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 The Martyrdom of Hypatia(or The Death of the Classical World) |
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| Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian A speech given before the Independent Religious Society at the Majestic Theater in Chicago |
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The Martyrdom
of Hypatia The Female Philosopher of Alexandria Our subject this morning takes us to the
city of Alexandria, one of the greatest intellectual
centers in the days when Athens and Rome
still ruled the world. The capital of Egypt
received its name from the man who conceived
and executed its design -- Alexander the
Great. Under the Ptolemies, a line of Greek
kings, Alexandria soon sprang into eminence,
and, accumulating culture and wealth, became
the most powerful metropolis of the Orient.
Serving as the port of Europe, it attracted
the lucrative trade of India and Arabia.
Its markets were enriched with the gorgeous
silks and fabrics from the bazaars of the
Orient. Wealth brought leisure, and it, in
turn, the arts. It became, in time, the home
of a wonderful library and schools of philosophy,
representing all the phases and the most
delicate shades of thought. At one time it
was the general belief that the mantle of
Athens had fallen upon the shoulders of Alexandria.
But there was a stubborn and superstitious
Oriental constituency in the city which would
not blend with the foreign element -- namely,
the Greeks and the Romans. This antagonism
between the Egyptian born and the children
of Hellas and Rome, who were Alexandrians
only by adoption, was frequently the occasion
of street riots, feuds, massacres, and civil
wars.
In or about the year 400 A. D., Alexandria,
which is today a third-rate Mohammedan town,
enjoyed a population of 600,000 inhabitants.
The city proper comprehended a circumference
of fifteen miles. It enjoyed the distinction
of being quite free from the curse of poverty.
No beggars could be seen loitering in its
streets. No one was idle, and work brought
good wages. Such was the demand for labor
that even the lame and the blind found suitable
occupation. The Alexandrians understood the
manufacture of papyrus, a kind of vegetable
paper used extensively by the authors, and
they knew how to blow glass and weave linen.
After its magnificent library, whose shelves
supported a freight more precious than beaten
gold, perhaps the most stupendous edifice
in the town was the temple of Serapis. It
is said that the builders of the famous temple
of Eddessa boasted that they had succeeded
in creating something which future generations
would compare with the temple of Serapis
in Alexandria. This ought to suggest an idea
of the vastness and beauty of the Alexandrian
Serapis, and the high esteem in which it
was held. Historians and connoisseurs claim
it was one of the grandest monuments of Pagan
civilization, second only to the temple of
Jupiter in Rome, and the inimitable Parthenon
in Athens, which latter is certainly the
best gem earth ever wore upon her zone.
The Serapis temple was built upon an artificial
hill, the ascent to which was by a hundred
steps. It was not one building, but a vast
body of buildings, all grouped about a central
one of vaster dimensions, rising on pillars
of huge magnitude and graceful proportions.
Some critics have advanced the idea that
the builders of this masterpiece intended
to make it a composite structure, combining
the diverse elements of Egyptian and Greek
art into a harmonious whole. The Serapion
was regarded by the ancients as marking the
reconciliation between the architects of
the pyramids and the creators of the Athenian
Acropolis. It represented to their minds
the blending of the massive in Egyptian art
with the grace and the loveliness of the
Hellenic.
But the greatest attraction of this temple
was the god Serapis himself, within the vaulted
building. It is difficult for us to form
an idea of his enormous proportions. He filled
the house with his presence. He stretched
his arms and took hold of the two walls,
the one on his right and the other on his
left. The artist had conceived, also, the
idea of making the body of the god as all-embracing
as his arms. He fused together all the then
known metals -- gold, silver, copper, iron,
tin, lead -- to create a substance fit to
represent a god. He inlaid this multifarious
composition with the rarest gems -- the most
costly stones which the markets of the world
offered. He polished them all until the colossal
statue shone like a huge sapphire. Its exquisite
tints and shades are said to have provoked
the jealousy of the azure skies. For a crown,
the god wore on his head a bushel, symbol
of plentiful harvests. At his side, in silence,
stood a three-headed animal with the forepart
of a lion, a wolf, and a dog. The lion was
meant to represent the present; the rapacious
wolf symbolized the past -- the devoured
past; while the dog, the faithful, friendly
animal, stood for the future. Wound around
the body of the god was a mammoth serpent,
which, after its many turns and twists, returned
to rest his head on the hand of the god.
