I have just seen
Agora and have to say it has been the most moving film I have seen for many a long year. I can see why various
Christian groups condemn it as being anti
Christian, and they have a point in that there is no
direct evidence of
Bishop Cyril's instigation of Hypatia's murder. For example John Sanidopoulos on
his blog at-http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/02/historical-inaccuracies-of-movie-agora.html and Father
Robert Barron at-http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/persecution/pch0251.htm.
However I'm not entirely convinced the
Bishop is above suspicion and the ancient and early
medieval sources, even though they are written by Christians do not put a
good light on the character of the murderers, or their fiendishly cruel method of murder.
For example from
Socrates of Constantinople-
Yet even she 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 by scraping her skin off with tiles and bits of shell. After tearing her body in pieces, they took her mangled limbs to a place called Cinaron, and there burnt them.And then there is John of Nikiû
And in those days there appeared in Alexandria a female philosopher, a pagan named Hypatia, and she was devoted at all times to magic, astrolabes and instruments of music, and she beguiled many people through Satanic wiles...A multitude of believers in God arose under the guidance of Peter the magistrate...and they proceeded to seek for the pagan woman who had beguiled the people of the city and the prefect through her enchantments. And when they learnt the place where she was, they proceeded to her and found her...they dragged her along till they brought her to the great church, named Caesareum. Now this was in the days of the fast. And they tore off her clothing and dragged her...through the streets of the city till she died. And they carried her to a place named Cinaron, and they burned her body with fireOf course the monsters that committed the crime
were not following any Christian teaching what so ever. The terrible truth is that
they believed they were.
Steve