John Climacus

John Climacus, also known as John of the Ladder, was a Christian monk and spiritual writer who lived in the sixth and seventh centuries in the Byzantine world. He became abbot of Saint Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai, and he is venerated as a saint by both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. His nickname comes from his best-known work, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, a guide to the spiritual life that made him one of the most influential figures in Byzantine spirituality.

The dates of his birth and death remain uncertain. Our main source is a short life written by the monk Daniel of the Raithu monastery, which offers little chronology. According to this account, he entered the monastery as a novice at about sixteen, under the direction of the monk Martyrius, and later withdrew to a hermitage near the mountain for many years. Scholars, however, find this version hard to accept, since the rhetorical skill and philosophical thinking in his writings point to a solid classical education that would have been difficult to obtain in the desert. He probably lived by the sea, perhaps in Gaza, where he may have worked as a lawyer before entering the monastery after his wife's death.

When he was already elderly, the monks of Sinai asked him to lead their community, and there he wrote the Ladder. The book arranges the spiritual journey into thirty steps, matching the years of Jesus before his public ministry. The first seven steps deal with general ascetic virtues; the next nineteen with overcoming vices and cultivating their opposite virtues; and the last four with the higher virtues. At the summit stands love, beyond prayer, stillness and dispassion. First written for a neighbouring community, the work soon became one of the most read books of Byzantine spirituality, especially during Lent, and its image of a ladder inspired a well-known icon tradition.