The monastic community of Mount Latros, in western Asia Minor, near Miletus, was established in the 7th century and experienced its first great flourishing in the 10th century, during the time of its most renowned representative, Saint Paul the New.

Amidst the deep gorges and sharp peaks of the area that the Byzantines called Phileremos, as well as along the banks of the picturesque Bafa Lake, more than ten monasteries congregated until the 13th century.

The monastic institutions and the monastic center as a whole, its history, progression, and institutions, remain largely unknown even to specialists in Byzantine History, as Latros has not yet been the subject of extensive research, a gap that this study aims to fill.

The reader will find the establishment and historical development of monasticism at Latros particularly interesting, especially in its interplay between myth and reality, the merging of different traditions, and their adaptation to Byzantine circumstances.

According to local monastic tradition, the monasticism of the Holy Places, Sinai, and Palestine was transmitted to Latros.

Its main representative was the Monastery of Kellivara, the oldest established in Latros, which was particularly connected with Sinai, while the Monastery of Stylos, founded by Saint Paul the New in the 10th century, while not renouncing the local tradition, developed special ties with Constantinople and the patriarchate.

Significant milestones in the development of the institutions of the monastic center are illuminated by the preserved archive of the Monastery of the Theotokos of Stylos, which serves as an important source for western Asia Minor and offers information of broader interest to scholars of Byzantine History.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]