In Byzantium monks did not form a separate caste, apart from society. They formed part of a nexus of social, economic and spiritual relationships that bound together the "powerful" in the middle Byzantine state. Using hagiography, chronicles and, in particular, the newly-available archives of the Athonite monasteries, this book reassesses the role of monks in Byzantine society and examines the reasons for the flowering of the monastic life in the period from the end of iconoclasm to the beginning of the twelfth century.