
Contents
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I. King and Physician in the Great Coenobium I. King and Physician in the Great Coenobium
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Tools of the Trade Tools of the Trade
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Dosimetry and the Skilled Physician Dosimetry and the Skilled Physician
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II. Physician and Judge in Cell and Church II. Physician and Judge in Cell and Church
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The Physician and the Judge The Physician and the Judge
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III. Prison, Amputation III. Prison, Amputation
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Last of All, a Knife Last of All, a Knife
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IV. Conclusion: The Monastery as Clinic IV. Conclusion: The Monastery as Clinic
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Conclusions Conclusions
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9 A Physician, a Judge, and a Shepherd Walk into a Monastery…
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Published:October 2022
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Abstract
This final chapter returns to the Ladder, but also takes in John Climacus’ other work, To the Shepherd. In these, John multiplies images for his spiritual director, favoring especially those of physician, judge, king, and shepherd. John uses these different images to explore both degrees of coercion in spiritual direction and different contexts for it. He is especially interested in expanding and nuancing the therapeutic hierarchy on display in church-order literature by means of a detailed analogy with a physician’s toolkit and expertise in dosimetry. The director learns to alternate harsher and gentler disciplines as well as to reserve more painful ones for more serious or persistent problems. These nuance John’s description of a monastery’s abbot as a king dispensing orders, while the regal imagery locates practices of confession and penance in a disciplinary organization. At other points, John describes private confessional encounters in medical terms, drawing especially on the manners of physicians and patients in intimate settings. For more public confessions, the same relationship is described through judicial imagery as John develops manners appropriate to that profession. Like Cassian and Basil, he deals with intransigent monks for whom he recommends amputation, in contrast to the “prison” he gleefully imagines in the Ladder’s Fifth Rung. Finally, John reconceives the monastic space as a clinic and its daily activities as a drama through which hidden realities come to light and the sick find healing.
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