Modern Scholarship and Translations

No complete critical edition of the Ladder of Divine Ascent has ever been produced, and the standard Greek text still rests on two early printings — Matthew Rader’s of 1633 (reprinted in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca) and the 1883 Constantinople edition of Sophronios the Hesychast. The modern English readership of John Climacus has been shaped above all by two translations — the Luibheid–Russell Classics of Western Spirituality volume with Kallistos Ware’s introduction, and the Lazarus Moore version as revised at Holy Transfiguration Monastery — together with the monographic study of John Chryssavgis.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

This collection cites the Ladder by Step and section (for example, “Step 27.61”), following the standard division established in the modern English tradition. The base reference is Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell, trans., John Climacus: The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Classics of Western Spirituality (Paulist, 1982), whose short Step-titles this collection adopts; the numbering within each Step is that standardized by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery revision of Archimandrite Lazarus Moore’s translation (Boston, 1979), and the two numbering schemes coincide. To the Shepherd is cited separately by section. This page exists to lay out those editions and the text-critical situation behind them.

The Greek Text and the Text-Critical Situation

There is, to this day, no complete critical edition of the Ladder. The standard printed Greek rests essentially on two early texts. The first is the 1633 edition of the Jesuit scholar Matthew (Matthaeus) Rader, Ioannis Climaci Opera, which presented the Greek alongside a Latin translation; this is the text reprinted by Migne in Patrologia Graeca 88 (Paris, 1860), where the Ladder occupies columns 632–1164 and To the Shepherd columns 1165–1208 (Migne, PG 88). The second is the 1883 Constantinople edition prepared by Sophronios the Hesychast (Sophronios Eremites), which rests on a different — and in many places superior — manuscript base, and which underlies the bulk of the modern Greek and Athonite reprints in devotional use (Sophronios, Klimax, 1883).

The reason a critical edition has never been completed is the sheer scale of the tradition. More than seven hundred Greek manuscripts of the Ladder survive, alongside a vast versional tradition in Syriac, Arabic, Georgian, Slavonic, and Latin — a textual inheritance so large that it has repeatedly deterred editors from attempting a full collation (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent; Encyclopedia.com). The popularity that made the Ladder one of the most copied books in the Byzantine world is therefore also the obstacle to fixing its text. A digital critical-edition project is now under way — Maxim Venetskov (University of Glasgow), “Towards a Critical Edition of the Ladder” — but until it matures, Rader’s text in PG 88 and the 1883 Sophronios edition remain the standard reference texts for scholarly citation (Venetskov, Glasgow).

The Standard English Translations

Two English translations dominate the field, and they complement rather than compete with each other.

The first is Colm Luibheid and Norman Russell, trans., John Climacus: The Ladder of Divine Ascent, in the Classics of Western Spirituality series (New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1982). It opens with a preface by Luibheid and a note on the translation by Russell, but its scholarly weight comes from a substantial introduction by Kallistos Ware — then Bishop Kallistos — which treats John’s life, the dating problem, the structure of the work (the threefold scheme of renunciation, the active life or praxis, and contemplation or theoria), and his theology. Ware’s introduction is the most-cited short English study of Climacus and serves as the standard scholarly entry-point in English (Luibheid & Russell, CWS, 1982, intro. Ware). It is the edition whose Step-titles and Step.section numbering this collection follows.

The second is the translation of Archimandrite Lazarus Moore, The Ladder of Divine Ascent (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), which appeared with an introduction by M. Heppell. This version was subsequently revised and re-edited by Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Boston and issued in 1978/1979; later printings followed (commonly 1991, and a “Revised Edition” through Conciliar/Ancient Faith Publishing). The HTM Boston edition is a revision of Moore, not an independent translation. Its significance is twofold: it established the now-standard paragraph-and-verse numbering within each Step — the reason Climacus can be cited precisely as “Step 27.61” — and it includes To the Shepherd, the short pastoral treatise that Luibheid and Russell omit. For these reasons the Moore/HTM text is the version usually preferred in Orthodox liturgical and devotional use (Moore, Ladder, Faber 1959; rev. HTM Boston 1978/1979).

The relation between the two is best understood as a division of labour. Luibheid–Russell offers the scholarly apparatus and Ware’s framing introduction; Moore/HTM offers the standardized numbering, devotional register, and the appended To the Shepherd. Serious study of Climacus in English normally keeps both at hand, and this collection’s citation conventions are deliberately compatible with each (Luibheid & Russell, CWS, 1982; Moore, rev. HTM, 1979).

The Modern Scholarly Literature

The standard modern English study is John Chryssavgis, John Climacus: From the Egyptian Desert to the Sinaite Mountain (Aldershot/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004; later reprinted by Routledge). It provides a chronological table and a full treatment of John’s ascetic teaching, his sources, and the long-versus-short dating problem, and it has become the natural first stop for the scholarly reader after Ware’s introduction (Chryssavgis, John Climacus, Ashgate 2004). Chryssavgis also produced Soul Mending: The Art of Spiritual Direction (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000), which translates and studies To the Shepherd and so fills the gap left by the Luibheid–Russell omission (Chryssavgis, Soul Mending, 2000).

