was Hypatia, a maiden not more distinguished
for her beauty than for her learning and her virtues. Her father was
Theon, the illustrious mathematician who had early initiated his
daughter in the mysteries of philosophy. The classic groves of Athens
and the schools of Alexandria equally applauded her attainments and
listened to the pure music of her lips. She respectfully declined the
tender attentions of lovers, but, raised to the chair of Gamaliel,
suffered youth and age, without preference or favor, to sit
indiscriminately at her feet. Her fame and increasing popularity
ultimately excited the jealousy of St. Cyril, at that time the Bishop of
Alexandria, and her friendship for his antagonist, Orestes, the prefect
of the city, entailed on her devoted head the crushing weight of his
enmity. In her way through the city, her chariot was surrounded by his
creatures, headed by a crafty and savage fanatic named Peter the Reader,
and the young and innocent woman was dragged to the ground, stripped of
her garments, paraded naked through the streets, and then torn limb from
limb on the steps of the Cathedral. The still warm flesh was scraped
from her bones with oyster-shells, and the bleeding fragments thrown
into a furnace, so that not an atom of the beautiful virgin should
escape destruction." The cruelty of man when spurred on by the mania of
religious zeal!

In more historic times there are numerous instances of the tyranny
exercised over women by the feudal system. Feudalism, composed as it was
of military ideas and ecclesiastical traditions, exercised the well
known "rights of seigniory." These "rights" comprised a jurisdiction
which is now unprintable, and had even the power to deprive woman of
life itself.

A history of the licentiousness of the monks and the early popes would
fill a great number of volumes; and indeed, many are the volumes which
have been devoted to this subject. It will suffice to point out only a
few representative incidents. In 1259, Alexander IV tried to disrupt the
shameful union between concubines and the clergy. Henry III, Bishop of
Liege, was such a fatherly sort of individual that he had sixty-five
"natural children!" William, Bishop of Padreborn, in 1410, although
successful in reducing such powerful enemies as the Archbishop of
Cologne, and the Count of Cloves by fire and sword, was powerless
against the dissolute morals of his own monks, who were chiefly engaged
in the corruption of women