Hollywood Hokum - Again
Agora
by Chilean director Alejandro Amenabar. Now normally I'd be delighted
that someone was making a film set in the Fifth Century (at least, one
that wasn't another fantasy about "King Arthur" anyway). After all, it's
not like there's a shortage of remarkable stories to tell from that
turbulent and interesting time. And normally I'd be even more delighted
that they are actually bothering to make it
look like the Fifth
Century, rather than assuming because it's set in the Roman Empire
everyone needs to be wearing togas, forward combed haircuts and
lorica segmentata. And I would be especially delighted that they are not only doing both these things but also casting
Rachel Weisz in the lead role, since she's an excellent actress and, let's face it, pretty cute.
So why am I not delighted? Because Amenabar has chosen to write and
direct a film about the philosopher Hypatia and perpetuate some hoary
Enlightenment myths by turning it into a morality tale about science vs
fundamentalism.
As an atheist, I'm clearly no fan of fundamentalism - even the 1500 year
old variety (though modern manifestations tend to be the ones to watch
out for). And as an amateur historian of science I'm more than happy
with the idea of a film that gets across the idea that, yes, there was a
tradition of scientific thinking before Newton and Galileo. But
Amenabar has taken the (actually, fascinating) story of what was going
on in Alexandria in Hypatia's time and turned it into a cartoon,
distorting history in the process. From the press release timed to
coincide with the film's screening at Cannes this week:
Played by Oscar-winning British actress Weisz, Hypatia is persecuted
in the film for her science that challenges the Christians' faith, as
much as for her status as an influential woman.
From bloody clashes to public stonings and massacres, the city descends
into inter-religious strife, and the victorious Christians turn their
back on the rich scientific legacy of antiquity, defended by Hypatia.
So we are being served up the idea that Hypatia was persecuted and, I'll
assume, killed because "her science ... challenges the Christians'
faith". And why have a movie with one historical myth in it when you can
have two:
"Agora" opens with the destruction of the second library of
Alexandria by the Christians and Jews -- after the first, famous library
which was destroyed by Julius Caesar.
At least he's done his homework enough to realise that the decline of
the Great Library was a long, slow deterioration and not a single
catastrophic event. But he still clings to Gibbon's myth that a
Christian mob was somehow responsible. And rather niftily invents a
"second library of Alexandria" so he can do so. Of course, there's an
inevitable moral to all this:
The director also said he saw the film worked as a parable on the crisis of Western civilisation.
"Let's say the Roman Empire is the United States nowadays, and
Alexandria is what Europe means now -- the old civilisation, the old
cultural background.
"And the empire is in crisis, which affects all the provinces. We are
talking about social crisis, economic of course, this year, and
cultural.
"Something is not quite fitting in our society. We know that
something is going to change -- we don't know exactly what or how, but
we know that something is coming to an end."
Exactly how far or how closely he expects we can extend this analogy is
unclear. If Europe is Alexandria and the US is Rome, who is Hypatia? And
who are the murderous fundamentalists? I suspect the answer could be
"Muslims". The
LA Times article on the Cannes screening seemed to think so:
The film is at its most compelling when Amenabar shows the
once-stable civilization of Alexandria being overwhelmed by fanaticism,
perhaps because the bearded, black-robe clad Christian zealots who sack
the library and take over the city bear an uncanny resemblance to the
ayatollahs and Taliban of today. (At Cannes: Alejandro Amenabar's provocative new historical thriller)
However far you want to take Amenabar's parable, the outlines are clear -
Hypatia was a rationalist and a scientist, she was killed by
fundamentalists who were threatened by knowledge and science and this
ushered in a Dark Age.
It looks like some pseudo historical myths about the history of science
are about to get a new shot in the arm, thanks to the new movie
Hypatia the Myth
long been
pressed into service as a martyr for science by those with agendas that
have nothing to do with the accurate presentation of history. As Maria
Dzielska has detailed in her study of Hypatia in history and myth,
Hypatia of Alexandria,
virtually every age since her death that has heard her story has
appropriated it and forced it to serve some polemical purpose.
