K. Fili

By this author

Hypatia: a victim of the clash between the decadent and the nascent worlds

Issue 2 from 01.06.2002

Hypatia (ca. 370-450) received an excellent education from his father, an Alexandrian mathematician Theon. As a tutor at the Alexandria Museum, she devoted herself to a wide range of subjects, including mathematics, philosophy, and astronomy. Although most, if not all, of her literary legacy has not survived to our days, Hypatia’s intellectual activity is known to have attracted a circle of young students, which became a feature of Alexandria’s cultural and social life. However, with the advent of Bishop Cyril patriarch of Alexandria, Hypatia’s studies in mathematics and astronomy came to be viewed as engagement in magic and astrology, for which she was sentenced to death. Thus, at the turn of the 5th cenirury, the last representative of the late Hellenism fell victim to the clash between the old world-view rooted in the teachings of Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek scholars and the early Christian outlook marked by intolerance to «old-fashioned» Platonism and its respect to mathematics.

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