When Egeria visited the Sinai in 383-384, she wrote approvingly of the way the monks read to her the scriptural accounts concerning the various events that had taken place there. Thus we can speak of manuscripts at Sinai in the fourth century. It is written of Saint John Climacus that, while living as a hermit, he spent much time in prayer and in the copying of books. This is evidence of manuscript production at Sinai in the sixth century. The library at the Holy Monastery of Sinai is thus the inheritor of texts and of traditions that date to the earliest years of a monastic presence in the Sinai. In earlier times, manuscripts were kept in three different places: in the north wall of the monastery, in the vicinity of the church, and in a central location where the texts were accessible.
In 1725, Nicephorus Marthalis was elected Archbishop of Sinai. He had been a scribe, and the library contains manuscripts written in his hand. He had a great concern for the manuscripts, and asked that they be gathered into a new location opposite the Archbishop’s quarters, and that a catalogue of the manuscripts be drawn up.
In 1930, construction began on a new building along the south wall, which was completed in 1951. This provided a new space for the monastery’s collection of manuscripts and printed books. The library now consists of some 3,300 manuscripts, and some 8,000 early printed books, together with 5,000 new books.
In 1975, a cache of manuscript leaves and fragments were discovered in the north wall. These were damaged fragments that had been left behind when the books and manuscripts were moved in the eighteenth century.
Beginning in 2008, the entire top floor of the south wing will be renovated, to supply conservation workshops and digital photography studios, and greatly improved storage for the books and manuscripts, as well as an improved reading space for visiting scholars.
The Sinai brotherhood, wishing to offer even the smallest tribute of honour to the great Saint of the Sinai desert, the righteous John, made in 2017 the bold decision to undertake a critical edition of the text of the Ladder. In order to accomplish this goal, there was constituted, with the blessing of the Archbishop of Sinai, Pharan, and Raithou, kyr Damianos, a scholarly committee of Sinai Fathers and friends of Mount Sinai, who are working selflessly under the leadership of the Professor and at the same time an old friend of the Monastery, Panagiotes Nikolopoulos.
The Sinai brotherhood is aware of both the enormity and the extent of the demands, as well as the overwhelming costs, of the task that has been undertaken, which surpasses its strength, humanly speaking. But the longing of those (our own Myrrhbearers) who are employed with this task we trust will attract the blessing and the collaboration of our Righteous Father John the author of the Ladder, who is able to cover all of our inabilities. And this is already happening.
Recently, the Sinai Fathers came in contact and agreed to work together with the University of Leuven (the Department of Early Christian and Byzantine Studies), which also concurrently initiated in 2018 the same work in the person of the quite capable new researcher Maxim Venetskov, under the guidance of Professor Peter Van Deun. We hope that this partnership will accelerate the pace of the research, and that it will give the committee the opportunity to review all (if this is possible) of the existing Greek manuscripts, some five hundred in number.
October 2019
The Scholarly Committee for the Ladder of the Sacred Monastery of Mount Sinai
The Sinai manuscripts comprise the oldest and most important Christian monastic library collection. Of its 3,300 manuscripts, two-thirds are in Greek. The rest are principally in Arabic, Syriac, Georgian, and Slavonic, through there are other manuscripts in Polish, Hebrew, Ethiopian, Armenian, Latin, and Persian. The New Finds correspond to these languages, and are stored adjacent to the library. The library also contains an important archive, containing letters, account books, charters, and other documents.
The Sinai library contains some 8,000 early printed books, of which 7,000 are in Greek. There are many early and important editions of the Holy Scriptures, of patristic and classical texts, and of Orthodox service books. These include the first editions of Homer (1488) and Plato (1513), and the Comedies of Aristophanes (1498), the Great Etymological Lexicon of the Greek Language (1499), and Suidae’s Lexicon (1499). The works of Aldus Manutius, the first to print Greek, are well represented.
The Sinai archive contains documents, letters, account books, and other compositions, pertaining to the Holy Monastery of Sinai itself, and to its many dependencies. The oldest Greek documents date from the middle of the fifteenth century, but there are older documents in Latin and in Venetian.
On May 25, 1975, Archimandrite Sophronius, then the Skevophylax of the monastery, discovered a cache of manuscript leaves and fragments in the tower on the north wall of the monastery. The room where they were discovered had been used to store manuscripts in earlier centuries, and when the manuscripts were transferred to a new location in the early eighteenth century, these damaged leaves and fragments had been left behind. These were subsequently hidden when the floor above the room gave way during an earthquake. They were recovered during the renovation of the tower. When the mass of leaves and fragments had been gathered and sorted, they were found to reflect the diverse languages found in the library: the majority of the manuscripts were in Greek, with the majority of the others in Arabic, Syriac, Slavonic, and Georgian. There were also texts in Hebrew, Latin, and Ethiopian.
The manuscripts that are found at the Holy Monastery of Sinai are either the offerings of notable rulers or of simple pilgrims, or they are the work of the monks living at Sinai, written to supply some needed text. The earliest manuscripts written at Sinai date to the time of the Arab predominance of the area, a time in which contact with the Orthodox centres of book production were difficult. Codices written before the eleventh century are sometimes rich in decoration, while manuscripts written after that date are adorned with miniatures. Some of these have a Constantinopolitan provenance, and reached the monastery either directly, or through one of its many far-flung dependencies. In other manuscripts, the capital letters have been designed and executed with a high artistic ability.