Ask who Hypatia was and you will
probably be told "She was that beautiful young pagan philosopher who was
torn to pieces by monks (or, more generally, by Christians) in
Alexandria in 415". This pat answer would be based not on ancient
sources, but on a mass of belletristic and historical literature ....
Most of these works represent Hypatia as an innocent victim of the
fanaticism of nascent Christianity, and her murder as marking the
banishment of freedom of inquiry along with the Greek gods.
(Dzielska, p. 1)
If you had asked me at the age of 15 that's certainly what I would have
told you, since I had heard of Hypatia largely thanks to astronomer Carl
Sagan's TV series and book
Cosmos. I still have a soft spot both for Sagan and
Cosmos,
since - as with a lot of young people of the time - it awakened my love
not only of science, but a humanist tradition of science and a
historical perspective on the subject that made it far more accessible
to me than dry formulae. But popularisations of any subject can create
erroneous impressions even when the writer is very sure of his material.
And while Sagan was usually on very solid ground with his science, his
history could be distinctly shaky. Especially when he had a barrow or
two to push.
The final chapter of the book of
Cosmos is the one where Sagan
pushes a few barrows. Generally, his aims are admirable - he notes the
fragility of life and of civilisation, makes some calm and quietly sober
condemnations of nuclear proliferation - highly relevant and sensible
in the depths of Cold War 1980 - and makes a rational and humanistic
plea for the maintenance of a long term view on the Earth, the
environment and our intellectual heritage. In the process he tells the
story of Hypatia as a cautionary parable; a tale that illustrates how
fragile civilisation is and how easily it can fall to the powers of
ignorance and irrationality.
After describing the glories of the Great Library of Alexandria, he
introduces Hypatia as its "last scientist". He then notes that the Roman
Empire was in crisis in her time and that "slavery had sapped ancient
civilisation of its vitality"; which is an odd comment since the ancient
world had always been based on slavery, making it hard to see why this
institution would suddenly begin to "sap" it of "vitality" in the Fifth
Century. He then he gets to the crux of his story:
Cyril, the Archbishop of Alexandria,
despised her because of her close friendship with the Roman governor,
and because she was a symbol of learning and science, which were largely
identified by the early Church with paganism. In great personal danger
she continued to teach and publish, until, in the year 415, on her way
to work she was set upon by a fanatical mob of Cyril's parishioners.
They dragged her from her chariot, tore off her clothes, and, armed with
abalone shells, flayed her flesh from her bones. Her remains were
burned, her works obliterated, her name forgotten. Cyril was made a
saint.
(Sagan, p. 366)
I gather I was not the only impressionable reader who found this parable moving. One reader of Dzielska's study, which
debunks the version Sagan propagates, wrote a breathless review on Amazon.com that declared:
Hypatia was first brought to my
attention by Carl Sagan in his television series Cosmos. She has often
been represented as a pillar of wisdom in an age of growing dogma.
Unlike with Socrates we know much less about her life and teachings. She
is remembered precisely as a martyr who was sacrificed rather than
executed by a literalist Christian mob inspired by "St" Cyril,
apparently as she was regarded as a threat to Christendom and theology
by certain regio-political figures.
That actually makes you wonder if they had read Dzielska's book at all.
While Sagan is the best known propagator of the idea that Hypatia was a
martyr for science, he was simply following a venerable polemical
tradition that has its origin in Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:
A rumor was spread among the
Christians, that the daughter of Theon was the only obstacle to the
reconciliation of the prefect and the archbishop; and that obstacle was
speedily removed. On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent, Hypatia
was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, and
inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the Reader and a troop of
savage and merciless fanatics: her flesh was scraped from her bones with
sharp oyster-shells and her quivering limbs were delivered to the
flames.
