The Ladder of Divine Ascent

The Ladder of Divine Ascent or Ladder of Paradise (Κλῖμαξ; Scala or Climax Paradisi) is an important ascetical treatise for monasticism in Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, written by John Climacus in c. 600 AD at Saint Catherine's Monastery; it was requested by John, Abbot of the Raithu monastery.

The Scala, which obtained immense popularity and made its author famous in the Church, is addressed to anchorites and cenobites and treats of the means by which the highest degree of religious perfection may be attained. Divided into thirty parts, or "steps", in memory of the thirty years of the life of Christ—the "Divine Model" for the faithful Christian—it presents a picture of all the virtues, and contains a great many parables and historical touches, drawn principally from the monastic life and exhibiting the practical application of the precepts.

At the same time, as the work is mostly written in a concise, aphoristic form, and as the reasonings do not always seem clearly connected from one to the next, it is at times somewhat obscure. This explains its having been the subject of various commentaries, even in very early times. The most ancient of the manuscripts containing the Scala is found in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and was probably brought from Florence by Catherine de' Medici. In some of these manuscripts, the work bears the title of "Spiritual Tables" (Plakes Pneumatikai in Greek).