122
manuscripts.”
26
Martin examined 33 icons or fragments of icons—parchment
folios—each with Penitential canons or rules laid down by the Church to accompany the images, which are to be found in libraries and museums from the Monastery
of Mount St. Catherine’s to the Vatican; from Mount Athos to the Bibliotheque
National de Paris, and in every major rare books room from UCLA to Harvard’s
Widener. In fact, from the 1491 Venetian edition of Sancto Ioanne Climacho,
Altramente Schala Paradisi
27
until the late 1800s there were dozens of editions.
28
In every instance, the congruence of the painter-monk/mountaineering seer, the
surrounding isolated gorges, and that metaphysical fortress, all added up to a majestically sequestered and contiguous spirituality. The iconographic legacies were the
perfect illustrations for an essentially pivotal manuscript at their heart, namely, the
Codex Sinaiticus. This perfect union of composites heralded humanity’s utterly
compelling and dire fixations with the hereafter.
13.3 The Incarnation of Fragments
The iconic world of Sinai had so universal an appeal that just 33 years after El Greco
painted his illustrious Iraklion triptych of the Holy Mountain and its Monastery, a
fellow Cretan, Georgios Klontzas, rendered his marvelous “Transfiguration with
Scenes of Monastic Life” (1603, Candia, Crete?).
29
Neither El Greco nor Klontzas
ever made the pilgrimage to Sinai but the legends spanning the vast timeframe
between the composition of the Old Testament, and the book finally arriving in fragments and hundreds of pages (tens of thousands of lines) at the Monastery of St.
Catherine’s had long become a kind of certitude in Judeo-Christian history. Not
only was the “Ladder to Paradise” and the many mythical qualities attributed to
Saint John Climacus instinct with the very essence of a Biblically inflorescent Sinai,
26 ibid., Martin, p. 3. The great Danish genius, Søren Kierkegaard devoted an entire manuscript to
the name of Johannes Climacus, writing in a section entitled, “III: The Absolute Paradox (A
Metaphysical Caprice),” “But one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion
of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow.
But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also
the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the
collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.” Second Period: Indirect Communication
(1843–46)
Philosophical Fragments, p. 37, http://sorenkierkegaard.org/philosophical-fragments.html,
Accessed August 11, 2019. For Kierkegaard, this passion to know is betrayed by the quest for
knowledge, discovering its aspired to precision through faith and experience, not cognition.
27 Publisher: Bernardinus Benabus and Matheo da Parma.
disi-fol-s-1-recto-incomecia-el-sermoe-sacto-iohane-climacho-al-pastore-translated-from-thelatin/oclc/561777726&referer=brief_results, Accessed March 3, 2020.
29 See Holy Image – Hallowed Ground, Icons From Sinai, Edited by Robert S. Nelson and Kristen
M. Collins, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2006, p. 232.
13 Codex Sinaiticus
manuscripts.”
26
Martin examined 33 icons or fragments of icons—parchment
folios—each with Penitential canons or rules laid down by the Church to accompany the images, which are to be found in libraries and museums from the Monastery
of Mount St. Catherine’s to the Vatican; from Mount Athos to the Bibliotheque
National de Paris, and in every major rare books room from UCLA to Harvard’s
Widener. In fact, from the 1491 Venetian edition of Sancto Ioanne Climacho,
Altramente Schala Paradisi
27
until the late 1800s there were dozens of editions.
28
In every instance, the congruence of the painter-monk/mountaineering seer, the
surrounding isolated gorges, and that metaphysical fortress, all added up to a majestically sequestered and contiguous spirituality. The iconographic legacies were the
perfect illustrations for an essentially pivotal manuscript at their heart, namely, the
Codex Sinaiticus. This perfect union of composites heralded humanity’s utterly
compelling and dire fixations with the hereafter.
13.3 The Incarnation of Fragments
The iconic world of Sinai had so universal an appeal that just 33 years after El Greco
painted his illustrious Iraklion triptych of the Holy Mountain and its Monastery, a
fellow Cretan, Georgios Klontzas, rendered his marvelous “Transfiguration with
Scenes of Monastic Life” (1603, Candia, Crete?).
29
Neither El Greco nor Klontzas
ever made the pilgrimage to Sinai but the legends spanning the vast timeframe
between the composition of the Old Testament, and the book finally arriving in fragments and hundreds of pages (tens of thousands of lines) at the Monastery of St.
Catherine’s had long become a kind of certitude in Judeo-Christian history. Not
only was the “Ladder to Paradise” and the many mythical qualities attributed to
Saint John Climacus instinct with the very essence of a Biblically inflorescent Sinai,
26 ibid., Martin, p. 3. The great Danish genius, Søren Kierkegaard devoted an entire manuscript to
the name of Johannes Climacus, writing in a section entitled, “III: The Absolute Paradox (A
Metaphysical Caprice),” “But one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion
of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow.
But the ultimate potentiation of every passion is always to will its own downfall, and so it is also
the ultimate passion of the understanding to will the collision, although in one way or another the
collision must become its downfall. This, then, is the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.” Second Period: Indirect Communication
(1843–46)
Philosophical Fragments, p. 37, http://sorenkierkegaard.org/philosophical-fragments.html,
Accessed August 11, 2019. For Kierkegaard, this passion to know is betrayed by the quest for
knowledge, discovering its aspired to precision through faith and experience, not cognition.
27 Publisher: Bernardinus Benabus and Matheo da Parma.
disi-fol-s-1-recto-incomecia-el-sermoe-sacto-iohane-climacho-al-pastore-translated-from-thelatin/oclc/561777726&referer=brief_results, Accessed March 3, 2020.
29 See Holy Image – Hallowed Ground, Icons From Sinai, Edited by Robert S. Nelson and Kristen
M. Collins, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2006, p. 232.
13 Codex Sinaiticus