The Codex Sinaiticus is dated to the second quarter of the 4th century. It is a splendid manuscript of the Holy Scriptures, which originally contained the entire Old and New Testaments, plus the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Epistle of Barnabas. It is written four columns to the page, in a clear and regular script. The Codex Sinaiticus contains the oldest surviving complete New Testament. The Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus are the oldest copies of the scriptures written on parchment. Scholars feel that they preserve a very early level of the text, and their study is absolutely essential for anyone wishing to study the history of the text of the scriptures.
The Epistle of thy Humility testifies to the holiness of thy life; whence we give great thanks to Almighty God, for that we know that there are still some to pray for our sins. For we, under the colour of ecclesiastical government, are tossed in the billows of this world, which frequently overwhelm us. But by the protecting hand of heavenly grace we are raised up again from the deep. Do you, then, who lead a tranquil life in the so great serenity of your rest, and stand as it were safe on the shore, extend the hand of your prayer to us who are on our voyage, or rather who are suffering shipwreck, and with all the supplications in your power help us as we strive to reach the land of the living, so that not only for your own life, but also for our rescue, you may have reward for ever. May the Holy Trinity protect thy Love with the right hand of Its protection, and grant unto thee in Its sight, by praying, by admonishing, by shewing example of good work, to feed the flock committed to thee, that so thou mayest be able to reach the pastures of eternal life with the flock itself which thou feedest. For it is written, My sheep shall come and shall find pastures (John x. 27). And these pastures in truth we find, when, freed from the winter of this life, we are satisfied with the greenness of eternal life, as of a new Spring.
We have learnt from the report of our son Simplicius that there is a want of beds and bedding in the Gerontocomium124, which has been constructed by one Isaurus there. Wherefore we have sent 15 cloaks, 30 rachanæ125, and 15 beds. We have also given money for the purchase of mattresses and for their transport, which we beg thy Love not to disdain, but to supply them to the place for which they have been sent.
Given on the day of the Kalends of September, Indiction 4. [600 A.D].
123 No doubt the John called Climacus, Scholasticus, and Sinaita, commemorated as a saint on 30 March. Having entered the monastery of Mount Sinai at the age of 16, he is said to have retired thence to live the life of an anchoret, to have been elected abbot at the age of 75, to have again after a time retired into solitude, and to have died early in the 7th century. While abbot, he wrote a work called Scala (κλῖμαξ) Paradisi, whence his name of Climacus. The monastery on Mount Sinai was a place to which pilgrimages were made. Cf. IV. 46.
124 Properly a hospital for aged persons.
125 The meaning of the word rachana, racana, or racahina, is uncertain. It occurs again in XI. 78, where Barbara and Antonina, two young ladies at Constantinople, are thanked for a present of two racanæ, which they had alleged to be of their own workmanship. It is usually supposed to mean some wooller article of dress, worn by monks. Others understand blankets.
The original text (from Patrologiæ Latinæ of J.P.Migne, 1862, vol.77, 1117D-1119B & manuscript Cologne 92, 8th cent., f.140ab - www.ceec.uni-koeln.de).
Sanctitatem vitae tuae humilitatis tuae testatur epistola, unde omnipotenti Deo magnas gratias agimus, quia adhuc esse cognoscimus, qui prò peccatis nostris valeant exorare. Nos enim sub colore ecclesiastici regiminis, mundi hujus fluctibus volvimur , qui frequenter nos obruunt, sed coelestis gratiae manu protegente, de profundo re- levamur. Vos ergo, qui in tanta quietis vestrae serenitate tranquillam vitam ducitis, et securi quasi in littore statis, nobis navigantibus aut potius naufragantibus orationis vestrae manum tendite, et conantes ad terram viventium pergere, quantis potestis precibus adiuvate , ut non solum de vestra vita , sed etiam de ereptione nostra mercedem habere in perpetuum valeatis, Sancta Trinitas dilectionem tuam suae protectionis dextera protegat , detque tibi com- missum gregem orando , admonendo, exempla boni operis estendendo, in suo conspectu recte pascere, ut ad aeter- nae vitae pascua valeas cum ipso quem pascis grege per- venire. Scriptum quippe est : Oves meae venient et pascua invenient , quae videlicet pascua tunc invenimus, quando huius vitae hyeme carentes, de aeternae vitae quasi de novi veris viriditate satiamur.
Filio nostro Simplicio renunciante cognovimus, lectos vel lectisternia in gerontocomio, quod a quodam illic Isauro conditum est , deesse. Propterea misimus laenas XV, ra- chanas XXX , lectos XV , pretium quoque de emendis culcitris vel naula dedimus, quae dilectionem tuam peti— mus non indigne suscipere, sed in loco quo transmissa sunt, praebere. Data die kalend. septembr., indictione IV.
manuscript Cologne 92 - f.140a
manuscript Cologne 92 - f.140b