Two further scholarly works are indispensable. Henrik Rydell Johnsén, Reading John Climacus: Rhetorical Argumentation, Literary Convention and the Tradition of Monastic Formation (Lund, 2007), is the major treatment of the Ladder‘s literary form, situating its rhetoric within the conventions of ancient monastic instruction (Johnsén, Reading John Climacus, Lund 2007). Earlier, and still authoritative as a reference treatment, is G. Couilleau’s article “Jean Climaque” in the Dictionnaire de spiritualité VIII (Paris, 1974), which advanced the influential concentric-structure analysis of the work (Couilleau, “Jean Climaque,” DSp VIII, 1974). Together with Ware’s introduction these constitute the core modern bibliography; Ware himself returned to Climacus in his studies of the “spiritual father,” a theme central to both the Ladder and To the Shepherd (Ware, intro. to CWS, 1982).

The Manuscript and Versional Tradition

The text-critical difficulty is worth dwelling on, because it is also a measure of the book’s reach. The more than seven hundred surviving Greek manuscripts of the Ladder place it among the most heavily transmitted works of the entire Byzantine ascetical corpus — a body of witnesses comparable in scale to that of major biblical and patristic texts, and far larger than most monastic writings ever attracted (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent; Chryssavgis, John Climacus, Ashgate 2004). Many of these manuscripts are illuminated, and the Ladder developed its own iconographic cycle in the margins and frontispieces, of which the famous Sinai panel is only the most celebrated independent instance (see the-image-of-the-ladder.md).

To the Greek witnesses must be added the early and extensive versional tradition. The Ladder was translated into Syriac, Arabic, Georgian, Old Church Slavonic, and Latin, in several cases not long after its composition, and these versions are themselves of text-critical value because they may preserve readings older than many of the surviving Greek copies (Chryssavgis, John Climacus, Ashgate 2004; on the Slavonic Lestvitsa see influence-on-the-tradition.md). The practical consequence for the modern reader is a paradox worth stating plainly: the book that has been continuously read in Orthodox monasteries for some fourteen centuries, and that the Church sets before the whole people each Great Lent, still lacks the one thing a classical text of its stature would normally possess — an established critical text. The Venetskov project at Glasgow is the first sustained modern attempt to remedy this, applying digital ecdotic methods to a tradition whose very size had defeated earlier editors (Venetskov, Glasgow). Until it bears fruit, every citation of Climacus rests, ultimately, on Rader and Sophronios — a reminder, congenial to John’s own spirit, that even the most familiar authorities stand on more provisional ground than their familiarity suggests.

The Dating Problem in Modern Scholarship

The modern literature remains divided on John’s dates, and the division maps onto the editions surveyed above. The introductions and reference works are not unanimous, and the question bears directly on how one reads the work’s relation to its Sinaite context.

[Disputed: John Climacus’s dates. The “short chronology” (c. 525–606, placing him in the sixth century) is followed by the Catholic Encyclopedia, the New World Encyclopedia, and the Library of Congress (“active 6th century”), going back to Müller and supported by the Greek scholars Bogdanović and Sakkos. The “long chronology” (c. 579–649, placing him in the later sixth and seventh centuries) is followed by OrthodoxWiki and is the framing of the Luibheid–Russell CWS edition, associated with the work of Nau. Kallistos Ware presents the later dating (c. 579–649) while stressing that the dates are insecure. This collection notes the dispute and does not adjudicate it; see ../01-foundations/sinai-and-the-monk.md for the full discussion.]

The practical point for the reader of the editions is that Ware’s CWS introduction adopts the long chronology, whereas several of the encyclopedic reference works that a student is likely to consult assume the short one; the discrepancy is a matter of competing manuscript notices and inferences from John’s reported lifespan, not of new evidence, and it is treated in full in the foundations file (Luibheid & Russell, CWS, 1982, intro. Ware; Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent).

References

Migne, J.-P., ed. Patrologia Graeca 88 (Paris, 1860). Rader’s text of 1633; the Ladder at cols. 632–1164, To the Shepherd at cols. 1165–1208.
Sophronios the Hesychast (Sophronios Eremites), ed. Klimax (Constantinople, 1883).
Luibheid, Colm, and Norman Russell, trans. John Climacus: The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1982. Introduction by Kallistos Ware.
Moore, Archimandrite Lazarus, trans. The Ladder of Divine Ascent. London: Faber and Faber, 1959 (intro. M. Heppell); revised and re-edited by Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, 1978/1979.
Chryssavgis, John. John Climacus: From the Egyptian Desert to the Sinaite Mountain. Aldershot/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004 (later Routledge reprints).
Chryssavgis, John. Soul Mending: The Art of Spiritual Direction. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2000.
Johnsén, Henrik Rydell. Reading John Climacus: Rhetorical Argumentation, Literary Convention and the Tradition of Monastic Formation. Lund, 2007.
Couilleau, G. “Jean Climaque.” In Dictionnaire de spiritualité VIII. Paris, 1974.
Venetskov, Maxim. “Towards a Critical Edition of the Ladder.” University of Glasgow.
St. John Climacus. Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent.