Tatiana G. Popova presented the Hilandar Research Library with a copy of her latest book on the Slavic text of The Ladder by St. John Climacus (6th cent.), Die “Leiter zum Paradies” des Johannes Klimakos: Katalog der slavischen Handschriften / “Лествица” Иоанна Синайского: Каталог славянских рукописей  (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2012). The 1073-page tome provides descriptions of extant and lost Slavic manuscripts containing the entire text of The Ladder, as well as manuscripts such as miscellanies, prologs, paterika, the Pandects of Nikon Chernogorets, etc., that include excerpts from The Ladder.Photo of the front cover of Tatiana Popova's book - it is dark blue cloth, with "Tatiana G. Popova" written at the top, with the title in German written below the author's name on the upper right-hand side of the front cover; below the author and title is a small grayscale image from a medieval Slavic manuscript or icon of men climbing "the ladder" to heaven with angels flying around the ladder, an Orthodox church on the left side of the image with a saint holding a scroll with Slavic words standing on the top step of the church, turned twoards a crowd of people. There are also what may be a couple of demons flying on the right side of the image; and at least two people appear to be falling off of the Ladder

The 40-page, two-column bibliography on The Ladder includes works in Slavic, Greek, English, German, Romanian, and several other languages. The indexes arrange the manuscript data according to chronology; recension and language; repository location; the names of people connected to the history of the manuscripts; geographical names and the names of monasteries and churches. There’s also an index of proper names and subjects, an alphabetical index of manuscript sigla, and two appendices: 1. pre-revolutionary Russian editions of The Ladder, and 2. Greek manuscripts of The Ladder.

This work follows Tatiana Popova’s 2010 publication Славянская рукописная традиция Лествицы Иоанна Синайского: Монография (Северодвинск, Россия) – another gift from the author to the Hilandar Research Library.

Postscript, July 31, 2012: Tatiana Popova requests that readers notify her if they find errors in her book or if they have any questions or comments – lestvic@mail.ru.