John Climacus

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John Climacus
Ἰωάννης τῆς Κλίμακος
StJohnClimacus.jpg

Orthodox icon showing monks ascending to (and falling from) full spiritual attainment, as described in the Ladder of Divine Ascent.
John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus, John Sinaites, John of Sinai
Born ca. 525 in Syria
Died March 30, 606
Venerated in Roman Catholic Church
Eastern Catholic Churches
Eastern Orthodox
Oriental Orthodox
Feast March 30

John Climacus (Ἰωάννης τῆς Κλίμακος ca. 525 – 30 March, 606), also known as John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites, was a 6th century Christian monk at the monastery on Mount Sinai. <expand here>

He is revered as a saint by the Roman Catholic, Oriental Orthodox , Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches.

Biography

As with many other Syrian monastic saints, little is known of the life of John Climacus prior to his high profile involvement with the monastery at Mount Sinai. In particular, different accounts provide varied (and mutually exclusive) renditions of his early life, with some claiming that he sought the monastic novitiate as early as sixteen and others that he joined the order after the premature death of his young wife.[1] Regardless of the specific circumstances of his entrance into monastic life, John thrived in this new environment and, after completing his novitiate under Martyrius, he withdrew to a hermitage at the foot of the mountain to practice further austerities.

In the year 560, and the thirty-fifth of his age, he lost Martyrius by death; having then spent nineteen years in that place in penance and holy contemplation. By the advice of a prudent director, he then embraced an eremitical life in a plain called Thole, near the foot of Mount Sinai. His cell was five miles from the church, probably the same which had been built a little before, by order of the Emperor Justinian, for the use of the monks at the bottom of this mountain, in honour of the Blessed Virgin, as Procopius mentions. Thither he went every Saturday and Sunday to assist, with all the other anchorets and monks of that desert, at the holy office and at the celebration of the divine mysteries, when they all communicated. His diet was very sparing, though, to shun ostentation and the danger of vainglory, he ate of everything that was allowed among the monks of Egypt, who universally abstained from flesh, fish, &c. Prayer was his principal employment; and he practiced what he earnestly recommends to all Christians, that in all their actions, thoughts, and words they should keep themselves with great fervour in the presence of God, and direct all they do to his holy will. By habitual contemplation he acquired an extraordinary purity of heart, and such a facility of lovingly beholding God in all his works that this practice seemed in him a second nature. Thus he accompanied his studies with perpetual prayer. He assiduously read the holy scriptures and fathers, and was one of the most learned doctors of the church.[2]

After forty years of prayer, study and quiet contemplation, when John was about seventy-five years of age, the monks of Sinai persuaded him to accept the leadership of their abbey (ca. 600 C.E.). He acquitted himself in this role with the greatest wisdom, and his reputation spread so far that Pope Gregory the Great wrote to recommend himself to his prayers, and sent him a sum of money for the hospital of Sinai, where the pilgrims were wont to lodge. At this time, he also wrote the Ladder of Divine Ascent, a manual of ascetic practice that has remained a staple of Christian devotionalism throughout the fourteen centuries since its composition (as described below). Four years later, he resigned his charge and returned to his hermitage to prepare for death:

St. John sighed continually under the weight of his dignity during the four years that he governed the monks of Mount Sinai; and as he had taken upon him that burden with fear and reluctance, he with joy found means to resign the same a little before his death. Heavenly contemplation, and the continual exercise of divine love and praise, were his delight and comfort in his earthly pilgrimage: and in this imitation of the functions of the blessed spirits in heaven he placeth the essence of the monastic state. In his excellent maxims concerning the gift of holy tears, the fruit of charity, we seem to behold a lively portraiture of his most pure soul. He died in his hermitage on the 30th day of March, in 605, being fourscore years old.[3]

The Ladder of Divine Ascent

See also: Hesychasm

The "Scala", which obtained an immense popularity and has made its author famous in the Church, is addressed to anchorites and cenobites, and treats of the means by which the highest degree of religious perfection may be attained. Divided into thirty parts, or "steps", in memory of the thirty years of the hidden life of Christ, the Divine model of the religious, it presents a picture of all the virtues and contains a great many parables and historical touches, drawn principally from the monastic life, and exhibiting the practical application of the precepts. At the same time, as the work is mostly written in a concise, sententious form, with the aid of aphorisms, and as the reasonings are not sufficiently closely connected, it is at times somewhat obscure.

The Scala describes how to raise one's soul to God, as if on a ladder. This book is one of the most widely read among Eastern Orthodox Christians, especially during the season of Great Lent which immediately precedes Easter, and on the 4th Sunday of Great Lent he is especially commemorated. The book discusses monastic virtues and vices and holds dispassionateness (apatheia) as the ultimate contemplative and mystical good in a Christian. There are thirty steps of the ladder, which correspond with the age of Jesus at His baptism and the beginning of ministry.

An icon known by the same title depicts several people climbing a ladder; at the top is Jesus, prepared to receive the climbers into Heaven. Also shown are angels helping the climbers, and demons attempting to shoot with arrows or drag down the climbers, no matter how high up the ladder they may be. Most versions of the icon show at least one person falling.

