A movie “Agora” by Alejandro Amenabar, recently released in Poland (October 2009 in Spain), is a story about a philosopher Hypatia who lived in 3th and 4th century A.D. One of the major themes of this movie seems to be fanatism and fundamentalism.
My main problem with that movie is that it’s supposed to be a historical one, based on studies and consulted with scholars. Finally, I watched a movie which is a far-fetched interpretation of historical sources – an interpretation which is quite negative towards Christianity, which praises positivism and agnosticism over religion.
In the movie Hypatia is a pagan philosopher (rather – a mathematician) who is persecuted and ultimately killed by St. Cyril, the new, powerful bishop of Alexandria. We can also watch how Christians, Jews and Pagans fight on the street for their faith. Christians destroy Pagan temples, stone Jews, and Pagan and Jews take revenge on them. At the same time, Hypatia’s main interest astronomy – she tries to explain the movement of the planets, going beyond the epicycle system of Ptolemy. When she tries to stand up against Cyril’s politics, she’s murdered by his thugs.
There are several things in the movie which are not entirely true to history. First of all, Hypatia is pictured as an astronomer. It serves a purpose – she must be an intellectual, sceptic, she says proudly that she “must question her believes”, while Christians apparently cannot do that. But Amenabar conveniently ignores the fact that Hypatia was above all a neoplatonic philosopher. Since Plato’s time mathematics and astronomy were an important stage in philosophical life, which were designed to purify the mind and draw it from the senses towards its immaterial essence. But mathematics wasn’t the peak of philosophy for Hypatia, it was just a middle step. We know well from the letters of her disciple and friend, Synesius of Cyrene (one of the movie protagonists) that her teaching wasn’t that much about astronomy, as the movie shows, but rather she was focused on transcending discursive thought and achieving mystical experience of the One, the source of all being in Neoplatonism.
Hypatia and her students, both Pagan and Christian, tried to reach the ineffable wisdom of the non-discursive contemplation of Platonic Forms and the One itself. Like other neoplatonic schools, they were a highly religious group, a congregation even. Synesius in his letters tell us that he cannot describe in words the mystical experiences that he and others students achieved in the presence of divine Hypatia, their spiritual guide and master. Of course, Amenabar wasn’t interested in the least in showing the audience a zealous mystic or a group of intellectuals seeking God, because he wanted to make a point that religion causes fanatism, while rational, scientific thinking, represented allegedly by Hypatia, is a cure for this madness. As far as we know late Neoplatonism, Hypatia didn’t “question” her beliefs at all – she believed in a bunch of things without questioning them at all, like the immortality and divinity of the soul, reincarnation, the existence of Platonic Forms, the emanation of beings from the One, the importance of moral goodness, and the need to transcend discursive thinking in order to arrive at henosis or ekstasis, the union with the One, which was the goal of philosophical life. Again – too “religious” for Amenabar’s taste and for the taste of his audience.
Hypatia’s adversary in the movie is bishop Cyril. We know that his contemporaries perceived him as a very ambitious and relentless man and criticized him because of his strive for secular power as a bishop of Alexandria. At that time even the orthodox Church was fractured by different parties fighting violently against each others, and the example of it is mutual hatred of Cyril towards John Chrysostom, the patriarch of Constantinople. Cyril banishid Jews and destroyed Pagan temples, but his most urgent need was to fight heretics inside the Church. He didn’t need to persecute a Pagan intellectual like Hypatia, since the victory of Christianity in the Empire was already sealed by the Emperor Theodosius. Cyril disliked Hypatia, and, most likely, envied her the influence and moral authority she had among Pagans as well as among Christian philosophers (like Synesius).
A great Pagan philosopher, Damaskios, tells a story about Cyril seeing once a great crowd aroung Hypatias house and being filled with jealousy and hatred. Damaskios is, of course, partial here, but Christian historians tend to agree that Cyril was indeed ambitious and jealous. Despite all his weaknesses, he is revered as one of the greatest Fathers of the Church (especially, in the East), called the Pillar of Faith and the Seal of Fathers. He was also declared a Doctor of the Church. In the movie, however, Cyril is in a totally “black” manner - a cold psychopath who manipulates his servants into killing Pagans, Jews, and Hypatia. He could be ambitious, impulsive, but certainly not psychopathic. Sammy Samir, an actor who plays him, looks like he’s of an Arabic origin, which makes the impression like Amenabar tries to allude in some way to Islamic fanatism. Unfortunately for Amenabar, there wasn’t Islam yet, so in the movie evil Cyril at least got to look like an Arab...
