John Climacus

John Climacus (d. 649), monk and abbot of Mount Sinai. A native of Palestine, he was married in early life and became a monk on the death of his wife. After some years in community, John became a hermit for the greater part of his life, living at Thole like the Egyptian monks, coming with other solitaries to church on Saturday and Sunday, but spending the rest of the week in almost complete solitude. There he wrote the work which gave him his name ‘Climacus’ (= ladder), usually called The Ladder to Paradise. This influential treatise of monastic spirituality deals with vices and virtues, community and eremitical life, and the pursuit of apatheia (passive disinterestedness) which was regarded as a perfect state. At the age of seventy he was chosen as abbot of Sinai and ruled for four years before retiring to his hermitage. He died at the age of about eighty. His concept of the spiritual life as a ladder inspired artists to develop interesting pictorial conventions as illustrations, while his own emblem is also a ladder. Feast: 30 March.

Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.

• AA.SS. Mar. III (1668), 834–7; works in P.G., lxxxviii. 585–1248 (Eng. tr. by L. Moore, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 1959); W. Volker, Scala Paradisi (1968); J. R. Martin, The Illustration of the Heavenly Ladder of John Climacus (1954); B.L.S., iii. 272–5 and L. Petit in D.T.C., vii. 690–2