According to manuscript sources, John Climacus arrived at the Saint Catherine’s Monastery at the age of sixteen, where he became a disciple of Abba Martyrius and received monastic tonsure at the age of twenty. Until the death of his mentor, John Climacus remained in the monastery; afterwards, he withdrew to a secluded cave in the Sinai Valley. There, he devoted himself to prayer, reading of spiritual books, and the cultivation of a small garden. After forty years of eremitic life, John became abbot of the Sinai monastery and, at the request of the abbot John of Raithu, composed his celebrated work, The Ladder of Divine Ascent. The treatise consists of thirty chapters, each representing a step in the ascent of the virtues.
Church Slavonic Prologue under 30 March. Upon conducting an analysis of manuscript copies representing all currently known translations and recensions of the Prologue, three independent translations of the Life of John Climacus are identified ‒ the earliest, the Bulgarian, and the Serbian ‒ together with two revisions. The study demonstrates that these translations were produced independently at different times, whereas the two recensions ‒ the verse and the expanded ‒ derive from the earliest translation.
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