The sinuous serpent was meant to personate
Time, whose mysterious birthplace, or birthday,
has yet to be discovered.
Serapis, whose statue adorned the temple,
was once the most popular god in the Orient.
He was believed to be the source of the Nile,
whose breasts he swelled until they poured
their wealth upon the surrounding soil. As
long as his eye remained open, the sun would
shine, and the land would produce, and women
would give birth. But if he should close
his eye, life would became as a sere and
sapless leaf. But Serapis was a stranger
in Egypt. He was not an African by birth,
but was imported from Sinope, on the Euxine.
When he first made his appearance in the
land of the Nile, the people -- the Alexandrians,
especially -- rose up en masse and protested
vehemently against the introduction of a
foreign deity. Did they not have Osiris,
the great god of their ancestors, and Isis,
his consort -- the divine woman with her
infant, Horus, sitting upon her knees? Why,
then should a strange god be admitted to
the throne or to the bed of Osiris and Isis?
Did they not have their holy trinity, Osiris,
Isis, and Horus -- father, mother, and child
-- the best trinity ever conceived? But Ptolemy
was king, and his will prevailed. He told
them that Osiris had, in a dream, commanded
him to accept Serapis as a new and well-beloved
god, and he did not wish to do anything contrary
to his dream.
In all this do we not see a similarity to
the story about Jesus, and how his friends
compelled solitary Jehovah to accept him
as his son, and share with him the honors
of divinity? We know how the people objected
at first to Jesus, precisely as the Alexandrians
did to Serapis, and how, finally, through
dreams and miracles, Jesus, the new God,
grew to be even more popular than the old
one.
When Christianity gained the upper hand in
Alexandria, it set its mind from the start
upon destroying two of the principal monuments
of its powerful rival, Paganism -- the library
and the temple of Serapis. Let me at this
juncture remind you that Alexandria, at a
very early period, became one of the foremost
strongholds of the Christian religion. Of
the five capitols of the new faith -- Jerusalem,
Constantinople, Carthage, Alexandria, Rome
-- Alexandria at one time led Constantinople,
and was not second even to Rome. What was
said about Christianity being essentially
an Asiatic philosophy is confirmed, it seems
to me, by this additional fact; that out
of five of its greatest centres four were
in the Orient. It felt more at home in Asia
and Africa than in Europe. A still stronger
confirmation of the affinity between Asia
and Christianity is the fact that as soon
as the Roman Empire became Christian it shifted
its capital from Europe to Asia, from Rome
to Constantinople. The first Christian emperor,
Constantine, impelled, as it were, by the
logic of his new religion, left Rome to take
up his residence on the Bosphorus, which
washed the shores of the continent that had
cradled Christianity. For a ruler who coveted
absolute power, who feared democracy, who
hated liberty and who preferred stagnation
of thought to the movement of ideas, who
desired slaves for subjects, Asia was the
more suitable place. Without wishing to offend
anyone, I must say that Christianity was
more Asiatic than Paganism, and the Orient
was better fitted to be the home of political
and religious absolutism than the occident.
Christianity, as the religion of meekness
and obedience, had irresistible attractions
for Constantine. He not only embraced it,
but he went to dwell as close to where its
cradle had swung as he could.
It is not the fault of Christianity that
the Asiatic is servile, but the fault of
the Asiatic that Christianity is so supple
and submissive. It is not so much religion
that makes the character of a people, as
it is the people who determine the character
of their religion. Religion is only the resume
of the national ideas, thoughts, and character.
Religion is nothing but an expression. It
is not, for instance, the word or the language
which creates the idea, but the idea which
provokes the word into existence. In the
same way religion is only the expression
of a people's mentality. And yet a man's
religion or philosophy, while it is but the
product of his own mind, exerts a reflex
influence upon his character. The child influences
the parent, of whom it is the offspring;
language affects thought, of which, originally,
it was but the tool. So it is with religion.
The Christian religion, as soon as it got
into power, turned the world about. It struck
at the Roman Empire, and grabbing everything
it could lay its hands on -- the sceptre,
the sword, the imperial diadem, the throne
-- it walked away with them to Asia. We could
never ask for a more eloquent defense of
the position that Christianity is Asiatic
than is found in this historic transfer of
the seat of power from Europe to Asia, from
Rome to Constantinople.
