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Hypatia - mathematician, Neoplatonist and renowned beauty - was brutally murdered by a mob of Christians in Alexandria in 415. This volume searches behind the legend to provide a new perspective on Hypatia's life and death. Historians and poets, Victorian novelists and contemporary feminists have seen Hypatia as a symbol - of the waning of classical culture and freedom of inquiry, of the rise of fanatical Christianity or of sexual freedom. This text suggests that certain versions of Hypatia's legend have served to distort the true story. In order to correct this, it provides an examination of the culture of Alexandria of Hypatia, with its Library and Museion, pagan cults and the pontificate of Saint Cyril, Jewish community and Greek culture, and circles of philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, and militant Christians. Drawing on the letters of Hypatia's pupil, Synesius of Cyrene, the book constructs a picture of the young philosopher's disciples and her teaching. Finally it draws on various sources to examine the facts surrounding Hypatia's cruel death, clarifying what the murder tells us about the tensions of this tumultuous era.
Hypatia - mathematician, Neoplatonist and renowned beauty - was brutally murdered by a mob of Christians in Alexandria in 415. This volume searches behind the legend to provide a new perspective on Hypatia's life and death. Historians and poets, Victorian novelists and contemporary feminists have seen Hypatia as a symbol - of the waning of classical culture and freedom of inquiry, of the rise of fanatical Christianity or of sexual freedom. This text suggests that certain versions of Hypatia's legend have served to distort the true story. In order to correct this, it provides an examination of the culture of Alexandria of Hypatia, with its Library and Museion, pagan cults and the pontificate of Saint Cyril, Jewish community and Greek culture, and circles of philosophers, mathematicians, astronomers, and militant Christians. Drawing on the letters of Hypatia's pupil, Synesius of Cyrene, the book constructs a picture of the young philosopher's disciples and her teaching. Finally it draws on various sources to examine the facts surrounding Hypatia's cruel death, clarifying what the murder tells us about the tensions of this tumultuous era.