Contents

The Scala consists of 30 chapters or "rungs",

  • 1–4: renouncement of the world and obedience to a spiritual father
    • 1. Περί αποταγής (On renunciation of the world)
    • 2. Περί απροσπαθείας (On detachment)
    • 3. Περί ξενιτείας (On exile or pilgrimage; concerning dreams that beginners have)
    • 4. Περί υπακοής (On blessed and ever-memorable obedience (in addition to episodes involving many individuals))
  • 5–7: penitence and affliction (πένθος) as paths to true joy
    • 5. Περί μετανοίας (On painstaking and true repentance which constitutes the life of the holy convicts; and about the Prison)
    • 6. Περί μνήμης θανάτου (On remembrance of death)
    • 7. Περί του χαροποιού πένθους (On joy-making mourning)
  • 8–17: defeat of vices and acquisition of virtue
    • 8. Περί αοργησίας (On freedom from anger and on meekness)
    • 9. Περί μνησικακίας (On remembrance of wrongs)
    • 10. Περί καταλαλιάς (On slander or calumny)
    • 11. Περί πολυλογίας και σιωπής (On talkativeness and silence)
    • 12. Περί ψεύδους (On lying)
    • 13. Περί ακηδίας (On despondency)
    • 14. Περί γαστριμαργίας (On that clamorous mistress, the stomach)
    • 15. Περί αγνείας (On incorruptible purity and chastity, to which the corruptible attain by toil and sweat)
    • 16. Περί φιλαργυρίας (On love of money, or avarice)
    • 17. Περί αναισθησίας (On non-possessiveness (that hastens one Heavenwards))
  • 18–26: avoidance of the traps of asceticism (laziness, pride, mental stagnation)
    • 18. Περί ύπνου και προσευχής (On insensibility, that is, deadening of the soul and the death of the mind before the death of the body)
    • 19. Περί αγρυπνίας (On sleep, prayer, and psalmody with the brotherhood)
    • 20. Περί δειλίας (On bodily vigil and how to use it to attain spiritual vigil, and how to practise it)
    • 21. Περί κενοδοξίας (On unmanly and puerile cowardice)
    • 22. Περί υπερηφανείας (On the many forms of vainglory)
    • 23. Περί λογισμών βλασφημίας (On mad pride and (in the same Step) on unclean blasphemous thoughts; concerning unmentionable blasphemous thoughts)
    • 24. Περί πραότητος και απλότητος (On meekness, simplicity, and guilelessness which come not from nature but from conscious effort, and about guile)
    • 25. Περί ταπεινοφροσύνης (On the destroyer of the passions, most sublime humility, which is rooted in spiritual perception)
    • 26. Περί διακρίσεως (On discernment of thoughts, passions and virtues; on expert discernment; brief summary of all aforementioned)
  • 27–29: acquisition of hesychia or peace of the soul, of prayer, and of apatheia (absence of afflictions or suffering)
    • 27. Περί ησυχίας (On holy stillness of body and soul; different aspects of stillness and how to distinguish them)
    • 28. Περί προσευχής (On holy and blessed prayer, the mother of virtues, and on the attitude of mind and body in prayer)
    • 29. Περί απαθείας (Concerning Heaven on earth, or Godlike dispassion and perfection, and the resurrection of the soul before the general resurrection)
  • 30. Περί αγάπης, ελπίδος και πίστεως (Concerning the linking together of the supreme trinity among the virtues; a brief exhortation summarizing all that has said at length in this book)

Veneration

His feast day is March 30 in East and West. The Orthodox Church also commemorates him on the fourth Sunday of the Great Lent. Many churches are dedicated to him in Russia, including a church and belltower in the Moscow Kremlin. John Climacus was also known as "Scholasticus," but he is not to be confused with St. John Scholasticus, Patriarch of Constantinople.

Notes

  1. For an account of this discrepancy, compare Farmer ("He was married in early life and became a monk on the death of his wife" (267)) and Butler ("At sixteen years of age he renounced all the advantages which the world promised him to dedicate himself to God in a religious state, in 547" (703)). Given the highly truncated life expectancies that characterized this period, it is even theoretically possible that both accounts are historically accurate.
  2. Butler, 703. This passage seems to echo many standard hagiographical tropes, though its claim concerning John's advanced scholarship is echoed by the clear and penetrating quality of the Ladder of Divine Ascent (described below).
  3. Butler, 704.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

This article incorporates text from the public-domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913.

  • Butler, Alban. Lives of the Saints. Edited, revised, and supplemented by Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater. Palm Publishers, 1956.
  • Duffy, John. "Embellishing the Steps: Elements of Presentation and Style in "The Heavenly Ladder" of John Climacus." Dumbarton Oaks Papers 53 (1999). 1-17.
  • Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 0192800582.
  • John Climacus. The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Scala paradisi). Translation by Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell; notes on translation by Norman Russell; introduction by Kallistos Ware; preface by Colm Luibheld. New York; Toronto: Paulist Press, 1982. ISBN 0809123304
  • Mack, Fr. John. Ascending the Heights - A Layman's Guide to The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Press, 1999. ISBN 1888212179.

External links

All links retrieved December 19, 2007

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