The Execution of Hypatia


Hypatia
There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, a pagan, the 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.
The trouble was that she outraged the local Christian leader of Alexandria, the lector Peter because of her intelligence, beauty and the knowledge of the wide range of sciences which she possessed.
According to Socrates Scholasticus, during the Christian season of Lent in March 415, a mob of Christians under the leadership of Peter, raided Hypatia's carriage as she was travelling home.
They dragged her into a building known as the Kaisarion, a former pagan temple and center of the Roman Imperial Cult in Alexandria that had been converted into a Christian church.
There, the mob stripped Hypatia naked and murdered her by skinning her alive by using “ ostraka “ which can either be translated as "roof tiles " or "oyster shells".
Damascius adds that they also cut out her eyeballs
They tore her body into pieces and dragged her mangled limbs through the town to a place called Cinarion, where they set them on fire.
This was in line with the traditional manner in which Alexandrians carried the bodies of the "vilest criminals" outside the city limits to cremate them as a way of symbolically purifying the city.
Although Socrates Scholasticus never explicitly identifies Hypatia's murderers, they are commonly assumed to have been members of the “ parabalani “ although it maybe have been a common Christian mob.
And what was she executed for ?
Being a beautiful, intelligent and independent woman.

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