Like Gibbon, Sagan links the story of the murder of Hypatia with the
idea that the Great Library of Alexandria was torched by another
Christian mob. In fact, Sagan presents the two events as though they
were subsequent, stating "[the Library's] last remnants were destroyed
soon after Hypatia's death" (p. 366) and that "when the mob came .... to
burn the Library down there was nobody to stop them." (p. 365)
In the hands of Sagan and others both the story of Hypatia's murder and
the Library's destruction are a cautionary tale of what can happen if we
let down our guards and allow mobs of fanatics to destroy the champions
and repositories of reason.
Not that there is anything very new or original about this - Hypatia has
The Great Library and its Myths
This is certainly a powerful parable. Unfortunately, it doesn't
correspond very closely with actual history. To begin with, the Great
Library of Alexandria no longer existed in Hypatia's time. Precisely
when and how it had been destroyed is unclear, though a fire in
Alexandria caused by Julius Caesar's troops in 48 BC is the most likely
main culprit. More likely this and/or other fires were part of a long
process of decline and degradation of the collection. Strangely, given
that we know so little about it, the Great Library has long been a focus
of some highly imaginative fantasies. The idea that it contained
500,000 o0r even 700,000 books is often repeated uncritically by many
modern writers, even though comparison with the size other ancient
libraries and estimates of the size of the building needed to house such
a collection makes this highly unlikely. It is rather more probable
that it was around less than a tenth of these numbers, though that would
still make it the largest library in the ancient world by a wide
margin.
The idea that the Great Library was still in existence in Hypatia's time
and that it was, like her, destroyed by a Christian mob has been
popularised by Gibbon, who never let history get in the way of a good
swipe at Christianity. But what Gibbon was talking about was the temple
known as the Serapeum, which was not the Great Library at all. It seems
the Serapeum had contained a library at some point and this was a
"daughter library" of the former Great Library. But the problem with
Gibbon's version is that no account of the destruction of the Serapeum
by the Bishop Theophilus in AD 391 makes any mention of a library or any
books, only the destruction of pagan idols and cult objects:
At the solicitation of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, the Emperor
issued an order at this time for the demolition of the heathen temples
in that city; commanding also that it should be put in execution under
the direction of Theophilus. Seizing this opportunity, Theophilus
exerted himself to the utmost to expose the pagan mysteries to contempt.
And to begin with, he caused the Mithreum to be cleaned out, and
exhibited to public view the tokens of its bloody mysteries. Then he
destroyed the Serapeum, and the bloody rites of the Mithreum he publicly
caricatured; the Serapeum also he showed full of extravagant
superstitions, and he had the phalli of Priapus carried through the
midst of the forum. Thus this disturbance having been terminated, the
governor of Alexandria, and the commander-in-chief of the troops in
Egypt, assisted Theophilus in demolishing the heathen temples.
(Socrates Scholasticus, Historia Ecclesiastica, Bk V)
Even hostile, anti-Christian accounts of this event, like that of
Eunapius of Sardis (who witnessed the demolition), do not mention any
library or books being destroyed. And Ammianus Marcellinus, who seems to
have visited Alexandria before 391, describes the Serapeum and mentions
that it had once housed a library, indicating that by the time
of its destruction it no longer did so. The fact is that, with no less
than five independent accounts detailing this event, the destruction of
the Serapeum is one of the best attested events in the whole of ancient
history. Yet nothing in the evidence indicates the destruction of any
library along with the temple complex.
Still, the myth of a Christian mob destroying the "Great Library of
Alexandria" is too juicy for some to resist, so this myth remains a
mainstay for arguments that "Christianity caused the Dark Ages" despite
the fact it is completely without foundation. And it seems Amenabar
couldn't resist it either - thus a scene early in the movie features an
anxious Hypatia scrambling to rescue precious scrolls before a screaming
mob bearing crosses bursts through a barred door to destroy what he's
dubbed "the second library of Alexandria" (presumably he means the
Serapeum). This seems to be at the beginning of the movie, apparently
setting the stage for the conflicts between science and religion that
will end in Hypatia's murder. Sagan, on the other hand, put the
destruction of the Library after her murder. In fact, it seems no such destruction happened either in her lifetime or after it and the idea it did is simply part of the mythic parable.
