text:  The death of Hypatia is indeed a blot in Christian annals but she fell the victim of an infuriated multitude; and how often had the Proconsul and the Emperor beheld unmoved the arena wet with the blood of Christian virgins and the earth blackened with their ashes! Indeed the deference paid to weakness is the grand maxim the practical application of which in spite of some fantastic notions and some most pernicious errors that accompanied it entitles chivalry to our veneration and prevented the dark ages from being one scene of unmixed violence and oppression