ABSTRACT

The life and condition of the monks in the Sinaite desert are well described in the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschus, published by his friend and pupil Sophronius. Therein, John informs his readers of a series of incidents and stories that seemed to him noteworthy. Another source of information is the collection of forty Narratives attributed to Anastasius of Sinai, published by F. Nau.1 These documents offer us a picture of monks who enjoyed a high reputation, with an atmosphere and tradition of their own, distinct from that of Palestine or of Egypt yet at the same time blending both in an austere but balanced ethos. It is in these mountains that Moses encountered God; it is here that Elijah heard God; and it is here that John Climacus, or John of the Ladder, recorded his experiences of God. The principal source, apart from the writings of John himself, is the Life of

John written by a monk named Daniel of Raithou, whose biographical dates and origin are equally uncertain.2 Daniel writes as an eyewitness, or at the very least as a contemporary of the Sinaite ascetic and author of the Ladder. Yet we cannot be entirely sure of this; after all, in his Life, which resembles an edifying eulogy, Daniel too is imprecise. He does not, for example, provide any chronology and explicitly states that he does not even know John’s place of origin (596A). All other information, apart from the evidence mentioned below, goes no further than Daniel’s: such includes the Menaion for March 30,

the day of John’s repose, as well as other synaxaria and menologia such as the tenth-century Life in the menologion of Emperor Basil.3