John Skylitzes Libri

An accessible introduction exploring how the earliest Christian monks lived and taught in the Egyptian deserts in the fourth to the seventh centuries AD, using their own tales and sayings. Shows the gradual transformation of their essentially solitary existence into communal co-existence which defined the monasteries of the Middle Ages.

As Focal Impulse Theory deftly illustrates, bodily movements carry musical meaning and, in a very real sense, are meaning.

The first complete English translation of John Skylitzes' Middle Byzantine chronicle, with introductions and notes.