Now, naturally enough, a religion which combats
the culture and traditions of European life
in Europe, will not tolerate them in Asia.
Do we understand this point? If it seeks
to down European thought in Europe, how much
more will it seek to expel it from Asia?
If it persecutes Socrates, Plato, Cicero,
and Seneca in Europe, it cannot, of course,
tolerate them in Asia. Christianity tried
to destroy all the monuments of Paganism
in Rome, in free and proud Rome; could it,
then, leave them standing in Alexandria,
in Constantinople, or in Antioch? On the
contrary, in Asia, which is her proper home,
the seat of her power, and with the Emperor
transferred to Constantinople, Christianity
became more aggressive against Paganism and
civilization than even in Europe. Religion,
like everything else, is consistent as long
as it is young and virile, and Christianity
in the early centuries was both young and
virile, and therefore logical. Changing slightly
the great words of Shakespeare, we might
say:
There is a logic which shapes our ends Rough
hew them as we may. We wonder sometimes that
a Japanese gentleman or an Arab, or a Siamese,
who has never mingled with Europeans or Americans,
should think as we do, or exhibit the polite
manners of occidental races. There are those
who refuse to believe that a Pagan, living
three thousand years ago, could possess the
very virtues which we prize today. The sectarian
who believes that only people of the size
and calibre of his creed can be good, is
at a loss to explain the universality of
culture and virtue. This is explained by
his inability to perceive that there is a
logic in the development of the human being
which brings about the same results the world
over -- before Christ, and after. Let us
appreciate this truth. How can a Moslem or
a Jew or a Pagan be as good as a Christian?
By a law of nature and evolution the ripened
human fruit is the same the world over. If
only Mohammedanism or Christianity or Judaism
possessed the power to make men good, then
there would be no morality outside these
religions. But history contradicts so sweeping
a conclusion. There is a logic, we repeat,
in the culture of the mind which makes a
Trajan, who was a Pagan, as sweet and sane
as a Washington, who was born in a Christian
era, or the Chinese Confucius, as noble and
independent as the French Voltaire. I say
there is a universality in the evolution
of man, before which all sectarian pretenses
and conceits are like chaff for the wind
to sport with. And we cannot be really large-minded,
nor can we read history and philosophy aright,
until we appreciate the power of the logic
which shapes our ends "rough hew them
as we may." The transference of the
capital of the world and the seat of authority
from Europe to Asia was not an accident.
It was a logical step. Christianity, to be
consistent, had to break up housekeeping
in Europe and move its menage from Rome to
Constantinople. She was homesick for the
climate, the atmosphere, the peoples, the
traditions, the spirit, the institutions
-- the milieu in which she was born. Unable
to assimilate western ideas, she pined for
Asia. By the same logic, she wished to wipe
out in Asia every trace of European thought
and culture. When, therefore, we read of
the destruction of Pagan schools, libraries,
and monuments, let us not look upon such
acts as accidents in the history of Christianity,
but as the logical unfolding of its genius.
Why, you may ask, does it no longer pursue
the policy of extermination? For the best
of reasons; it is no longer virile enough
to be logical. It has stumbled into the ways
of inconsistency by reason of old age. Fifteen
hundred years ago, in Alexandria, when our
religion was both young and lusty, it attempted
to, and succeeded in, destroying everything
that reminded the world of the glory and
liberty of ancient Rome and Greece.
Theodosius was at the time, of which we will
now speak, the Christian ruler of the Empire.
