Hypathia of Alexandria: Murdered by the Jews

I have not always been an astute watcher of films, but as of late I have tried to keep up with the latest films that concern jews and jewry. One film that grabbed my attention was 'Agora' from 2009, which is dramatic take on the life of Hypathia: the female pagan neo-Platonic philosopher and mathematician who was famously tortured and murdered by Christians in Alexandria in 415 A.D.

Hypathia is a somewhat mythological figure today - she is reputed to have been a very beautiful woman as well as an eminent intellectual - having been claimed as a heroine by numerous different intellectual movements from rationalists to modern day third-wave feminists. Her name is bandied about a lot, but we know remarkably little about her other than that she was an eminent neo-Platonist and was perceived to be so dangerous by the Christians of Alexandria that they killed her in a particularly gruesome way: they scraped the flesh off of her bones with oyster shells and bits of pottery while she was still alive.

This is the story that Alejandro Cantos seeks to tell and he does so fairly well with plenty of plausible historical additions whereby Hypathia is shown to be centrally involved in events such as the sack of the Alexandrian Serapeum by Bishop Theophilis and the assault and killing of Christians by outraged pagans in 391 A.D. Cantos places Hypathia in the role of the Cassandra of religious peace and tolerance: who foresees that the pagans cannot take on the Christians and win in open conflict. However her advice is not heeded and her father; the noted neo-Platonic philosopher Theon of Alexandria, votes to declare war on the Christians. The reason for this battle is shown originally to be Theophilus' open mocking of the statues of the Gods that line the Agora, which then incites the pagans to rise up against the Christian attacks on the Gods.

However Hypathia played no role in these events - taken from two Christian sources - (1) although it is quite plausible she may have been involved on the periphery: however the actual cause of the uprising of the pagans against the Christians was caused by Emperor Theodosius I's degree in 391 A.D. that the pagan temples were to be closed and then converted into churches.

However Theophilis didn't simply stop at that: he and his followers entered the Alexandrian Serapeum, destroyed its statues and votive figures and went down into the caverns below the Serapeum where key blood sacrifices and mystical statues were kept. Whence he then paraded these statues in public and desecrated them, which caused an immediate uprising from a large mob of pagans who promptly overran the Christians, took a large number prisoner (who were then interrogated and/or forced to sacrifice to Serapis for their blasphemy) and fortified the Serapeum. They bravely held it until the Emperor decided to relent and offered them the chance to leave unharmed, but in exchange they had to leave behind the cult relics and a large number of books: all of which the Christians promptly destroyed. (2)

Throughout these events - which form much of the film's story line - we find Hypathia talking about science and about the potential of the heliocentric model - which we have no idea about her belief of or opposition to - to explain such things as gravity, motion and astronomy. As such she is pictured - unfortunately played the jewish actress Rachel Weiss - doing a lot of soul-searching about faith and science: she is also shown - incorrectly - as an absolute egalitarian as while we know Hypathia would teach anyone - pagan, Christian or jew - mathematics and philosophy: she never questioned the basis of slavery (as she is implied to do by 'Agora') or the rightness of her own neo-Platonic belief system, which she would need to do to be the absolute egalitarian Cantos and Weiss portray her as.

The other focus of 'Agora's' storyline is linked in with this religious strife: it portrays the battles between the pagans, Christians and jews with the latter portrayed as innocent victims. The key antagonist and general bad guy at this point is Saint Cyril: who leads the Christians in a fanatical campaign to destroy any book other than Christian ones and kill or convert anyone who isn't a believing Christian. This isn't strictly speaking true, but we do know that Cyril was a hard-line Christian who opposed compromise with pagans and jews in any shape or form, while the moderate camp was represented by the Prefect of Alexandria: Orestes. The latter was a Christian and keen - as statesmen frequently are - to keep the peace at all costs: thus he more than likely cultivated a close relationship with Hypathia as a leading pagan intellectual in the city to keep good contacts on each side of the sectarian struggle.

Cyril obviously didn't exactly approve of this - and as in the film - he may well have preached against Hypathia: although it is the otherwise unknown 'Peter the Reader' who actually lead a mob of Christians - possibly Coptic Christian monks - to kidnap Hypathia from her chariot while she was on her way home and then murder her in one of the most vile ways possible. 'Agora' actually shows Cyril preach and incite the mob against Hypathia, but this is only ever a speculation on Cantos' part.

Another major issue with 'Agora' is the time-line proposed in that Theophilis is shown to be killed during the pagan counter-blast over the Serapeum with Cyril then taking charge in 391 A.D. : however Theophilis actually died some twenty years later in 412 A.D. and only then did Cyril come to power. It is also indirectly suggested that Cyril was far more radical than his uncle Theophilis which is not true as he was thought to be - and was just as - radical as Theophilis. (3)

However despicable Cyril's action or inaction was regarding Hypathia and the wholesale attacks on pagan intellectuals that followed: it is a mistake to equate the attacks on the largely innocent pagan population of Alexandria by the Christians under Theophilis and Cyril with their attacks on the jews that are also viscerally presented in 'Agora' (with the film's goriest sequences I might add). Indeed Cyril is shown provoking the jews by having his followers pelt the crowd of a proto-Klemzer music performance with rocks, which then provokes a massacre of Christians by jews in Cyril's own church and then leads to Cyril preaching of what can only be described as an anti-Semitic sermon against the jews over the bodies of the dead Christians in the church where they had been massacred leading further to the expulsion of all the jews by Cyril.

This is a gross misrepresentation of what actually occurred: in that Cyril - it is true - was attempting to interfere in Orestes' balancing of the different factions in Alexandria as part of his programme of radical Christianity. In doing so he sent an agent of his named Hierax to spy on Orestes to find out what his program was for the popular mime shows. Hierax was then discovered by the jews who promptly decided that the moment was ripe for yet another riot - after persuading Orestes to put Hierax to a painful death after torturing him first - and in doing so murdered a large number of pagans and Christians. (4) Cyril took rather restrained action and banished the jews from Alexandria: although in doing so he was crossing into secular territory and thus caused a showdown with Orestes that Cyril - in effect - won.

Hence 'Agora' gets it wrong on quite an epic scale when it is dealing with Cyril's relations with the jews (indeed a lot of its presentation is simply fiction designed to present the jews in a positive light), but yet the reconstruction of the pagan and jewish relations are at least feasible for the historic literature. Thus in many respects Christianity is the evil force in 'Agora' and Cantos' probable reason for portraying it as such is that he is a homosexual in a still very Catholic country so he wishes to attack the Catholic Church by attacking its foundations and thus discrediting it so he be 'free' to be as much of a sodomite as he wishes.

However Cantos' portrayal of the murder of Hypathia is in keeping with the historical accounts and what is interesting to note is that the murderers of Hypathia were very likely jewish as the Christians of Alexandria tended to come - at this time - from the very large jewish community that resided there and had done since early in its history when it was founded as a Greek commercial hub for Egypt.

We can see evidence of this in the fact that the man who lead and organised the murder of Hypathia was called 'Peter the Reader', which would be a baptismal name. Given the proclivity of Greek Christians to keep their Romanised names (and not switch to a baptismal name): it is likely that 'Peter the Reader' was actually a jew who had substituted his Hebrew or Aramaic birth name for a Christian baptismal one like the biblical Peter who Jesus renamed from Simon. (5)

This is - of course - speculative, but never-the-less quite plausible given that we have historically concentrated on whether Orestes and/or Cyril was responsible for Hypathia's vile murder but we have not looked closer at the potential identity of her physical murderer: Peter the Jewish Reader.

References

(1) Sozomen. Ecc. Hist. 7.1; Tyran. Ruf. Ecc. Hist. 2.23

(2) Socrat. Schola. Ecc. Hist. 7.16

(3) John of Nikiu. Chron., 79.12:17

(4) Socrat. Schola. Ecc. Hist. 7.13.6:9

(5) This has long been part of jewish culture in Alexandria against which Philo of Alexandria had railed earlier by proxy in ‘On the Change of Names’; for a discussion of this in the context of broader jewish culture in Alexandria see: Erich Gruen, 2002, ‘Diaspora: Jews amidst Greeks and Romans’, 1st Edition, Harvard University Press: Cambridge, pp. 122-125