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John Climax

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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JOHN CLIMAX ( c. 525-600 A.D.), ascetic and mystic, also called Scholasticus and Sinaltes. After having spent forty years in a cave at the foot of mount Sinai, he became abbot of the monastery. His life has been written by Daniel, a monk belonging to the monastery of Raithu, on the Red Sea. He derives his name Climax (or Climacus) from his work of the same name (KMµa 701i Ilapa5Eivov, ladder to Paradise), in thirty sections, corresponding to the thirty years of the life of Christ. It is written in a simple and popular style. The first part treats of the vices that hinder the attainment of holiness, the second of the virtues of a Christian.

Editions.-J. P. Migne, Patrologia graeca, lxxxviii. (including the biography by Daniel); S. Eremites (Constantinople, 1883); see also C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (1897); Gass-Kruger in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopcidie fiir protestantische Theologie, Bd. 9 (1901). The Ladder has been translated into several foreign languages - into English by Father Robert, Mount St Bernard's Abbey, Leicestershire (1856).