This article is within the scope of WikiProject Greece, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Greek people on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GreeceWikipedia:WikiProject GreeceTemplate:WikiProject GreeceGreek
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Middle Ages, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Middle Ages on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Middle AgesWikipedia:WikiProject Middle AgesTemplate:WikiProject Middle AgesMiddle Ages
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography, a collaborative effort to create, develop and organize Wikipedia's articles about people. All interested editors are invited to join the project and contribute to the discussion. For instructions on how to use this banner, please refer to the documentation.BiographyWikipedia:WikiProject BiographyTemplate:WikiProject Biographybiography
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philosophy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of content related to philosophy on Wikipedia. If you would like to support the project, please visit the project page, where you can get more details on how you can help, and where you can join the general discussion about philosophy content on Wikipedia.PhilosophyWikipedia:WikiProject PhilosophyTemplate:WikiProject PhilosophyPhilosophy
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Poetry, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of poetry on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoetryWikipedia:WikiProject PoetryTemplate:WikiProject PoetryPoetry
This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Historyhistory
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Christianity, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Christianity on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChristianityWikipedia:WikiProject ChristianityTemplate:WikiProject ChristianityChristianity
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Religion, a project to improve Wikipedia's articles on Religion-related subjects. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.ReligionWikipedia:WikiProject ReligionTemplate:WikiProject ReligionReligion
Latest comment: 18 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion
The existence of the person treated in this article is currently questioned. The following is moved here from a discussion between User_Talk:Robth and User_Talk:LukasPietsch:
[...] Michael Psellus the Elder is an article based on the 1911 Enc. Brittanica. Trouble is, the Enc.Br. gives no sources in turn; it also states that no writings of that guy have been preserved, so how do we even know he existed? He is in none of the more recent works I've checked - the present version of Enc.Br., Pauly's Reallexicon, a couple of other general-purpose encyclopedias. Nothing in the specialist literature on the "younger" Psellos either that would suggest the existence of a confusable namesake. What makes the whole thing even more fishy is that much of the information the article gives on the "elder" (except his geographical provenance from Andros) sounds almost as if it could also apply to either of the other two Psellos, so I have the suspicion his whole existence might be a philological misunderstanding that has in the meantime been solved by scholarship. Does your library have anything where you could look up a topic like this? Lukas(T.|@)09:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
I searched through a number of different reference books--including extensive ones devoted to philosophy, theology, and Byzantium--and histories of the period, and came up with absolutely nothing on the elusive "elder"; I think you must be right in your guess that some reference to the well attested Psellus was misconstrued to refer to a different individual, and that this has been cleared up since 1911. [...] RobthTalk20:53, 7 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
Hah, I found it. Paul Lemerle (1971), Le premier humanisme byzantin, 1st page of ch.6 (p. 129 in Greek translated edition) and fn. 6., deals with the question. It's just as I thought: A misunderstanding based on one equivocal and probably mistaken mentioning of the name in one medieval chronicle, the Σύναψη Κεδρηνού-Σκυλίτση. The guy is a phantom. Lukas(T.|@)23:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)Reply
This name is mentioned in one of Nostradamus' works.
"The tenth day of the April Calends, calculated in Gothic fashion
is revived again by wicked people.
The fire is put out and the diabolic gathering
seek the bones of the demon of Psellus."
I don't know if this is literal or anything, I just thought I would ask.
level-5 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