The Hypatia of History
The real Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, who was famous for his edition of Euclid's
Elements and
his commentaries on Ptolemy, Euclid and Aratus. Her birth year is often
given as AD 370, but Maria Dzielska argues this is 15-20 years too late
and suggests AD 350 would be more accurate. That would make her 65 when
she was killed and therefore someone who should perhaps be played by
Helen Mirren rather than Rachel Weisz. But that would make the movie
much harder to sell at the box office.
She grew up to become a renowned scholar in her own right. She seems to
have assisted her father in his edition of Euclid and an edition of
Ptolemy's
Almagest, as well writing commentaries on the
Arithmetica of Diophantus and the
Conics
of Apollonius. Like most natural philosophers of her time, she embraced
the neo-Platonic ideas of Plotinus and so her teaching and ideas
appealed to a broad range of people - pagans, Christians and Jews. There
is some suggestion that Amenabar's film depicts her as an atheist, or
at least as wholly irreligious, which is highly unlikely. Neo-Platonism
embraced the idea of a perfect, ultimate source called "the One" or "the
Good", which was, by Hypatia's time, fully identified with a
monotheistic God in most respects.
She was admired by many and at least one of her most ardent students was
the Bishop Synesius, who addressed several letters to her, calling her
"mother, sister, teacher, and withal benefactress, and whatsoever is
honoured in name and deed", saying she is "my most revered teacher" and
describing her as she "who legitimately presides over the mysteries of
philosophy" (R. H. Charles,
The Letters of Synesius of Cyrene). The Christian chronicler quoted above, Socrates Scholasticus, also wrote of her admiringly:
There was a woman at Alexandria named Hypatia, daughter of the
philosopher Theon, who made such attainments in literature and science,
as to far surpass all the philosophers of her own time. Having succeeded
to the school of Plato and Plotinus, she explained the principles of
philosophy to her auditors, many of whom came from a distance to receive
her instructions. On account of the self-possession and ease of manner,
which she had acquired in consequence of the cultivation of her mind,
she not infrequently appeared in public in presence of the magistrates.
Neither did she feel abashed in coming to an assembly of men. For all
men on account of her extraordinary dignity and virtue admired her the
more.
(Socrates Scholasticus
, Ecclesiastical History, VII.15)
So if she was admired so widely and admired and respected by learned
Christians, how did she come to die at the hands of a Christian mob?
And, more importantly, did it have anything to do with her learning or
love of science?
The answer lies in the politics of early Fifth Century Alexandria and
the way that the power of Christian bishops was beginning to encroach on
that of civil authorities in this period. The Patriarch of Alexandria,
Cyril, had been a
protégé of his uncle Theophilus and succeeded
him to the bishopric in AD 412. Theophilus had already made the position
of Bishop of Alexandria a powerful one and Cyril continued his policy
of expanding the influence of the office, increasingly encroaching on
the powers and privilages of the Prefect of the City. The Prefect at the
time was another Christian, Orestes, who had taken up his post not long
before Cyril became bishop.
Orestes and Cyril soon came into conflict over Cyril's hard-line actions
against smaller Christian factions like the Novatians and his violence
against Alexandria's large Jewish community. After an attack by the Jews
on a Christian congregation and a retaliatory pogrom against Jewish
synagogues led by Cyril, Orestes complained to the Emperor but was
over-ruled. Tensions between the supporters of the Bishop and those of
the Prefect then began to run high in a city that was known for mob rule
and vicious political street violence.