Historians tell us that Cyril indeed accused Hypatia of being a witch and because of his propaganda (it was a common thing for ancient conflicts that the adversaries were accused of worst things possible – nothing special about it) he can be held in part morally responsible for the barbarious murder of Hypatia. In the trial which ended before the Emperor Cyril was found innocent (again, his adversaries may attribute this to his influence and alleged bribery), and we’ll never know if he really wanted to have Hypatia murdered. The whole matter probably wasn’t really a religious one – it seems to be a purely political struggle. Cyril was in conflict with the prefect Orestes (Hypatia’s disciple and friend), a conflict of political power in Alexandria. Historically, it was Cyril who tried to make peace with Orestes, but was rejected by him. Amenabar shows us an Orestes who is much more peaceful and wants to make up with evil Cyril. We watch a scene in which the bishop reads a lecture from the letter to Titus, about women who must remain silent, and wants Orestes to kneel before himself holding the Bible. Orestes takes it as an attack on Hypatia and doesn’t kneel. The scene is based on the truth – Cyril indeed demanded that Orestes, if he is a Christian, venerated the Bible in the congregation, but the movie suggests that Cyril twisted the meaning of the Bible to attack Hypatia. Another “interpretation” of the facts by Amenabar.
As to Hypatia’s death we have two slighlty different accounts. She was either dragged out from her lectic and literally ripped into pieces in the streets of Alexandria, or she was dragged out of her house and killed in a Christian church. It was done either by (1) Christian crowd, scared that she was a witch, (2) monks of Nitria who came to Alexandria to defend Cyril (one of them, Ammonius, throw a stone at Orestes after the incident with the Bible), (3) parabolani, that is young Christians thugs who were Cyril’s private police. In the movie parabolani and the monks of Nitria are the same thing, which is totally nonsensical. We just see fanatical monks in black robes who are called “parabolani”. The purpose is clear – denigrating religion – but, fanatic as they might have been, the monks of Nitria weren’t at all thugs. Mistake or manipulation?
In the sources we hear that Hypatia was cut by ostraka (sharp pieces of pottery), but the movie shows us a very humane death. In fact, she is killed by a young parabolanus, who was in love with her. The director didn’t show the real barbarity of ancient Alexandria, yet he didn’t hesitate to picture the religious fanatism of this time. We are talking of a time in history when the Roman empire was in deep crisis, these were violent times, and it wasn’t religion that caused people to kill each other. They killed each other for various reasons, because it was their way to solve problems. Few decades before Hypatia, a bishop of Alexandria was murdered by a crowd. Similar things happened in the city. There’s no reason to make Cyril a monster or to blame religion for these atrocities. In fact, religions, and Christianity itself, tried to temper those kind of violent reactions. The murder of a great philosopher was a horrible thing, but not that unusual in that time.
Hypatia herself in the movie is a sensitive, emotional woman, played by Rachel Weisz. She calls everyone her “brothers”. According to the historical sources she was a rather austere woman, despising the crowd (neoplatonism was very aristocratic), calling “brothers” only other philosophers, not everyone. She was a virgin all her life, at the moment of her death she was about 60 years old. There is a scene in the movie, when a young Orestes falls in love with her and declares it publicly, and Hypatia the next day tosses her used menstrual pad into his lap. In the movie she tries to show him that his love for her is unrealistic, idealized. But in fact it was a very insulting thing to do in the ancient world and everyone was shocked by her behavior. She did it to show him that he should love the immaterial Beauty, not impure flesh. She was a Platonic ascetic and she despised human body and its physiology. She was also praised as the one who attained a perfect apatheia, raised above emotions and passions. That was her teaching which in the movie was reinterpreted in a modern way.
“Agora” shows us turbulent times and a great city of Alexandria in the midst of political, social and religious conflicts. It is based on historical facts and figures, but it’s not true to what really happened. The director uses Hypatia’s story, just as many antireligious writers in the Western history, to criticize the Church, institutionalized religion, and to praise rational, sceptical, scientist approach to reality. We have wise and ideal Hypatia, wicked, dark Cyril, and weak Orestes between them. It seems that in fact it was Hypatia who were used by Orestes and Cyril in their political battle – she engaged in politics and paid the price, although she was really of great moral integrity, an enlightened person trying to live a life of contemplation in the cruel world of the 5th century A.D.
The good thing about the movie is that it can draw our attention to the tensions between religion/spirituality and politics/reality. I think the real story about Hypatia, Cyril, Orestes, Pagans, Jews and Christians in Alexandria is a good enough teaching for us, and we don’t need to distort the historical truth by making some black-and-white vision of Christian cruelties. But I’m a Christian, so I’m probably biased.

That's a good review, Mt. Unfortunately, I think most people who see the movie won't take the time to dig into the historical record themselves.

Good review, Mt. You've saved us the trouble of going to see the movie and also from having to do our own research! Despite the movie's tendentious revision of history, at least it sounds intelligent. Most of the ones shown in movie theaters over here are the mass-market Hollywood types.

Mt., I hope you publish this in other venues so that people will have a broader view of what went on and how prejudiced the movie is. Nice job spelling that out.