The Martyrdom of Hypatia (Prof. Ronchey)

To define the conflict between Cyril and Hypatia,historians often speak of “trag edy”. Now, the genre of martyrdom in Christian literature is often an application and legal sublimation of the classical dramatic genre, with parts assigned and fixed characters.Such agenre thereforeisonlyapparentlyobjective and written as achroni cle, but it is in reality eminentlypolitical and propagandistic. The conflict between Hypatia and Cyril has traditionallybeen read in terms of a conflict between religions and between opposing “philosophies” or visions of the world, like aconfessional and ideological drama. Hypatia is asupporter of elite Hellenism, which brings her, incontrast to Christian radicalism, close to the tolerant pragmatism of the Roman government.

Pagan Damascius wrote:

One day when Hypatia was, as usual, returning home from one of her public appearances, a horde of enraged men attacked her. These wretches, heedless of the vengeance of the gods and men, massacred the philosopher. And while she was still breathing, they put out her eyes. It was a terrible stain, an abomination for their city. And the ire of the emperor would have fallen violently on them, had Aedesius not been corrupt, thus saving the butchers from their punishment (Damascius, Vita Isidori fr. 104, 105, pp. 79,25–81,10 Zintzen = fr. 43E, p. 130,17–22 Athanassiadi = Suidas Υ 166, IV, p. 645, 12–17 Adler (Harich-Schwarzbauer 2011, pp. 247–248).

Christian Socrates writes:

The woman was torn to shreds by those who professed consubstantiality (Philostorgius 8, 9, p. 111,3–8Bidez =8,9,pp. 366,5–368, 2Bleckmann-Stein(Harich-Schwarzba uer 2011,p.318).

Arian Philostorgius:

A multitude of believers in God rose under the guidance of Peter the Reader – a man who on Jesus Christ professed exemplary dogmas from any point of view – and they began seeking the Pagan woman who had bewitched the people of the city and the prefect with her enchantments. And when they came to know the place where she was to be found, they marched to punish her and they found her sitting on a high chair. And after pulling her from her cathedra they dragged her to the great church called Caesareum. Note that this occurred in the days of fasting. And every one of them began to tear off her clothes, and they had her dragged [behind a wagon] through the city, until she died. Then they took her body to a place called Cinaron and there they burned it. And the entire [Christian] population surrounded the patriarch Cyril and acclaimed him “New Theophilus,” because he had freed the city from the last residues of idolatry (Joannes de Nikiu LXXXIV parr.102–103,p.102).

Re-reading these first testimonies on the death of Hypatia, we may notice that already the ancient sources described it in terms of a genuine sacrifice. While Damascius calls her assassins οἱ σφαγεῖς, “the butchers,” “the immolators,” Socrates and Philostorgius use the verb diaspao (διασπάω), “to tear to pieces,” a technical term commonly used to indicate the ritual dismembering of the victim. It is possible, as we have seen, that Hypatia was literally torn to pieces, as both Socrates (μεληδὸν διασπάσαντες) and, above all, Suidas, in the passage ascribable to Hesychius (καὶ τὸ σῶμα […] διεσπάρη) seem to indicate; if not also “dismembered” in the sacrificial manner; and that then she was also eviscerated, with her heart torn from her body. It may appear more likely to modern mentality, perhaps wrongly, that with the shards of pottery they had available the Christian monks skinned her alive, reproducing the capital punishment reserved in ancient times for the great heretics, like Mani, the heresiarch par excellence, and that the use of the technical-sacrificial verb diaspao should not be taken literally, but as a clarification, and a denouncement, of her quality as a victim. While the Pagan sources use sacrificial terms, in the Christian versions we find those of martyrdom. John of Nikiu, who is more indulgent with the persecutors, regarding the “arrest” of Hypatia uses the verb equivalent to what designates, in the Proto-Christian martyrological texts, the prosecutio, that is the search for and capture of Christians to be sentenced to death by the Roman governmental militia, which included, moreover, regular and irregular troops.

Hypatia was the victim of a brutal power at a time and in a place where, as Chateaubriand wrote, the roles were reversed and “in the race along the slippery slope of the century” Cyril’s Christianity was the outdated and retrograde force, the armed wing of conservation and repression. While the models of sacrificial virgins were already forged by Roman religiosity, the 5th century was the “period of noble and educated saints,” it has been written, “amongst the Pagans no less than amongst the Christians” (Cracco Ruggini 1988, p. 273). As a virgin and martyr, Hypatia moves from the Pagan mythology of Damascius – who after mentioning her brilliance (ἀρετή) as a scholar and a teacher describes her intense spiritual and also physical beauty (σφόδρα καλή […] καὶ εὐειδής) emphasizing her sophrosyne (σωφροσύνη), chastity, and exalting the fact that “she kept herself a virgin” (διετέλει παρθένος) – directly to Christian mythology, with its historiographical expressions, not to mention the hagiographical, such as those found in the Passion of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. The “doctrine” is also a martyrological trait, particularly if disclosed to the public (δημοσίᾳ), since Socrates’ trial was one of the two great archetypes of Christian trial literature, alongside that of Christ.