Hypatia, whether by chance or choice, found herself in the middle of
this power struggle between two Christian factions. She was well-known
to Orestes (and probably to Cyril as well) as a prominen tparticipant in
the civic life of the city and was perceived by Cyril's faction to be
not only a political ally of Orestes but an obstacle to any
reconciliation between the two men. The tensions spilled over when a
group of monks from the remote monasteries of the desert - men known for
their fanatical zeal and not renowned for their political
sophistication - came into the city in force to support Cyril and began a
riot that resulted in Orestes' entourage being pelted with rocks, with
one stone hitting the Prefect in the head. Not one to stand for such
insults, Orestes had the monk in question arrested and tortured, which
led to the man's death.
Cyril tried to exploit the torture and death of the monk, making out
that it was effectively a martyrdom by Orestes. This time, however, his
appeals to the Imperial authorities were rejected. Angered, Cyril's
followers (with or without his knowledge) took revenge by seizing
Hypatia, as a political follower of Orestes, in the street and torturing
her to death in vengeance.
The incident was generally regarded with horror and disgust by
Christians, with Socrates Scholasticus making his feelings about it
quite clear:
[Hypatia] fell a victim to the political jealousy which at that time
prevailed. For as she had frequent interviews with Orestes, it was
calumniously reported among the Christian populace, that it was she who
prevented Orestes from being reconciled to the bishop. Some of them
therefore, hurried away by a fierce and bigoted zeal, whose ringleader
was a reader named Peter, waylaid her returning home, and dragging her
from her carriage, they took her to the church called
Caesareum, where they completely stripped her, and then murdered her
with tiles [oyster shells]. After tearing her body in pieces, they took
her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them. This
affair brought not the least opprobrium, not only upon Cyril, but also
upon the whole Alexandrian church. And surely nothing can be farther
from the spirit of Christianity than the allowance of massacres, fights,
and transactions of that sort.
(Socrates Scholasticus,
Ecclesiastical History, VII.15)
What is notable in all this is that nowhere in any of this is her science or learning mentioned, expect as the basis for the
respect
which she was accorded by pagans and Christians alike. Socrates
Scholasticus finishes describing her achievements and the esteem with
which she was held and then goes on to say "Yet
even she fell a victim to the
political jealousy which at that time prevailed". In other words,
despite her learning and position, she fell victim to
politics.
There is no evidence at all that her murder had anything to do with her
learning. The idea that she was some kind of martyr to science is
totally absurd.
History vs the Myths. And Movies.
Unfortunately for those who cling to the discredited "
conflict thesis"
of science and religion perpetually at odds, the history of science
actually has very few genuine martyrs at the hands of religious bigots.
The fact that a mystic and kook like Giordano Bruno gets dressed up as a
free-thinking scientist shows how thin on the ground such martyrs are,
though usually those who like to invoke these martyrs can fall back on
citing "scientists burned by the Medieval Inquistion", despite the fact
this never actually happened. Most people know nothing about the Middle
Ages, so this kind of vague hand-waving is usually pretty safe.
Unlike Giordano Bruno, Hypatia
was a
genuine scientist and, as a woman, was certainly remarkable for her
time (though the fact that another female and pagan scientist, Aedisia,
practised science in Alexandria unmolested and with high renown a
generation later shows she was far from unique). But Hypatia was no
martyr for science and science had absolutely
zero to do
with her murder. Exactly how much of the genuine, purely political
background to her death Amenabar puts in his movie remains to be seen.
It's hoped that, unlike Sagan and many others, the whole political
background to the murder won't simply be ignored and her killing won't
be painted as a purely anti-intellectual act of ignorant rage against
her science and scholarship. But what is clear from his interviews and
the film's pre-publicity is that he has chosen to frame the story in
Gibbonian terms straight from the "conflict thesis" textbook - the
destruction of the "Great Library", Hypatia victimised for her learning
and her death as a grim harbinger of the beginning of the "Dark Ages".
And, as usual, bigots and anti-theistic zealots will ignore the
evidence, the sources and rational analysis and believe Hollywood's
appeal to their prejudices. It makes you wonder who the real enemies of
reason actually are.