In reply to a request by the Archbishop of
Alexandria, he sent a sentence of destruction
against the ancient religion of Egypt. Both
the Pagans and the Christians had assembled
in the public square to hear the reading
of the Emperor's letter, and when the Christians
learned that they may destroy the gods of
the Pagans, a wild shout of joy rent the
air. The disappointed Pagans, on the other
hand, realizing the danger of their position,
silently slipped into their homes through
dark alleys and hidden passage-ways. Yet
they did not stand aside and see the temples
of their gods razed to the ground without
first offering a desperate resistance. Under
the leadership of a zealot, Olympus, the
Pagans fell upon the Christians, maddened
with the cry in their ears of their leader,
"Let us die with our gods!" Then
came the turn of the Christians. Theophilius,
the Archbishop of Alexandria, with a cross
in his hand, and followed by his monks, marched
upon the temple of Serapis, and proceeded
to pull its pillars down. When they came
to strike at the colossal statue of the god,
for centuries worshiped as a deity, even
the Christians turned pale with superstitious
awe, and held their breath. A soldier armed
with a heavy axe, was hesitating to strike
the first blow. Will the god tolerate the
insult? Will he not crash the roof upon the
heads of the sacrilegious vandals? But the
soldier struck the thundering blow right
in the cheeks of Serapis, who offered no
remonstrance whatever. The sun shone as usual,
and the laws of nature maintained their even
pace. Encouraged by this indifference of
the god to defend himself, the Christian
rabble rushed upon the statue, and pulling
Serapis off his seat, dragged him in pieces
through the streets of Alexandria that the
Pagans might behold the disgrace into which
their great god had fallen. Thousands of
Pagans, seeing how helpless their gods were
to avenge this insult, deserted Paganism
and joined the Christians. As soon as the
ground of the temple was sufficiently cleared,
a church was erected on the ancient site.
The Alexandrian library was the next point
of attack. Its shelves were soon cleared,
and you and I, and twenty centuries, were
most lamentably deprived of the intellectual
treasures which our Greek and Roman forefathers
had bequeathed unto us.
When the archbishop under whose influence
the monuments and libraries of Pagan civilization
were pillaged and pulled down died, he was
succeeded by his nephew, St. Cyril, who was
even more Asiatic in his sympathies and more
hostile to European thought than his uncle,
Theophilius. The new archbishop directed
his efforts against the living monuments
of Paganism -- the scholars, the poets, the
philosophers -- the men and women who still
cherished a passionate regard for the culture
and civilization of the Pagan world. The
most illustrious representative of Greco-Roman
culture in Alexandria about this time was
Hypatia, the gifted daughter of Theon, a
mathematician and a philosopher of considerable
renown. It is said that Theon would have
come down to us as a great man had not his
daughter's fame eclipsed his.
Hypatia was a remarkably gifted woman. Her
example demonstrates how all difficulties
yield to a strong will. Being a girl, and
excluded by the conventions of the time from
intellectual pursuits, she could have given
many reasons why she should leave philosophy
to stronger and freer minds. But she had
an all-compelling passion for the life of
the mind, which overcame every obstacle that
interfered with her purpose. The example
of a young woman conquering tremendous difficulties,
and becoming the undisputed queen of an intellectual
empire, ought to be a great inspiration to
us faint hearts. She won the prize which
was denied her sex, and became "the
glory of her age and the wonder of ours."
To pursue her studies, she persuaded her
father to send her to Athens, where her earnest
work, her devotion to philosophy, the readiness
with which she sacrificed all her other interests
to the cultivation of her mind, earned for
herself the laurel wreath which the university
of Athens conferred only upon the foremost
of its pupils. Hypatia wore this wreath whenever
she appeared in public, as her best ornament.
Upon her return to Alexandria, she was elected
president of the Academy, which at this period
was the rendezvous of the leading minds of
the East and West. In fact, it was in this
academy that the effort of the advanced thinkers
to bring about a pacification between the
culture of Europe and that of Asia originated.
They wished to make Alexandria, situated
midway between the occident and the orient,
the point of confluence of the two streams
of civilization. They wished to celebrate
the marriage of the East as bride to the
West as bridegroom. It was their plan to
make Alexandria a sort of intellectual distillery,
refining and fusing the two civilizations
into one. But this amalgamation -- this assimilation
-- Christianity, alas, helped to prevent
by bringing into still bolder relief the
Asiatic habits of mind, and by refusing to
concede an inch to the larger spirit of the
West. Christianity is responsible for the
miscarriage which has ever since left Asia
a widow, or, to change the simile, a withered
branch upon the tree of civilization. Christianity
broke the link which scholarship and humanity
were trying to forge between Europe and Asia.
The world has never since been one as it
came near being under the Roman Empire.
Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria, persuaded
himself that Hypatia's good name and talents
were giving the cause of Paganism a dangerous
prestige, and thereby preventing the progress
of the new faith. Hypatia was indeed a great
power in Alexandria. She was the most popular
personage in the city. When she appeared
in her chariot on the streets people threw
flowers at her, applauded her gifts, and
cried, "Long live the daughter of Theon."
Poets called her the "Virgin of Heaven,"
"the spotless star," "of highest
speech the flower." Judging by the chronicles
of the times, it appears that her beauty,
which would have made even a Cleopatra jealous,
was as great as her modesty, and both were
matched by her eloquence, and all three surpassed
by her learning.
Her beauty did astonish the survey of eyes,
Her words all ears took captive. Her renown
as a lecturer on philosophy brought students
from Rome and Athens, and all the great cities
of the empire, to Alexandria. It was one
of the great events of each day to flock
to the hall in the academy where Hypatia
explained Plato and Aristotle. Cyril, the
Asiatic archbishop, passing frequently the
house of Hypatia, and seeing the long train
of horses, litters, and chariots which had
brought a host of admirers to the female
philosopher's shrine, conceived a terrible
hatred for this Pagan girl. He did not relish
her popularity. Her learning was rubbish
to him. Her charms, temptations for the ruin
of man. He hated her because she, a frail
woman, dared to be free and to think for
herself. He argued in his mind that she was
competing with Christianity, taking away
from Christ the homage which belonged to
him. With Hypatia out of the way the people
would turn to God, and give him the love
and honor which they were wasting upon her.
She was robbing God of his rights, and she
must fall; for He is a jealous God. Such
was the reasoning of Cyril, whom the Church
has canonized. Moreover, Orestes, the Prefect
of Alexandria, respected Hypatia, and was
a constant attendant at her lectures. Cyril
believed that she influenced the Prefect
and tainted him with her Paganism. With Hypatia
crushed, Orestes would be more responsive
to Christian influences. Ah, it is a cruel
story which I am about to unfold. Generally
speaking, if a man is jealous and small,
no religion can make him sweet; and if he
is generous and pure-minded, no superstition
can altogether poison the springs of his
love. Religion is strong, but nature is stronger.
Unfortunately Cyril was a barbarian, and
the doctrines of his religion only sharpened
his claws and whipped his passion into a
rage.
If we were living in those days we would
have witnessed at the close of each day,
when both sea and sky blush with the departing
kiss of the sun, Hypatia mounting her chariot
to ride to the academy, where she is announced
to speak on some philosophical subject. She
is followed by many enthusiastic and devoted
admirers impatient to catch her eye. She
is nodding to her friends on her right and
on her left. She, who refused lovers that
she may love philosophy, is not insensible
to the appreciation of her pupils. Approaching
the academy, she dismounts, ascends the white
marble steps and enters by the door, on either
side of which sit two silent sphinxes. As
we follow her into the hall, we see that
it is lighted by numerous swinging lamps
filled with perfumed oil; the rotunda of
the ceiling has been embellished by a Greek
artist, with figures of Jupiter and his divine
companions, who appear to be rapt in the
words which fall from his lips. The walls
have been decorated by Egyptian artists,
with pictures of the sacred animals, the
crocodile, the cat, the cow, and the dog;
and with sacred vegetables, the onion, the
lotus, and the laurel. Besides these there
is a scene on the walls representing the
marriage of Osiris and Isis. On an elevated
platform is a divan in purple velvet, and
upon a little table is placed the silver
statue of Minerva, goddess of wisdom and
patron of Hypatia. Behind the table sits
the philosophic young woman dressed in a
robe of white, fastened about her throat
and waist by a band of pearls, and carrying
upon her brow the laurel crown which Athens
had decreed to her. A musical murmur sweeps
over the audience as she rises to her feet.
But in a moment all is silent again save
the throbbing and trembling of Hypatia's
silvery voice. She speaks in Greek, the language
of thought and beauty, of the ancient world.
Alas! this is her last appearance at the
academy. Tomorrow that hall will be a tomb.
Tomorrow Minerva will be childless. When
Hypatia's listeners bade her farewell on
that evening they did not know that within
a few hours they would all become orphans.
