Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-5r2nc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-09T03:07:14.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Serena to Hypatia: John Toland's Women

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2020

Ian Leask
Ian Leask*
Affiliation:
Dublin City University
*
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper focusses on John Toland's influential Hypatia (1720), an account of the neo-Platonist philosopher and mathematician murdered in ancient Alexandria; it also considers segments of his Letters to Serena (1704), and suggests various conjunctions between the two texts which confirm Toland's genuine and sustained feminist commitment. As I try to establish, Toland's concern is as much about contemporaneous events as it is about ‘disinterested’ history: by promoting Hypatia as the representative of philosophy in its perennial struggle with superstition and priestcraft, Toland is able to underscore the wider case for an inclusive and capacious conception of ‘enlightenment’.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 88: Irish Philosophy in the Age of Berkeley , October 2020 , pp. 195 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anon., ‘Dissertation sur Hypacie, où l'on justifie Saint Cyrille d'Alexandrie sur la mort de cette Sçavante’, in the Continuation des Mémoires de Litterature et d'Histoire 5.1 (1728), 139–86.Google Scholar
Arnold, Gottfried, Unpartheyische Kirchen und Ketzer-Historie von Amfang des Neuen Testaments bis auf das Jahr Christi 1688 (Frankfurt: Thomas Fritzschens, 1669).Google Scholar
Broad, Jacqueline, Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Cameron, Alan and Long, Jacqueline, Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).Google Scholar
Champion, Justin, ‘Toleration and Citizenship in Enlightenment England: John Toland and the Naturalization of the Jews, 1714–1754’, in Toleration in Enlightenment Europe, eds. Grel, O.P. and Porter, R. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 133–156.Google Scholar
Cyril, , The Fathers of the Church, vol.118 (Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Festal Letters 1–12), trans. Amidon, Philip R., ed. O'Keefe, John J. (Washington, D.C.: Catholsic University of America Press, 2008).Google Scholar
de Lisle, Leconte, Poëmes antiques (Paris: Librairie de Marc Ducloux, 1852).Google Scholar
Dzielska, Maria, Hypatia of Alexandria, trans. Lyra, F. (Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Finke, Laurie A., ‘The Satire of Women Writers in The Female Wits‘, Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, 8/2 (1984), 64–71.Google Scholar
Force, James E., William Whiston. Honest Newtonian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).Google Scholar
Hanson, R.P.C., The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God. The Aryan Controversy, 318–381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988).Google Scholar
Haas, Christopher, Alexandria in Late Antiquity. Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).Google Scholar
Howard, Edward, The six days adventure, or the new Utopia (London: Thos. Dring, 1671).Google Scholar
Israel, Jonathan, Radical Enlightenment. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1670–1750 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Israel, Jonathan, Enlightenment Contested. Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man 1670–1752 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacob, Margaret, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981)Google Scholar
Karp, Jonathan, ‘The Mosaic Republic in Augustan Politics: John Toland's Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews’, Hebraic Political Studies, 1, (2006), 462–92.Google Scholar
Kelley, Anne (ed.), Catherine Trotter's ‘The Adventures of a Young Lady’ and Other Works (Aldershot: Ashagate, 2006).Google Scholar
Kingsley, Charles, Hypatia or the New Foes with an Old Face (London: John Parker & Son, 1853).Google Scholar
Leask, Ian, ‘Unholy Force: Toland's Leibnizian ‘Consummation’ of Spinozism’, British Journal for the history of Philosophy, 20 (2012), 499–537.10.1080/09608788.2012.670840CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leask, Ian, ‘Speaking for Spinoza? Notes on John Toland's Origines Judaicae’, in Reassessing the Radical Enlightenment, ed. Ducheyne, Steffen (London: Routledge, 2017), 143–59.10.4324/9781315613642-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leask, Ian, ‘Only Natural: John Toland and the Jewish Question’, Intellectual History Review, 28, 4, (2018), 515–28.10.1080/17496977.2017.1406220CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Thomas, The History of Hypatia, A most Impudent School-Mistress of Alexandria: Murder'd and torn to Pieces by the Populace, in Defence of Saint Cyril and the Alexandrian Clergy. From the Aspersions of Mr Toland (London: Bickerton, 1721).Google Scholar
Lurbe, Pierre, ‘John Toland and the Naturalization of the Jews’, Eighteenth Century Ireland, 14 (1999), 37–48.Google Scholar
McDonald, Grantley, Biblical Criticism in Early Modern Europe. Erasmus, the Johaninne Comma and Trinitarian Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).Google Scholar
Ménage, Gilles, History of Women Philosophers [Historia Mulierum Philosopharum], trans. Zedler, Beatrice (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1984).Google Scholar
Milling, Jane, ‘The Female Wits: Women Writers at Work’, in Gill, Catie (ed.), Theatre and Culture in Early Modern England, 1650–1737. From Levaiathan to Licensing Act (London: Routledge, 2010), 131–42.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Felicity, in The Brink of All We Hate: English Satires on Women, 1660–1750 (University Press of Kentucky, 1984).Google Scholar
Pankratz, Anette, ‘Performing Republics: Negotiations of Political Discourse in Restoration Comedies’, in Wiemann, Dirk and Mahlberg, (eds.), Perspectives on Revolutionary Republicanism (London: Routledge, 2014), 95–112.Google Scholar
Penella, Robert J., ‘When Was Hypatia Born?’ Historia. Zeitschrift für Alte Geschiche, 33/1 (1984), 126–28.Google Scholar
Rist, John M., ‘Hypatia’, Phoenix, 19 (1965), 214–25.10.2307/1086284CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Johann Andreas, Hipparchus, Theonae doctaque Hypatia in mathesis celebres: Dissertatione Historico-Mathematico (Jena: Litteris Krebsianis, 1689).Google Scholar
Sheridan, Patricia (ed.), Catharine Trotter Cockburn: Philosophical Writings (Peterborough, Ontaria: Broadview Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Toland, John, Christianity Not Mysterious: Or, A Treatise Shewing, That there is nothing in the Gospel Contrary to Reason, Nor Above it: And that no Christian Doctrine can be properly call'd A Mystery (London: Anon., 1696).Google Scholar
Toland, John, Life of John Milton (London: John Darby, 1699).Google Scholar
Toland, John, Mr Toland's Reflections on Dr Sacheverell's Sermon Preach'd at St Paul's Nov. 5 1709 (London: J. Baker, 1710).Google Scholar
Toland, John, High Church Display'd. Being a Compleat History of the Affair of Dr Sacheverell, In its Origin, Progress, and Consequence (London: anon., 1711).Google Scholar
Toland, John, Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews of Great Britain and Ireland, etc. (London: J. Roberts, 1714).Google Scholar
Toland, John, Hypatia: Or the History of a Most Beautiful, Most Vertuous, Most Learned, and Every Way Accomplish'd Lady; who was Torn to Pieces by the Clergy of Alexandria, to Gratify the Pride, Emulation, and Cruelty of Their Archbishop, Commonly But Undeservedly Styled St. Cyril, in Toland, Tetradymus (London: Brotherton, Meadows et al, 1720).Google Scholar
Toland, John, John Toland's ‘Letters to Serena’, ed. Leask, Ian (Dublin: Four Courts, 2013).Google Scholar
Watts, Edward J., City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).10.1525/california/9780520244214.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watts, Edward J., Hypatia. The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Wessel, Susan, Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199268467.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar