A new film Agora directed by Alejandro Amenabar (trailer) about Hypatia of Alexandria to be released later this year. ΥΠΑΤΙΑ (c. 370 – 415) was a philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. She was schooled in Italy and Athens and like her philosopher father taught in Alexandria. She was murdered by a mob of the Christian monks. Some say she was brought to the Christianised Caesareum church and flayed alive. The upcoming film is not the first public appearance of Hypatia. In 1510 Rafael depicted Hypatia of Alexandria amongst the philosophers in The School of Athens fresco in Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici in Vatican. It’s believed that the original sketch (above) resembled Raphael’s mistress Margherita (the mystery surrounding the fresco). There is a story that a bishop objected to the depiction of Hypatia. Raphael responded by moving Hypatia to the background and accentuating the androgynous features resembling the Pope’s nephew Francesco Maria della Rovere.
I am not sure if it was really a disguise. There are only two prominent characters that look directly at the viewer. Hypatia on the left and Rafael’s self portrait in the right corner (below), a striking symmetry.
Pythagoras reading the book, Hypatia and Parmenides? to the right of her.
The School of Athens, Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican
Stanza della Segnatura, Palazzi Pontifici, Vatican
I found some quotes attributed to Hypatia that sound to me somewhat suspicion (there is no way a classical Greek philosopher will speak disparagingly about myth!). Please confirm the sources of the quotes from Hypatia’s texts:
“Reserve your right to think, even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all!
Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truth is one of the most terrible things. The mind of a child accepts them, and only through great pain, perhaps even tragedy can the child be relieved of them.”
Images published with permission from the Web Gallery of Art.
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Ben, to the contrary, these quotes are typical of a classical greek philosopher, especially of late anitqquity. The rationalistic tradition of rejecting myths as delusions obscuring the proper path to unerstanding life, which is through reasoned inquiry, is as old as philosophy in ancient Greece. It is very important to rememeber there there has been a ever -widening gap between intellectuals and the masses in ancient Greece in how they approached tradition, myth, state religion. The split begun already in the fifth century BC when some Ionian philosophers such as Xenophanes and Heraclitus proclaimed Greek myth “funny”. There was a revolution of enlightement, rational thinking that culminated in Socrates. Socrates in many dialogues says that the belief in myth is nothing more a civic habit and contains no truth. It is clear that such was private belief of Plato and most of the philosophers after him. But while Plato understands the positive social function of belief in myth, Atistotle rejects it all together, so by the 3rd century CE the whole Greek mythology is long dead.
What is interesting, that the more the intellectuals rejected the myth, the more ferverishly the masses embraced it. There is excellent scholarship about theis subject by an Irish scholar E.R Dodds called “Greeks and the Irrational”. Highly illuminating work.
Thank you for writing about Hypateia, she's worth mentioning.
Precisely, but couldn’t it also be said that Hypatia was one of the first empiricists, and among the first to mount a serious challenge to Aristotelian rationalism? I believe this is so, leading eventually to Galileo’s championing experimental science over post-aquinas rationalism in the Catholic Church, on an issue that already had been a commonly held belief among scientists for a very long time. As Ben Atlas rightly observes, the contemporary revisiting of this fundamental conflict between the two philosophies over issues such as evolution and global warming often puts Hypatia at the center of current political debate. There could be no greater testament to her lasting importance as one of the greatest Thinkers of all time.
There are people who evoke Hypatias name to score very contemporary political points, i.e. the atheists and feminists. What I am always fascinated about how Renaissance paintings embraced and depicted all these characters, even in the Vatican. And even the nudes. There were some iconic images that they cared about, i.e. Veronese was allegedly investigated by the inquisition about his depiction of the last supper (he did may last suppers), but beyond that they didn't care much. Not for the nudes and not for any Greek themes. The Papal power evolved into a political structure and they didn't care much about the orthodoxy. In many ways it was the reenactment of Rome. Rome was the true tradition of the Renaissance.
The quotes are fabrications, made in 1908 by the soap salesman Elbert Hubbard.