Ladder of Divine Ascent
composition: probableauthorship: secure
Thirty chapters of monastic instruction map the inner life as a graded ascent, analysing the passions with a psychological precision that made the book the standard Lenten reading of eastern monasteries.
- the inner life set out as ordered, diagnosable stages
- fine discrimination between passions that resemble one another
- despondency treated as a specific condition rather than general sadness
- an image that became a fixed subject of eastern iconography
Written for a neighbouring abbot, the Ladder treats each step as a distinct condition to be diagnosed and worked through, from renunciation and detachment through anger, despondency, vainglory and pride to stillness, prayer and love. The analysis of despondency and of the varieties of vainglory is unusually exact, distinguishing conditions that look alike from the outside. Its image of a ladder from which monks fall at every rung became one of the most reproduced subjects in Byzantine icon painting.
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