Walter Hilton's The Scale of Perfection maintains a secure place among the major religious treatises composed in fourteenth-century England. This guide to the contemplative life, written in two books of more than 40,000 words each, is notable for its careful explorations of its religious themes and also as a monument of Middle English prose. Its popularity is attested by the fact that some forty-two manuscripts containing one or both of the books survive, with a relatively large number of manuscipts with Book I alone, which suggests it may have been the more popular of the two. Hilton (born c. 1343) was a member of the religious order known as the Augustinian Canons. There is reason to believe that be was trained in canon law and studied at the University of Cambridge. He was the author of a number of works in English and Latin, all much shorter than The Scale. He died at the Augustinian Priory of Thurgarton in Nottinghamshire in 1396. On the basis of the content of certain of his works it can be safely inferred that he was actively involved in some of the religious controversies current in England in the 1380s and 1390s, and his principal concern, evident in The Scale , is to defend orthodox belief, especially in the conduct of the contemplative life.

John Climacus (c. 579-649) was abbot of the monastery of Catherine on Mount Sinai. His Ladder was the most widely used handbook of the ascetical life in the ancient Greek Church.

THE SCALE (OR LADDER) OF PERFECTION is a guide to the contemplative life in which the soul is reformed to the image and likeness of God. Book One provides an overview of contemplation and its prerequisites, a discussion of prayer and meditation, and a path for dealing with sins, both obvious and hidden, through self-awareness, humility, and the love of God. By these means one passes through the darkness known to another English mystic as "the cloud of unknowing." Book Two distinguishes between the reform of the soul that is in faith only and the reform that is in both faith and feeling. Loving Jesus is the way through the initial darkness that one sees after withdrawal from the world of the senses, and God gives light to those who persevere in this work. The spiritual eye is opened in a way that cannot be arrived at by mere intellectual study, nor by individual effort. Contemplation is given by God. After further progress, the soul knows itself as it is, and Jesus speaks directly to her.

This book introduces the reader to the history of European Christian pilgrimage in the twelve hundred years between the conversion of the Emperor Constantine and the beginnings of the Protestant Reformation. It sheds light on the varied reasons for which men and women of all classes undertook journeys, which might be long (to Rome, Jerusalem and Compostela) or short (to innumerable local shrines). It also considers the geography of pilgrimage and its cultural legacy.