14 Facts About Michael Psellos

Michael Psellos was born in 1017 or 1018, and is believed to have died in 1078, although it has been maintained that he remained alive until 1096.

Michael Psellos served as a high ranking courtier and advisor to several Byzantine emperors and was instrumental in the re-positioning of power of those emperors.

The main sources of information about Michael Psellos' life are his works, which contain extensive autobiographical passages.

Michael Psellos's family hailed from Nicomedia and, according to his own testimony, counted members of the consular and patrician elite among its ancestors.

Michael Psellos became an influential political advisor to emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and became the leading professor at the University of Constantinople, bearing the honorary title of "Chief of the Philosophers".

Towards the end of Monomachos' reign, Michael Psellos found himself under political pressure for some reason and decided to leave court, entering the Olympus monastery on Mount Olympus in Bithynia in 1054.

Michael Psellos played a decisive political role in the transition of power from Michael VI to Isaac I Komnenos in 1057; then from Isaac Komnenos to Constantine X Doukas, then again from Romanos IV Diogenes to Michael VII Doukas.

Some scholars believe that Michael Psellos had to retreat into a monastery again at some time during the 1070s.

Byzantinist historian Judith Herrin said: "This book by Michael Psellos Psellus is so fascinating that if you only read one book about Byzantium, by a Byzantine, that would be the one I'd choose".

Michael Psellos was universally educated and had a reputation for being one of the most learned men of his time.

Michael Psellos prided himself on having single-handedly reintroduced to Byzantine scholarship a serious study of ancient philosophy, especially of Plato.

Michael Psellos prided himself on being a master of rhetoric, combining the wisdom of the philosopher and the persuasiveness of the rhetorician.

The term "Pseudo-Michael Psellos" is used in modern scholarship to describe the authorship of several later works that are believed to have been falsely ascribed to Michael Psellos in Byzantine times.

Michael Psellos appears in Tim Severin's novel Viking: King's Man, the final piece of the Viking trilogy.