The next morning, when Hypatia appeared in
her chariot in front of her residence, suddenly
five hundred men, all dressed in black and
cowled, five hundred half-starved monks from
the sands of the Egyptian desert -- five
hundred monks, soldiers of the cross -- like
a black hurricane, swooped down the street,
boarded her chariot, and, pulling her off
her seat, dragged her by the hair of her
head into a -- how shall I say the word?
-- into a church! Some historians intimate
that the monks asked her to kiss the cross,
to become a Christian and join the nunnery,
if she wished her life spared. At any rate,
these monks, under the leadership of St.
Cyril's right-hand man, Peter the Reader,
shamefully stripped her naked, and there,
close to the alter and the cross, scraped
her quivering flesh from her bones with oystershells.
The marble floor of the church was sprinkled
with her warm blood. The alter, the cross,
too, were bespattered, owing to the violence
with which her limbs were torn, while the
hands of the monks presented a sight too
revolting to describe. The mutilated body,
upon which the murderers feasted their fanatic
hate, was then flung into the flames.
Oh! is there a blacker deed in human annals?
When has another man or woman been so inhumanly
murdered? Has politics, has commerce, has
cannibalism even committed a more cruel crime?
The cannibal pleads hunger to cover his cruelty
-- what excuse had Hypatia's murderers? Even
Joan of Arc was more fortunate in her death
than this daughter of Paganism! Beautiful
woman! murdered by men who were not worthy
to touch the hem of thy garment! And to think
that this happened in a church -- a Christian
church!
I have seen the frost bite the flower; I
have watched the spider trap the fly; I have
seen the serpent spring upon the bird! And
yet I love nature! But I will never enter
a church nor profess a religion which can
commit such a deed against so lovable a woman.
No, not even if I were offered as a bribe
eternal life! If, O priests and preachers!
instead of one hell, there were a thousand,
and each hell more infernal than your creeds
describe, yet I would sooner they would all
swallow me up, and feast their insatiable
lust upon my poor bones for ever and ever,
than lend countenance or support to an institution
upon which history has fastened the indelible
stigma of Hypatia's murder!
I wish I could live a thousand years to admire
the noble spirit and delight in the courage
and beauty of this brave martyr of Philosophy,
Hypatia! O that my voice were strong enough
to reach the ends of the world! I would then
summon all independent minds to join with
me in a hymn of praise to that incomparable
woman, who has joined the choir invisible
and
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
Honor and love to beautiful Hypatia! Pity
to the monks who killed her! A delicious
feeling of satisfaction, like a warm sunshine
on a wintry day, spreads over me as I contemplate
the privilege I am enjoying of vindicating
her memory against her assassins. Fortune
has smiled upon me in selecting me as one
of her defenders. I congratulate myself on
having both the heart and the head to weep
over her sad fate. And I tremble and shrink,
as from a paralyzing nightmare, when I think
that, under different circumstances, I might
still have a minister of the Church whose
hands are, after fifteen hundred years, still
unwashed of her innocent blood. The thought
overpowers me; I labor for breath. But I
am free. O joy, O rapture! I am free to speak
the truth about Hypatia. Let the clergy praise
Peter and Paul, St. Cyril and St. Theophilius.
I give my heart to thee, thou glorious victim
of superstition! If we, of this present generation,
are responsible for Adam's sin, and deserve
the penalties of his disobedience, as the
clergy say we do, then the Church of today
is responsible for Hypatia's fate. How will
they take this practical application of their
own dogma? It will not do for them to say:
"We wash our hands clean of St. Cyril's
sin"; for if Adam can, by his remote
act, expose us all to damnation, so shall
Bishop Cyril's dark deed cleave for ever
unto the religion which his followers profess.
Yet, let the Church people apologize, and
we shall forgive them; but no apology short
of discarding this Asiatic slave-creed, which
in the Old Testament stoned the free thinker
to death, and in the New pronounces him a
"heathen and a publican," will
satisfy the ends of justice.
I have intimated, by the wording of my subject,
that it was a classic world which was murdered
in the person of one of its last and noblest
representatives, Hypatia. Hypatia embodied
in her life and teaching, the proud spirit,
the beauty, the culture, and the sanity of
Greece. With her, fell Greece; fell the intellectual
world from her eminence.
