rest of Rome followed. But Blanki speculates that Hypatia calculated that the equinox would fall on a different date than the one Alexandria was actually using, which would embarrass the Alexandrian Church and cause it to lose face before the rest of Rome. So it's really much more of an astronomy intrigue story from that point of view, right, And that is one of those things that I can see where we would get to that conclusion, but it's not something that is actually cited in any of the historical sources. But Alexandria and the rest of Rome did celebrate Easter on two completely different dates, yeah, in four seventeen. So if this did, if it was a precursor, that seems to be a little piece of evidence but it's not something that's actually referenced in historical sources. Yeah, it's like a piece together. It's a fairly well thought out theory based on circumstantial evidence, yet there's no hard case file on it. Right, And regardless of what the root cause was for Hypatia to be targeted, the general consensus today is also that Saint Cyril as he later became, was not directly involved in her death, but that his actions did really inflame the tensions that led up to it. After Hypatia's death, the tradition of education and knowledge in Alexandria pretty much died out. Most of what remains of the scholarly traditions of Alexandria we have is thanks to the Arabs, who captured Alexandria roughly two hundred years after all of this was over, and many of the Greek documents that still exist are in the form of translations into Arabic. Yes, and it's not that suddenly everyone was stupid after Hypatia died, but she had really been, at that point the keystone in this intellectual tradition, and once she died, there was not an immediate new person to take over. And based on what the climate was like socially and politically in Alexandria at that point, other cities easily moved into like into a higher rung of you know, what's the smartest place, right, because it was not a good time to be a scholar in Alexandria anymore. In the words of the poet Palladus of Alexandria, writing in the fourth or fifth century, quote revered Hypatia ornament of learning, stainless star of wise teaching. When I see THEE and thy discourse, I worship THEE looking on the starry house of the Virgin, for thy business is in heaven. So pretty huh. It's a lovely memorial to her. Yeah, she comes up frequently in lists of important women in science and philosophy. Yeah, well she should. Yes, so as we said before, there, you know, there were certainly female scholars before Hypatia, but she was the first, uh, especially in the Western world, truly famous female scholar about whom we have a pretty large amount of information. Yeah, I love her. It is not surprising at all that now there are you know, there are journals, academic journals named after her, conferences and things like that. So thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. 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