medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear John,
Thank you so much for the materials on John Climacus. As it happens, we
have just finished yesterday our Byzantine Greek reading seminar of the
Scala paradisi, with four devoted students. Sharing your collection of
images with them was a nice rounding off of the course.
Best,
George
György Geréby CSc (PhD)
associate professor
head, Mediaeval Studies Department
Central European University
Budapest V
Nador u 9
H-1051 Hungary
Phone/fax: + 36.1.3412634
Mobile: +36.30.9969874
Skype: ggereby4
On 30 March 2016 at 09:24, John Dillon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
> According to his Bios by Daniel (BHG 882), John Climacus (John of Sinai;
> d. earlier 7th cent.) was a monk of Sinai who after nineteen years of
> communal life spent the next forty as an hermit on Mt. Sinai, after which
> time he was elected abbot of his monastery. He is famous for his ascetic
> treatise _Klimax tou Paradeisou_ ("_The Ladder of Divine Ascent_", "_The
> Ladder of Paradise_"), from whose title and controlling image his
> appellation Climacus is derived (the latter is a latinization of John's
> appellation in Greek _tēs klimakos_, "of the ladder"). Herewith some
> icons illustrating John's concept:
> Holy Monastery of the God-trodden Mount Sinai, St. Catherine (South Sinai
> governorate), Egypt (twelfth-century):
> http://tinyurl.com/gpg2ud7
> Pantokrator monastery, Mt. Athos (sixteenth-century):
> http://tinyurl.com/3364ye
> The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg (sixteenth-century):
> http://tinyurl.com/2tawnv
>
> Today is John's feast day in the Synaxary of Constantinople and in its
> modern descendants in Byzantine-rite churches. It is also his day of
> commemoration in the Roman Martyrology.
>
>
> Some period-pertinent images of St. John Climacus:
>
> a) as depicted in the frontispiece of an eleventh-century copy of his
> _Klimax_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Coislin 88, fol. 1v):
> http://tinyurl.com/blqz8yl
>
> b) as depicted in an eleventh-century copy, of Mesopotamian origin, of his
> _Klimax_ (Paris, BnF, ms. Coislin 263, fol. 9r):
> http://tinyurl.com/79l55n4
>
> c) as depicted the beginning of an eleventh-century copy of his letter to
> abbot John of Raithou customarily accompanying the _Klimax_ (Paris, BnF,
> ms. Coislin 263, fol. 147v):
> http://tinyurl.com/735u3ec
>
> d) as depicted in an illumination from an early twelfth-century copy of
> his _Klimax_ in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC:
>
> http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/edan/object.php?q=fsg_F1909.151&bcrumb=true
>
> e) as depicted (at center) in a late twelfth- or early thirteenth-century
> fresco in the naos of the Palaia Enkleistra (Old Hermitage) of the St.
> Neophytus monastery near Tala (Paphos prefecture) in the Republic of Cyprus:
> http://tinyurl.com/2f4e83u
>
> f) as depicted (at center; at left, St. George of Lydda; at right, St.
> Blasius / Blaise of Sebaste) in a thirteenth-century Novgorod School icon
> in the Russian Museum in Leningrad:
> http://tinyurl.com/ybl7krg
>
> g) as depicted (detail of a damaged fresco) in the very late thirteenth-
> or very early fourteenth-century frescoes attributed to Manuel Panselinos
> in the Protaton church on Mt. Athos:
> http://www.groca.org/images/klimakos2.jpg
>
> h) as depicted in a fourteenth(?)-century fresco in the church of Agios
> Nikolaos tis Stegis at Kakopetria (Limassol prefecture) in the foothills of
> the Troodos Mountains on Cyprus:
> http://tinyurl.com/yb3bwnm
>
> i) as depicted in a fourteenth-century fresco in the church of the Timios
> Stavros (Holy Cross) at Pelendri (Limassol prefecture) in the Republic of
> Cyprus:
> http://tinyurl.com/ylz8pxu
>
> j) as depicted in an early fourteenth-century mosaic (ca. 1312) in the
> parecclesion (now a museum) of the former church of the Pammakaristos
> (Fethiye camii) in Istanbul:
> http://tinyurl.com/2exe43k
> http://tinyurl.com/7gefp9k
>
> k) as depicted in the earlier fourteenth-century frescoes (betw. ca. 1312
> and 1321/1322) in the chapel of the Most Holy Theotokos in the monastery
> church of the Theotokos at Gračanica in, depending upon one's view of the
> matter, either Serbia's province of Kosovo and Metohija or the Republic of
> Kosovo:
> http://tinyurl.com/7cbhjas
>
> l) as depicted (at left in the panel at upper right) in an earlier
> fourteenth-century pictorial menologion from Thessaloniki (betw. 1322 and
> 1340; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Gr. th. f. 1, fol. 33v):
> http://image.ox.ac.uk/images/bodleian/msgrthf1/33v.jpg
>
> m) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Onuphrius) in the later
> fourteenth-century frescoes (either betw. 1371 and 1389 or ca. 1397-1398;
> cleaned and conserved, 1960) on the north wall of the church of the
> Presentation of the Theotokos in the Nova Pavlica monastery in Pavlica
> (Raška dist.) in Serbia:
> http://tinyurl.com/2cd9m5d
>
> n) as depicted in the later fourteenth-century frescoes (1378) by
> Theophanes the Greek in the church of the Transfiguration on Ilin Street in
> Veliky Novgorod:
> http://tinyurl.com/zbgq7dz
>
> o) as depicted (at right; at left, St. Sabas of Jerusalem) in the later
> fourteenth-century frescoes (1389; restored, 1971-1972) in the monastery
> church of St. Andrew at Matka (near Skopje) in the Former Yugoslav Republic
> of Macedonia:
> http://tinyurl.com/zadb4z3
>
> p) as depicted in a late fourteenth-century copy of the _Klimax_ in an
> Italian-language version in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore:
> http://art.thewalters.org/detail/9603
>
> q) as depicted in a fifteenth-century copy of the _Klimax_ in a Russian
> Church Slavonic version in the Novgorod Museum of History, Architecture and
> Art:
>
> http://www.novgorod.ru/english/read/information/manuscripts/the-ladder-of-divine-ascent/
>
> Best,
> John Dillon
> **********************************************************************
> To join the list, send the message: subscribe medieval-religion YOUR NAME
> to: [log in to unmask]
> To send a message to the list, address it to:
> [log in to unmask]
> To leave the list, send the message: unsubscribe medieval-religion
> to: [log in to unmask]
> In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
> [log in to unmask]
> For further information, visit our web site:
> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/medieval-religion
>
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: subscribe medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: unsubscribe medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/medieval-religion
