Scaling the Text: The Ambiguity of the Book in John Climacus

With the kind permission of Associate Professor Alexis Torrance, here is an except from his article on the ambiguity of the book in John Climacus. For the full text and references, see Byzantinische Zeitschrift 111:3 (2018) 793–808.

Early Byzantine monastic attitudes towards books, text, reading, and by extension learning and paideia, has long been recognized as an important facet of discussions regarding the broader reception, propagation, neglect, and/or transformation of classical culture in late antiquity and Byzantium. At one end of the chronological and ideological spectrum we have the ever-quotable Gibbon, for whom brutish monks, those “exiles from social life,” being “impelled by the dark and implacable genius of superstition,” had only disdain for any real culture or learning. Gibbon scoffs at the ancient claim that monastics pursued “divine philosophy,” wryly commenting that the monks “surpassed, without the aid of science or reason, the laborious virtues of the Grecian schools.” The early monks are perceived by Gibbon to be at once slayers of themselves, of society, of education, civilization, and so on. Of course, with the advent of the category of “late antiquity” to counter that of the “Dark Ages” came the more positive, sensitive, even appreciative views of reading culture and learning among the early monks that characterizes many contemporary assessments.

What often calls for clarification, however, is the kind of reading material and learning culture that is under discussion. Allusions to monastic libraries and scriptoria (most famously the Pachomian library), the learning evident in the letters of Anthony, the concerns of Isidore of Pelusium with rhetoric, and/or the Evagrian fascination with philosophy, often seem to be made in order to create an impression of a flourishing interest in classical or secular learning among the monastics. To be sure, there was a degree of interest in these areas within monastic circles, but hardly a flourishing one (on this point, the kneejerk reactions to Gibbon might sometimes go too far). What does flourish is the reading and copying of scripture and the fathers, including liturgy. The production of new texts, most especially in the form of ascetic treatises, is also a key component here. The late antique as well as Byzantine ascetic culture of learning dealt inescapably with these texts as its substrate.

Among the new and most influential and copied texts produced in early Byzantine monasticism is of course John of Sinai’s Ladder, written in the first decades of the seventh century. Several scholars have realized that to study this text from a literary perspective is to be confronted with the use of unspoken yet impressive levels of rhetorical sophistication, in turn shedding light in turn on monastic cultures of learning that, while being barely discernible on the surface, nevertheless play a deep and active role in monastic formation. Henrik Rydell Johnsén’s recent study Reading John Climacus stands out as an impressive work in this regard, paying close attention to the complex rhetorical strategies John of Sinai employs in the construction of his famous Ladder.

In proposing plausible and convincing arguments for Climacus’ literary skill, Johnsén extends his argument to make the case that monastic culture and paideia was always, from the beginning, inescapably literary and “textual.” On the face of it, this is an uncontroversial point: if texts are involved in monastic culture from the beginning (which is true) then surely that culture is textual. Yet the argument is stronger than this. Not only are texts important to monastic culture, they in a sense are that culture. Johnsén thus resists the widespread assumption that monasticism developed its traditions from oral beginnings. A consequence of this for his understanding of monastic culture can be seen in his assessment of the pedagogical value of the various steps of John’s Ladder (“on obedience,” “on purity,” and so on). They are no longer steps “about” monastic therapy for the soul, but the text of the steps is, he says, “the very therapy” itself. In other words, Johnsén wishes to use his analysis of John of Sinai’s literary abilities to propose a broader collapse of text and meaning in early Byzantine monastic culture. There is no hors-texte in his conception; the medium is the message.

It is Johnsén’s broader claims about John Climacus and early Byzantine monasticism that serve as the backdrop and impetus for this article. While his argument depends on a close and detailed literary analysis of the text of the Ladder, little positive attention is given to Climacus’ own statements that occasionally help but ultimately, I argue, hinder Johnsén’s claims. The statements explored revolve around the thoughtful ambiguity shown by Climacus for the written word and/or the book. What is meant here is not the more obvious ambiguity between Christian texts and non-Christian ones, or between the “wisdom of God” and the “wisdom of this world” in the Pauline sense. Nor is this an ambiguity about learning if understood as training in rhetoric, a skill in which John Climacus (or John “the Scholastic”) appears adept. What is rather meant is an ambiguity regarding holy texts themselves. Having briefly discussed John’s own rhetorical and literary skill, attention is turned to his positive assessments of the written text or book and its integral role in the ascetic life. Following this, a more puzzling point is addressed, one that Climacus makes several times in the Ladder and To the Shepherd, which betrays an ascetic ideal that dispenses with books and with text, however holy and correct these may in principle be. Regard less of what is made of this notion, it at least shows that Climacus himself did not conceive his textual steps in the Ladder as “the very therapy” itself for monastic life; he was quite insistent, in fact, that while monasticism seemed inescapably textual, it pointed beyond the written word. In an idealized setting the monk had the ineffable words of divine knowledge inscribed directly on the tablet of his heart, divested of the mediation of parchment and ink. But in the final section, it is also argued that even here we are left by Climacus with a tablet and a text, an internalized and indeed supremely embodied sense of the holy book. And we are left too with his Ladder, a textual testimony to his firm belief in the hors-texte.