Hypatia (born 350-370, died 415 AD) was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. She is best known for the fact that she was murdered by a Christian mob in 415. Her body was hacked to pieces and burned outside the city.
Hypatia ran a Neoplatonist school in Alexandria, which had an excellent reputation. All of the students that we have a record of were Christians. This was a boon to the Christian community, since other pagans had endeavored to block Christians from higher education. Then as now, a college education was the ticket to success, especially at the Byzantine royal court in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey).
Neoplatonism was not irreconcilable with Christianity. An early Christian theologian, Origen, melded Neoplatonism with Christianity. Neoplatonism features ‘essences’ and ‘ideals’, which exist in Heaven but do not exist on earth except in corrupted form. An example might be stones. There are big stones, like boulders, and little stones, like pebbles. Some stones are smooth, and some are jagged, but they all share an essential ‘stoneness’. We recognize that a stone is different from metal or wood. In an era before science, it seemed to explain many things.
Hypatia seems to have been, by all accounts, a nice and learned person. She was a virgin and lived an ascetic life devoted to learning. She taught two bishops that we know of, and they both spoke highly of her. Her way of life made her a person of influence and a leading light of Alexandria. After her death, there were efforts to make her a saint, even though she was not a Christian. Nothing in her life seems to justify her violent death, especially at the hands of Christians. To understand her death, we need to examine what was happening to Christianity in that era.
The end of the early church
In 313, Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, granting Christians tolerance and legalizing Christianity. This signaled the end of the persecutions that had wracked the Christian world for the past decade. The Diocletian persecutions (302-313) were designed to destroy the church, but instead the church emerged stronger than ever. In 381, Theodosius I made Christianity the official religion, and in 394 withdrew all state funds for pagan rituals. There were battles between pagans and Christians, particularly in Alexandria. Pagans tried to claim temples that had actually been paid for by the state and occupied choice real estate in the city. They used the Serapeum as a fortress and after their eviction it was demolished so it could no longer be used in that fashion. They demanded all of the things that they had denied Christians for three centuries.
This marked the end of the early church and the beginning of a new era. It was a turbulent time in the life of the church, and not all of it was positive. In the days of its persecution, Christianity attracted mostly true believers, and was only 10-15% of the population. Now it was the path to power, and a majority of the population became Christian. St. Augustine (354-430) writes of some new members:
“One has a business on hand, he seeks the intercession of the clergy; another is oppressed by one more powerful than himself, he flies to the church… One in this way, one in that, the church is daily filled with such people. Jesus is scarcely sought after for Jesus’ sake.”
The end of the early church and the advent of the worldly in the church heightened a new danger, which Jesus had already spoken of,
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits…” (RSV) Matthew 7:15-16
In I Corinthians 4:6, Paul lays out one of those fruits:
“…that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another.” (RSV)
Puffing up, i.e. flattery, is a favorite technique of the worldly leader, and it leads to false pride and division. This is what Paul warns us of, and it is precisely what the worldly leader wants, because then he has his congregation to himself. It grieves the Holy Spirit that the Body of Christ is no longer whole, but worldly leaders figure they can buy off the Holy Spirit later. After all, they buy everything else.
Alexandria
In Alexandria in 415, two rulers were vying for power in Alexandria. One was the Prefect Orestes, sent by the emperor to rule over Alexandria, and the other was Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. Cyril (375-444) was a Christian with some unchristian techniques and aims. For example, under his authority the parabolani, whose business was to aid the sick and bury the dead, served as a kind of ecclesiastical militia.
At this time, there was considerable violence in Alexandria. Jews were harassing Christians, and Cyril threatened the Jews. In response, the Jews attacked and slew about 100 Christians in an unprovoked attack. Cyril ordered the Jews banished from the city. His followers pillaged through their possessions. Cyril did not have the authority to banish the Jews; this was Orestes job. Their dispute was about who would rule Alexandria.
Orestes represented the moderate faction of Christianity and in his role as ruler of Alexandria, maintained good relations with all parties, including the pagans. Hypatia was a pagan leader and friend to Orestes. Possibly she helped hold together an anti-Cyril coalition. Some historians believe that Cyril ordered her murder. It sent shock waves throughout Alexandria and the Empire.
Did Cyril order her death? We’ll never know, and Cyril was the kind of wily politician who makes sure he has plausible deniability. In my opinion, mobs do not form spontaneously and murder innocents without at least tacit approval from higher-ups, and it is the job of Christian bishops to stop violence. What we do know is that the Monophysite heresy flourished in the Coptic (Egyptian) Church. The nationalist Egyptians chafed under Byzantine rule. Alexandria was the ‘2nd city’ of the empire. Egypt was a rich agricultural land and somewhat isolated from the rest of the empire. The Monophysite heresy was more a semantic definition or word game than a substantive theological dispute. Cyril was completely intransigent with regard to any compromise with the rest of Christianity. There were overtures to the Coptic Church from other Christian churches, and there were political overtures to Cyril from Constantinople, but the Copts remained intransigent.
In 451, the first great schism in Christianity occurred. The Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches accepted the Council of Chalcedon, whereas a number of Eastern churches did not. They formed the Oriental Orthodox branch of Christianity and fell out of union with the others. I think that it is futile to try to describe teaching of the Council of Chalcedon and the various heresies involved. All sides in the dispute, called (in the West) the Monophysite heresy, in my opinion, go far beyond Paul’s ‘… what is written …’, piling up endless and largely futile conjectures and semantics. It was mostly power politics, with a small leaven of Jesus to give it legitimacy. It was one leader or faction puffing himself up against another. The ravenous wolves had come, and they had borne bitter fruit. They shattered, irrevocably, the unity of the Body of Christ.
What we can learn
We’ve all seen the Cyrils of this world. They wear their robes and conduct wonderful services. A few years later, after one of them has become your leader, you find out that he has pressured young women in the church to have sex and stolen from the collection plate to buy a Rolex. Cyril was a great theologian and prolific writer, when he wasn’t behaving like a thug ruler in Alexandria. Whatever its validity in the political sphere, I have no patience with the argument church leaders should indulge in these worldly practices, if the good they do compensates in other areas. That is not what Jesus preached.
If the average Christian hears of any person from Alexandria during this time, he is most likely to hear about Hypatia. She was a deservedly obscure person thrust into prominence solely by her death. Her lynching and dismemberment at the hands of a Christian mob is appalling, and that is likely the only thing anyone knows about Alexandria of that time. All of Cyril’s works and good deeds remain unknown to all but a few scholars. They remain interred with his bones; Hypatia’s death lives on.
People display a unity in their actions, and that includes ravenous wolves. Like other worldly leaders, they cannot resist divide and conquer. The late Billy Graham was the most notable Evangelical leader of his generation. Graham resisted segregation; in his crusades blacks and whites could sit anywhere. This was still the segregated South when he did this. He reached out to other denominations. For example, he was well regarded by Roman Catholics. He never became rich from his ministry, and there was never a hint of sexual misconduct.
Graham was a healer of divisions between people. Your ravenous wolf is a divider. He gains adherents by claiming that his church is saved, and most others are damned. He becomes your champion, and then he becomes your betrayer. As he gains in popularity he will show the tell-tale signs of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. When you realize it, run, for he threatens you with far more than just dismemberment. He threatens your soul.
