we are told, a woman of great wisdom, learned in philosophy, in mathematics, and in astronomy, and even men drank in her every word.
In the meantime our holy religion had triumphed in all the territories of the empire. There were still some unruly people who were trying to keep alive the thought of the pagan philosophers, such as the divine Plato, and I will not deny that they were doing good, transmitting also to us Christians the learning that would have been lost otherwise. But one of the greatest Christians of the time, who later became a saint of the Church, Cyril, a man of great faith but also of great intransigence, considered Hypatia’s teaching contrary to the Gospels and unleashed against her a horde of ignorant and enraged Christians, who didn’t even know what she was preaching, but now considered her, with Cyril as witness, dissolute and a liar. Perhaps she was slandered, even if it is also true that women should not meddle in divine questions.
In sum, they dragged her into a temple, stripped her naked, killed her, massacred her body with sharp shards of broken vessels, and put her corpse on a pyre. … Many legends sprang up about her.
They say she was very beautiful, but had taken a vow of virginity. One young man, her disciple, fell madly in love with her, and she showed him a cloth with the blood of her menses, telling him that only this was the object of his desire, not beauty itself. … In reality, what she taught no one has ever known exactly.
All her writings were lost; those who had preserved her spoken thought had been killed, or had tried to forget what they had heard. Everything we know of her has been handed down to us by the holy fathers who condemned her, and, honestly, as a writer of history and chronicles, I tend not to give too much credence to words that an enemy puts into the mouth of an enemy.”
They had other meetings and many conversations. Hypatia would talk, and Baudolino hoped her learning was extensive, infinite, so he would never stop hanging on her lips. She answered all of Baudolino’s questions, with intrepid sincerity, never blushing: nothing for her was restricted by any sordid prohibition, all was transparent.
Baudolino finally dared ask her how the hypatias, after so many centuries, perpetuated themselves. She answered that at every season the Mother chose some of them who would procreate, and she accompanied them to the fecundators.
Hypatia was vague about these; naturally, she had never seen them, nor had she ever seen the hypatias destined for the rite. They were led to a place, at night, they drank a potion that inebriated and dazed them, they were fecundated, then they returned to their community, where those who remained pregnant were tended by their companions until the birth: if the fruit of their womb was male, it was returned to the fecundators, who would bring it up as one of themselves; if it was female, it remained in the community and grew up as an hypatia.
“To be joined carnally,” Hypatia said, “like animals, who have no soul, is only a way of multiplying the error of creation. The hypatias sent to the fecundators accept this humiliation only because we must continue to exist, to redeem the world from that error. Those who have undergone fecundation remember nothing of that act, which, if it were not performed in the spirit of sacrifice, would alter our apathy….”
“What is apathy?”
“The state in which every hypatia lives and is happy to live.” “What is the error of creation?”
“Why, Baudolino,” she said, laughing with innocent amazement, “does it seem to you that the world is perfect? Look at this flower, look at the delicacy of the stem, look at this kind of porous eye that triumphs in its catch of the morning dew as in a shell, look at the joy with which it offers itself to this insect that now is sucking its juice… Isn’t it beautiful?”
“It is indeed beautiful. But, in fact, isn’t it beautiful that it is beautiful? Isn’t this a divine miracle?”
“Baudolino, tomorrow morning this flower will be dead, in two days it will be rotten. Come with me.” She led him into the brush and showed him a mushroom, its red crown striped with yellow flames.
“Is this beautiful?” she said. “It is beautiful.”
“It’s poisonous. Anyone who eats it, dies. Do you consider a creation perfect when death is hiding in it? You know that I, too, would be dead one day, and I, too, would be rotten matter, if I were not dedicated to God’s redemption?”
“God’s redemption? Explain…”
“Surely you’re not a Christian, too, Baudolino, like the monsters of Pndapetzim? The Christians who killed Hypatia believed in a cruel divinity who had created the world, and, with it, death, suffering and—even worse than physical suffering—the sickness of the soul.
Created beings are capable of hating, killing, of making their fellows suffer. You can’t believe that a just God could have destined his children to this misery….”
“These things are done by unjust men, and God punishes them, while saving the good.”
“But then why would this God have created us, only to expose us to the risk of damnation?”
“Why? Because the supreme good is the freedom to do good or evil, and, to give his children this supreme good, God must accept the fact that some of them will make bad use of it.”
“Why do you say that freedom is good?”
“Because if they deprive you of it, if they put you in chains, if they will not allow you to do what you wish, you suffer, and therefore the absence of freedom is an evil.”
“You can turn your head so that you can look behind you, but can you really turn it until you can see your own back? Can you enter that lake and remain under water until evening, I mean really under water, without ever sticking your head out?” she asked, laughing.
“No, because if I tried to turn my head completely, I would break my neck, if I remained under water it would prevent me from breathing. God created me with these restrictions to prevent me from doing myself harm.” “Then you say that he has deprived you of some freedoms for a good end, is that right?”
“He took them from me so that I would not suffer.”
“Then why has he given you the freedom to choose between good and evil, with the risk that you may then suffer eternal punishments?” “God gave us freedom thinking that we would use it well. But there was the revolt of the angels, which brought evil into the world, and the serpent tempted Eve, so now we all suffer from original sin. It isn’t God’s fault.” “And who created the rebel angels and the serpent?”
“God, of course, but before they rebelled the angels were good, as he had made them.”
“Then it was they who created evil?’
“No, they committed it, but it existed before, as a possibility of rebellion against God.”
“So it was God who created evil?”
“Hypatia, you are clever, sensitive, quick, you can conduct a disputatio
much better than I, even though I studied in Paris. But don’t say such things to me about the good God. He cannot wish evil.”
“Certainly not. A God who wishes evil would be the contrary of God.” “So?”
“So God found evil beside him, without wishing it, as the dark part of himself.”
“But God is the totally perfect being!”
“Of course, Baudolino. God is the greatest perfection that can exist, but if you only knew what hard work it is to be perfect! Now, Baudolino, I’ll tell you who God is, or, rather, what he is not.”
She truly was afraid of nothing. She said: “God is the Unique, and he is so perfect that he does not resemble any of the things that exist or any of the things that do not; you cannot describe him using your human intelligence, as if he were someone who becomes angry if you are bad or who worries about you out of goodness, someone who has a mouth, ears, face, wings, or
that is spirit, father or son, not even of himself.
Of the Unique you cannot say he is or is not, he embraces all but is nothing; you can name him only through dissimilarity, because it is futile to call him Goodness, Beauty, Wisdom, Amiability, Power, Justice, it would be like calling him Bear, Panther, Serpent, Dragon, or Gryphon, because whatever you say of him you will never express him.
God is not body, is not figure, is not form; he does not have quantity, quality, weight, or lightness; he does not see, does not hear, does not know disorder and perturbation; he is not soul, intelligence, imagination, opinion, thought, word, number, order, size; he is not equality and is not inequality, is not time and is not eternity; he is a will without purpose. Try to understand, Baudolino: God is a lamp without flame, a flame without fire, a fire without heat, a dark light, a silent rumble, a blind flash, a luminous soot, a ray of his own darkness, a circle that expands concentrating on its own center, a solitary multiplicity; he is … is…” She paused, seeking an example that would convince them both, she the teacher and he the pupil.
“He is a space that is not, in which you and I are the same thing, as we are today in this time that doesn’t flow.”
A faint flame trembled on her cheek. He was silent, frightened by that
