@@ -11,9 +11,9 @@ ''Picture from The Mysterious Fayum Portraits: Faces from Ancient Egypt.''
When the Christians destroyed the Library of Alexandria under Theodosius in 391 and 396CE, the librarian was Theon (or variously Theron). We can imagine his and his daughter Hypatia's feelings as some 500 000 scrolls representing hundreds of years of collection and research were destroyed. This was a forerunner of the end of "The Golden Age". Many have argued that the death of Hypatia, only 25 years later introduced the real "dark ages" as the last light of reason was extinguished with her death.
-Certainly, due to the deliberate destruction of all things perceived as anti- or even, "not sufficiently pro-" Christian, we don't know very much about her, and of that, much of what we do know was written by her enemies. Yet she was such a btilliant
beacon that even they could not entirely hide the fact that Hypatia was something quite exceptional. Nicephorus, Philostorgius and Socrates Scholasticus (who wrote an eccleciastical history in the 5th Century infra) mention her, and even these church apologists and manufacturers of pseudographica praised her characteristics and scholarship even as they damned her values. A few surviving letters by one of her former students who she taught neoplatonic ideas, Synesius of Cyrene (infra) and later Bishop of Ptolmais (who helped create the doctrine of the Trinity) provide some background and a few quotations, such as those used here.
+Certainly, due to the deliberate destruction of all things perceived as anti- or even, "not sufficiently pro-" Christian, we don't know very much about her, and of that, much of what we do know was written by her enemies. Yet she was such a brilliant
beacon that even they could not entirely hide the fact that Hypatia was something quite exceptional. Nicephorus, Philostorgius and Socrates Scholasticus (who wrote an eccleciastical history in the 5th Century infra) mention her, and even these church apologists and manufacturers of pseudographica praised her characteristics and scholarship even as they damned her values. A few surviving letters by one of her former students who she taught neoplatonic ideas, Synesius of Cyrene (infra) and later Bishop of Ptolmais (who helped create the doctrine of the Trinity) provide some background and a few quotations, such as those used here.
And then there was silence. For a long time. Many centuries later (1510ish) Raphael would allegedly submit a draft of his work, "The School of Athens", to the church fathers.
[http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/attachments/schoolofathens.jpg]