Then followed the nearly ten centuries of
Egyptian darkness, which settling over Europe,
paralyzed all initiative. During the thousand
years in which the spirit of St. Cyril and
his Church managed, with undisputed sway,
the affairs of religion and the State, night
folded to its sterile bosom our orphaned
humanity, and the chains of slavery were
upon every mind. A cloud of dust rising heaven-high
choked the flow and dried up the fountains
which had, in the days of Pericles and Antoninus,
poured forth a world of living waters. The
barren and lumbering theology of the Church
crowded out the Muses from their earthly
walks, and the world became a prison after
having been the home of man. One by one the
great lights went out; Athens was no more,
Rome was dead. The bloom had vanished from
the face of the earth, and in its place there
fell upon it the awful shadow of a future
hell.
Symonds, in his "The Greek Poets,"
says that while Cyril's mobs were dismembering
Hypatia, the Greek authors went on creating,
"Musaeus sang the lamentable death of
Leander, and Nonnus was perfecting a new
and more polished form of the hexameter."
These authors, ignorant that the Asiatic
superstition had destroyed their world, or
that they had themselves been stabbed to
death -- like one who has been shot, but
whose wound is still warm, and who does not
know that he has but a few more breaths to
draw -- kept on singing their song. But their
song was, indeed, the "very swan's notes"
of the classical world. "With the story
of Hero and Leander, that immortal love poem,
the Muse," says the same author, "took
her final farewell of her beloved Hellas."
After a thousand years of night, when the
world awoke from her sleep, the first song
it sang was the last long of the dying Pagan
world. This is wonderfully strange. In the
year 1493, when the Renaissance ushered in
a new era, the first book brought out in
Europe was the last book written in Alexandria
by a Pagan. It was the poem of Hero and Leander.
The new world resumed the golden thread where
the old world had lost it. The severed streams
of thought and beauty met again into one
current, and began to sing and shine as it
rushed forth once more, as in the days of
old. A Greek poem was the last product of
the Pagan world; the same Greek poem was
the first product of the new and renascent
world.
Between the dying and reviving Pagan world
was the Christian Church -- that is to say,
ten dark centuries.
If Greece and Rome made art, poetry, philosophy,
sculpture, the drama, oratory, beauty, (and)
liberty classical, (then) Christianity the
Syrian, Asiatic cult made for nearly fifteen
hundred years persecution, religious wars,
massacres, theological feuds and bloodshed,
heresy huntings and heretic burnings, prisons,
dungeons, anathemas, curses, opposition to
science, hatred of liberty, spiritual bondage,
the life without love or laughter, a classic!
But the dawn is in the sky, and it is daybreak
everywhere!
We are reasonably confident that never again
will this religion, born and bred in Asia,
command sufficient influence over the minds
of modern men to burn or murder the intellectual
aristocrats, the daily beauty of whose lives
makes the ugliness of superstition so very
noticeable. What a difference there would
have been in our attitude toward the Christian
Church, if, instead of fearing the thinker
and the inquirer, and persecuting him with
a hatred too awful to contemplate, it had
opened both its arms to welcome him with
affection and gratitude! But the "divine"
is always jealous of the human. Hypatia eclipsed
the glory of God. She was murdered because
only "the poor in spirit" -- the
intellectual babes, are the elect of Heaven.
It is good news, however, that while the
Church may still exclude the mental giants
from the world to come, it can no longer
exclude them from the world that now is!
Bibliographic information: Mangasar Mugurditch
Mangasarian 1859-1943, Mangasarian's lectures
Chicago : s. n., 1912-1919 (v. ; 22 cm) Series:
Rationalist (Independent Religious Society
of Chicago), v. 1-4
Mangasar Mugurditch Mangasarian 1859-1943, "The martyrdom of Hypatia, or, The death of the classical world.", The Rationalist, May 1915
Text entry by someone who wishes to remain
anonymous, from The Rationalist. HTML conversion by Howard A. Landman.
Howard A. Landman / howard@polyamory.org Created 1996 April 10 Last updated 1999 April 29 Hypatia of Alexandria, Egypt b. 355(?) AD - d. 415 AD The first woman to make a substantial contribution
to the development of mathematics, astronomy
and philosophy. She was a pagan woman who,
because of her friendship with the prefect
and her radical ideas, was murdered by Christian
monks on the streets of Alexandria. The Primary Sources |
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