1. • The long fragment from Damascius is reported in Damascius, Vita Isidori fr. 104,105, pp. 79, 25–81, 1–10 Zintzen = fr. 43E, p. 130, 17–22 Athanassiadi = Suidas Υ 166, IV, p. 645, 12–17 Adler (Harich-Schwarzbauer 2011, pp. 247–248). The passage from Socrates is in VII 15, 5–6, p. 361, 1–9 Hansen (Harich-Schwarzbauer 2011, pp. 188–189). See the brief fragment from Philostorgius (8, 9) on p. 111, 3–8 Bidez = 8, 9, pp. 366, 5–368, 2 Bleckmann-Stein (Harich-Schwarzbauer 2011, p. 318). The quotation from John of Nikiu corresponds to LXXXIV, parr. 102–103, p. 102 Charles. See above, part I, chapter “Mortal Envy,” Appendix ad loc.
   • That the death of Hypatia was due to literal dismembering, that is to say she was cut to pieces (see both Socrates, μεληδὸν διασπάσαντες, and Suidas, in the passage ascribable to Hesychius: καὶ τὸ σῶμα […] διεσπάρη, Suidas Y166, IV, p. 644, 5–6 Adler [Harich-Schwarzbauer 2011, p. 324]; see also Philostorgius 8, 9a, 1–2, p. 368 Bleckmann-Stein), is suggested by Agabiti, p. 100. It is also considered possible by Enrico Livrea, the expert scholar of 5th-century Egypt in general, and of the case of Hypatia in particular; he also believes that the diasparagmos (διασπαραγμός) of Hypatia can be compared to the similar fate of the courtesan Lais of Hyccara, told in Athenaeus and for which see Livrea 1986, p. 92 (the parallelism with the death of Hypatia was suggested to us per litteras by the scholar, whom we wish to thank). That similar forms of horrendous deaths were not foreign to the mentality of Late Antiquity is also shown by the homophagy reported in the Bassarica by Dionysius, fr. 19 Livrea, again per litteras. “The memory,” writes the scholar, “was kept alive by Orphism, which had one at the centre of its cult. That the ‘Christianity’ of the parabalani was contaminated by similar elements of ferociousness is no surprise; see the similar ‘punitive’ anti-Pagan monstrosities carried out a little further south in the Panopolite, by the terrible Shenoute, studied by Chuvin”; see Livrea 1973, pp. 90–93 (text), 127–128 (translation), 26–29 (commentary).
   • That this type of death was specifically reserved for those guilty of sorcery and magic, according to the edict of the Codex Theodosianus 9, 16, 5 de maleficis et mathematicis et ceteris similibus already mentioned above, is recalled by Takács 1995, pp. 60–61. See also Watts 2006b, p. 335; and the parallel cases of the bishops George and Proterius, mentioned above, part I, chapter “A Three-Handed Game,” Appendix ad loc.

• Whether her heart was also torn out (as with sacrificial victims) we do not know. On the division of the flesh and the excision and scattering of the organs (generally the heart and liver) of the victim of ancient sacrifice see, in any case, amongst others, the paper Meat and Society, Sacrifice and Creation, Butchers and Philosophy, read by Bruce Lincoln at the International Conference on La divisione delle carni held in Siena in September 1983, later published in Lincoln.

• That Mani died skinned alive in 275 AD, by order of the Persian king Shapur I, is told to us by the same Socrates, I 22, p. 68 Hansen. That Hypatia was “only” skinned alive would seem to be suggested by the type of blade – ostraka (ὄστρακα), potsherds – available to the sacrificers, and it is thus that not only Gibbon and other modern scholars interpret it as “flayed alive,” but also recently, for example, Thorp. In any case, as summarised by Canfora 2000, “[…] the scene was that of a human sacrifice carried out for the god of the Christians in one of his churches.” See also above, part II, “From Fielding to Gibbon Passing Through the Shadow of a Donkey.”

• On the prosecutio of the Christian martyrs see Lanata; Ronchey 1999.

• The quotation regarding the “noble saints,” both Pagan and Christian, from the 5th century is taken from Cracco Ruggini 1988, p. 273.

• On the models of “sacrificial virgins” expressed in Pagan religious literature, particularly Roman, and the typology of the Late Antique virgo see, apart from Cracco Ruggini 1988, and Brown 1988, especially Consolino, pp. 462–463.

• The words of Damascius on the asceticism and the virginity of Hypatia can be read in Damascius, Vita Isidori fr. *102, p. 77, 9 Zintzen = fr. 43A, p. 128, 7–11 Athanassiadi = Suidas Υ 166, IV, p. 644, 18–20 Adler (Harich-Schwarzbauer 2011, p. 247).