John Petritzi, Satnoebata kibe

Manuscripts: A — Central Archive 264/268 (Mkhedruli, 1730); B — Central Archive 259 (Nuskhuri, 1779); C — Literary Museum 2887 (Mkhedruli, 1757–1762); D — H-1737 (Nuskhuri, 18th c.); E — H-1023 (Nuskhuri, 18th c.); F — A-342 (Mkhedruli, 1788); G — S-1597 (Nuskhuri, 1768); K — A-711 (Mkhedruli, 1785); U — Q-814 (Mkhedruli, 18th c.). The prose text cited in the scholia is taken from the translation of John of Sinai’s *Klimax* by Euthymius the Hagiorite (see: *Of Our Venerable Father John, Abbot of Mount Sinai, the Klimax, which is the Ladder*, published by the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian of the New Georgians on the Holy Mountain, Poti, 1902, 426 pp.). The prose text and variants are indicated according to the stanza numbers. Stanzas marked with an asterisk (*1, *2, *4, etc.) have no corresponding prose text; they were composed by Petritsi himself independently of John of Sinai’s *Klimax*.

From John of Sinai, the thirty steps, spoken according to the ascent of the Ladder—whoever is perfected, you have reached fulfillment!—these I, John, have set down face to face from my own head in ten chapters. I. Concerning the departure from the world: *2. You wish to depart? Then do so at once. As you see the world, be not a hypocrite, but ever watchful, a lover of the eternal; weep, for there the souls of the father ascend toward the path, who here have gained this grace. 3. For those who seek, God is among His creations, according to the measure of their state He is, except for the organ of right vision, by which one desires to look at the sun. *4. Flight from the world is truly for the perfect, who abhor this shadow—the insubstantial world, a woven dream, never stable, vain and transitory, equal for the possessors and the dispossessed.

3. For all who desire and seek God, they are their [i.e., the steps'] summits. 5. Monasticism is the fulfillment of the incorporeal rule, within these material, mortal fleshly burdens and their activity, which from here send upward, from the temporal to the eternal. 6. A monk is one who compels nature perpetually, while the enlightened one is always a beholder, and the senses, purified by words, are adorned with good discernment. 7. The departure from the world is threefold, O wise one: either by fear of the remission of sins, or by desire to be worthy of the kingdom, or by the bearing of a measure beyond the ordinary, which is the high love of God. *8. A monk is one whose mind is perpetually purified by the vision of God, the animal powers of the soul are united into the intellectual, and he beholds Being, that single sun, unwaveringly.

5. Monasticism is the rule and work of the incorporeal, fulfilled within material and mortal flesh. 6. Monasticism is the perpetual coercion of nature and the undiminished preservation of the senses. Monasticism is an untainted body, a pure mouth, and an enlightened and contemplative mind. 7. All those who have abandoned worldly works have done so either because of the multitude of their sins, or for the sake of the heavenly kingdom, or because of love for God. 9. It is not a departure from the world by place, as if one were to go from here to somewhere else, but rather the complete abandonment of desires and the estrangement from worldly works, a voluntary death before the dissolution of the flesh. 10. Three things, O monk, shall you love and be saved by: innocence, purity, and fasting. One will bring you the love of your neighbor, the other will join you to the bodiless, and holy fasting will raise you above the earth.

11. Leaving the world in the time of youth is fitting for you, O monk, for the labors then gathered together nurture you in old age and, even before death, send you forth to the worthy reward of the eternal.