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2 Newcastle-street, Farringdon-street, E.C.
�THE MARTYRDOM OF HYPATIA.
Our subject this morning takes us to the city of Alexandria,
one of the greatest intellectual centres 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. Serv
ing 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 philo
sophy, 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 con
stituency 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 adop
tion, was frequently the occasion of street riots, feuds, mas; sacres, and civil wars.
In or about the year 400 a.d., Alexandria, which is to-day
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.
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After its magnificent library, whose shelves supported S’,
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 civilisation,
second only to the temple of Jupiter in Rome, and to the
inimitable Parthenon in Athens, which latter is certainly the
best gem earth every wore upon her zone.
The Serapis temple v,as 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 acentral one of vaster dimensions, rising on pillars of huge
magnitude and graceful proportions. Some critics have
advanced the idea that the builders of this masterpieceintended to make it a composite structure, combining the
diverse elements of Egyptian and Greek art into a harmo
nious 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. Iff
represented to their minds the blending of the massive, inEgyptian 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:
�&Ma^taART¥RDOKI OF
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5
■Sides. 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 symbolised 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 become 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
cn 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, com
manded 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 to 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.
�6
THE MARTYRDOM
OF HYPATIA.
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 capitals of the new faith—Jerusalem, Constanti
nople, 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 in 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 the stagnation of thought to
the movement of ideas, who desired slaves for subjects, Asia
was the more suitable place. Without wishing to offend any
one, I must say that Christianity was more favorable than
Paganism, and the Orient was better fitted to be the home of
political and religious absolutism than the Occident. Chris
tianity, as the religion of meekness and obedience, had irre
sistible 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 char
acter of a people, but the people who determine the character
of their religion. Religion is only the rame 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 language
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o£ a people’s idea. 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
defence 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 Con
stantinople, or in Antioch ? On the contrary, in Asia, which
is her proper home, the seat of her power, and with the
Emperor imported to Constantinople, Christianity became
more aggressive against Paganism and civilisation 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 (in the evolution of man) 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 to-day. The
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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 ? There is a logic in the culture of man
which leads all evolution, all progress, to the same summit.
If only Mohammedanism or Christianity or Judaism is true
as a divine revelation, .then there can be no virtue outside
these religions. But history contradicts so sweeping a con
clusion. There is a logic, we repeat, in the culture of the
mind, which makes a Trajan, though a Pagan, as sweet and
sane a soul as Washington, who was born in a Christian era,
and a Chinese, Confucius, as noble and independent as a
French, Voltaire. I say there is a logic in the evolution of
man, before which all sectarian pretences 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. Enable to
assimilate human thought, 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 de
struction of Pagan schools, libraries, and monuments, let us
not look upon such acts as accidents in the history of Chris
tianity, but as the logical unfolding of its genius. Why, you
may ask, does it no longer -pursue the policy of extermina
tion ? 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 Alexan
dria, when our religion was both young and lusty, it attempted
to, and succeeded in, destroying everything that reminded
�THE
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the world of the glory and liberty of ancient Rome and
j 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 destruc
tion 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 might destroy the gods of the Pagans, a wild •
shout of joy rent the air. The disappointed Pagans, on the
other hand, realising 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 offer
ing 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. Theo
philus, 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
�IO
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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 monu
ments and libraries of Pagan civilisation 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, Theo*
philus. 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 civilisation of the
Pagan world. The most illustrious representative of GrecoRoman culture in Alexandria about this time was Hypatia,,
the gifted daughter of Theon, a mathematician and a philo
sopher 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 brilliant 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 pur
posed The example of a young woman conquering tremen
dous 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 to 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 culture 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 orna
ment. Upon her return to Alexandria, she was elected presi
dent of the Academy, which at this period was the rendezvous
of the leading minds of the East and West. In fact, it was
�THE
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II
to 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 Alexan
dria, situated midway between the Occident and the orient,
the point of confluence of the two streams of civilisation.
