John Climacus

John Climacus lived as a Christian monk at the monastery on Mount Sinai during the 6th and 7th centuries. The details of his early life are sparse, but he devoted himself to monastic discipline in one of the faith's most remote and austere settings. At some point he composed his defining work, a spiritual treatise structured as a ladder with thirty rungs, each representing a stage in the ascent toward God. The text became a cornerstone of Eastern Christian monasticism and spread far beyond Sinai's walls. Both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church revered him as a saint. His nickn…