Jump to content
Main menu
Main menu
move to sidebar
hide
Navigation
Main page
Recent changes
Random page
Help about MediaWiki
Special pages
Niidae Wiki
Search
Search
Appearance
Create account
Log in
Personal tools
Create account
Log in
Pages for logged out editors
learn more
Contributions
Talk
Editing
Hypatia
(section)
Page
Discussion
English
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
Tools
move to sidebar
hide
Actions
Read
Edit
View history
General
What links here
Related changes
Page information
Appearance
move to sidebar
hide
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
===Antiquity=== Neoplatonism and paganism both survived for centuries after Hypatia's death,{{sfn|Booth|2017|pages=151β152}}{{sfn|Watts|2017|pages=154β155}} and new academic lecture halls continued to be built in Alexandria after her death.{{sfn|Booth|2017|page=151}} Over the next 200 years, Neoplatonist philosophers such as [[Hierocles of Alexandria]], [[John Philoponus]], [[Simplicius of Cilicia]], and [[Olympiodorus the Younger]] made astronomical observations, taught mathematics, and wrote lengthy commentaries on the works of Plato and Aristotle.{{sfn|Booth|2017|pages=151β152}}{{sfn|Watts|2017|pages=154β155}} Hypatia was not the last female Neoplatonist philosopher; later ones include [[Aedesia]], [[Asclepigenia]], and [[Theodora of Emesa]].{{sfn|Booth|2017|page=151}} According to Watts, however, Hypatia had no appointed successor, no spouse, and no offspring{{sfn|Watts|2017|page=117}}{{sfn|Watts|2008|page=201}} and her sudden death not only left her legacy unprotected, but also triggered a backlash against her entire ideology.{{sfn|Watts|2017|pages=117β119}} Hypatia, with her tolerance toward Christian students and her willingness to cooperate with Christian leaders, had hoped to establish a precedent that Neoplatonism and Christianity could coexist peacefully and cooperatively. Instead, her death and the subsequent failure by the Christian government to impose justice on her killers destroyed that notion entirely and led future Neoplatonists such as Damascius to consider Christian bishops as "dangerous, jealous figures who were also utterly unphilosophical."{{sfn|Watts|2017|page=119}} Hypatia became seen as a "martyr for philosophy",{{sfn|Watts|2017|page=119}} and her murder led philosophers to adopt attitudes that increasingly emphasized the pagan aspects of their beliefs system{{sfn|Watts|2017|pages=119β120}} and helped create a sense of identity for philosophers as pagan traditionalists set apart from the Christian masses.{{sfn|Watts|2017|page=120}} Thus, while Hypatia's death did not bring an end to Neoplatonist philosophy as a whole, Watts argues that it did bring an end to her particular variety of it.{{sfn|Watts|2017|page=155}} Shortly after Hypatia's murder, a [[forgery|forged]] anti-Christian letter appeared under her name.<ref>Synodicon, c. 216, in iv. tom. Concil. p. 484, as detailed in [[The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire]], vol. 8, chapter XLVII</ref> Damascius was "anxious to exploit the scandal of Hypatia's death", and attributed responsibility for her murder to Bishop Cyril and his Christian followers.{{sfn|Whitfield|1995|page=14}}{{sfn|Wessel|2004|page=51}} A passage from Damascius's ''Life of Isidore'', preserved in the ''Suda'', concludes that Hypatia's murder was due to Cyril's envy over "her wisdom exceeding all bounds and especially in the things concerning astronomy".{{sfn|Rosser|2008|page=12}}{{sfn|Dzielska|1996|page=18}} Damascius's account of the Christian murder of Hypatia is the sole historical source attributing direct responsibility to Bishop Cyril.{{sfn|Dzielska|1996|p=18}} At the same time, Damascius was not entirely kind to Hypatia either; he characterizes her as nothing more than a wandering [[Cynicism (philosophy)|Cynic]],{{sfn|Wessel|2004|pages=52β53}}{{sfn|Cameron|Long|Sherry|1993|pages=41β44}} and compares her unfavorably with his own teacher [[Isidore of Alexandria]],{{sfn|Wessel|2004|pages=52β53}}{{sfn|Cameron|Long|Sherry|1993|pages=41β44}}{{sfn|Dzielska|1996|page=55}} remarking that "Isidorus greatly outshone Hypatia, not just as a man does over a woman, but in the way a genuine philosopher will over a mere geometer."{{sfn|Deakin|2007|page=54}}
Summary:
Please note that all contributions to Niidae Wiki may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see
Encyclopedia:Copyrights
for details).
Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)
Search
Search
Editing
Hypatia
(section)
Add topic