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 civilisations into one. But this amalgamation—this
assimilation—Christianity, alas, helped to prevent by bring
ing 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 civilisation. 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
t: 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
�12
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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 charm®,
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 canonised a saint.
Moreover, Orestes, the Prefect of Alexandria, respected
Hypatia, and was a constant attendant upon 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 speak
ing, if a man is jealous and small, no religion can make him
sweet; and if he is generous and pure-minded, no supersti
tion 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. Approach
ing the academy, she dismounts, walks up the white marble
steps and enters the doors, on either side of which sit two
solid, silent sphinxes. As we follow her into the hall, we see
that it is lighted by numerous swinging lamps filled with per
fumed oil; the rotunda of the ceiling has been embellished
by a Greek artist, with figures of Jupiter and his divine com
panions, who appear to be rapt in the words which fall from
his lips. The walls have been decorated by Egyptian artists,
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witll pictures of the sacred animals, the crocodile, the cat, the
cow, and the dog ; and with sacred vegetables, the onion, the
Iotas, 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 murmer sweeps over the audience
as she rises to her feet. But in a moment all is silent again
save the throbbing and the 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 appear
ance at the academy. To-morrow that hall will be a tomb.
To-morrow 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 caverns of the Egyptian desert—five hun
dred 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 a 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 altar and the cross, scraped
her quivering flesh from her bones with oyster-shells.
The marble floor of the church was sprinkled with her
warm blood. The altar, 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
Irevolting to describe. The mutilated body, upon which
the murderers feasted their fanatic hate, was then flung
gpto the flames.
�14
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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 1 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 divine 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 to 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 sweet
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 heroic woman, whose place is in the choir
invisible—
“ Whose music is the gladness of the world.”
Honor and love to beautiful Hypatia 1 Pity to the monks
who killed her 1 A delicious feeling of satisfaction, like a
warm sunshine on a wintry day, spreads over me as I con
template 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 that I have both the heart and the head to weep over
her sad fate. And I tremble and shrink, as from a para
lysing nightmare, when I think that, under different circum
stances, I might still have been a minister of the Church
whose hands are, after fifteen hundred years, still unwashed
•of her innocent blood. The thought overpowers me ; I
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^labor for breath. But I am free. O joy, O rapture! Iam
free to speak the truth about Hypatia. Let the clergy praise
Peter and Paul, St. Cyril and St. Theophilus. I give my
heart to thee, Hypatia !
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 tot-day 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. When the
Church people apologise, 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 the 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 dark
ness, which, settling over Europe, paralysed 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 stopped the fountains which had, in the days of
Pericles and Cassar, poured forth a world of living wafers.
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 hell.
�l6
THE
MARTYRDOM
OF
HYPATIA.
Symonds, in his
Greek Poets, says that while Cyril’s
mobs were dismembering Hypatia, the Greek authors went
on creating. “ Musseus 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, that
they had themselves been stabbed to death, like a man 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 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 song of thedying 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 rena
scent world.
Between the dying and the reviving Pagan world was the
Christian Church—that is to say, ten dark centuries.
If Greece and Rome made art, poetry, philosophy, sculp
ture, the drama, oratory, beauty, liberty classical, Christianity,,
the Syrian, the Asiatic cult, made, for nearly fifteen hundred
years, persecution, religious wars, massacres, theological feud6
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 to-day the dawn is in the cheeks of the sky.
It is day-break everywhere !
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The martyrdom of Hypatia, or : the death of the classical world; an address at Chicago
Creator
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Mangasarian, Mangasar Mugwiditch
Description
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Place of publication: London
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
Publisher
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Pioneer Press
Date
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1906
Identifier
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N464
G4988
Subject
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Ancient Philosophy
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The martyrdom of Hypatia, or : the death of the classical world; an address at Chicago), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Ancient Philosophy
Hypatia
NSS