Orestes, being attacked by a party of monks as he
was peaceably pursuing his way through the streets in his carriage, was
succored by the citizens, who came to his relief; and in the affray a
monk was taken prisoner, whom the justly exasperated Orestes ordered to
be executed. The sentence was carried into effect, and Cyril caused the
name of the would-be murderer to be enrolled among the martyrs.
Hypatia was neither Jew nor Christian; but her love of truth and justice
caused her to espouse the side of the persecuted victims of
ecclesiastical tyranny. She had previously been the object of Cyril's
bitter hatred, because her mental attainments were superior to his own.
Now, that hatred was intensified to the highest degree of malignity. She
had openly and boldly censured the conduct of the bishop, and was deemed
the friend of Orestes; therefore she must die. Having committed no
crime, she could not be brought before the civil tribunal for
condemnation; therefore, as her death had been determined upon, _murder_
was the next resort.
She was surrounded and seized by a mob in the interest of Cyril, as she
was one day returning from her school, and hurried into the Caesarian
church, where she was brutally murdered, every barbarity being practiced
upon her which monks were capable of inventing, even to tearing her limb
from limb, and afterward burning her; and Cyril, if indeed he did not
sanction the murder by his actual presence while it was being committed,
sanctioned the horrid deed by his protection of the perpetrators when
the infuriated populace would have avenged her death.
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