ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the development of Michael Psellos studies in ways that include some obvious lines of development for the future. Psellos dominates the history of the Byzantine eleventh century. Details of Psellos’ version of eleventh-century history are being replaced – but often by more Psellos. Psellos’ history of the eleventh century influenced later Byzantine historians, particularly Zonaras, who incorporated bland summaries of events from the Chronographia in his own history, which was printed more than two centuries before the Chronographia itself. Psellos makes the best-known learned reference in Byzantine literature. He wrote the most attractive political history of the eleventh century, the Chronographia, which today in translation is one of the most widely read Byzantine books. But he has also transmitted eleventh-century thought and experience in the following special areas: philosophy and its history, the occult, precious stones, systems of belief, monasticism, literary criticism, grammar, rhetoric, education, medicine, law, music, mathematics and astronomy.
